Blog

Dear Little One: My new book

by Nina Laden

Even after twenty-seven years of being published it is still a nerve-wracking thrill to have a new book come out. As I type this, tomorrow, November 2nd, 2021, my next book, “Dear Little One” will make its way into the world, and hopefully into the hands of many, many readers. It has already gotten a much-coveted Starred Review in School Library Journal, which makes me so happy, and a lovely review from Publisher’s Weekly, as well as being chosen as one of the Best Books of the Month for November from Amazon.

“Dear Little One” is framed as a love letter that encourages and inspires readers to explore nature and to protect this world we love. Spoiler Alert: close your eyes right now if you don’t want to know who this letter is from…

My original title for this book is the answer: Love, Mother Nature. This is the actual page in my journal where inspiration hit and I started writing what eventually became “Dear Little One.”

All of my books begin in my journals, but after that I type them into my laptop and then the revising begins. Some books take dozens of revisions. I had a pretty clear vision for “Dear Little One,” and it went through four revisions before it went off to the amazing Melissa Castrillon for her to begin creating the illustrations.

“Dear Little One” the the third collaboration with me as author and Melissa as illustrator. My book, “If I Had A Little Dream” was the very first picture book she illustrated. Then we did “Yellow Kayak” together. (and we are doing a fourth book together – which hasn’t officially been announced in the trades, but I think I can say the title… it is “Love is My Favorite Color.”) Yes, I am also an illustrator. I have a degree in Illustration from Syracuse University’s College of Visual and Performing Arts, and my parents were both artists. My career has been a journey and life has taken many twists and turns as I became a caregiver to my father, who has now passed away, my husband, who still has some health issues, and my brother, who also has been battling health issues. I am grateful that I’ve been able to write through this period of time and I know there is art in writing- and nature has grounded me.

I have always been a Nature Girl. This is me at age 8 in summer camp in Cooperstown, New York. I was that little girl who collected pine cones and leaves. I had funerals for spiders, and I rescued bugs. I also started foraging as a child in summer camp and loved to shock my friends by eating the petals on day lilies. It is no surprise that I live on a rural island and I forage for a lot of the food that we eat.

In this day of Climate Change and during the pandemic I especially think that the message of “Dear Little One” is so important for children of all ages- to care for this world and help keep it from danger. I feel so deeply for this book on so many levels and absolutely love how Melissa has brought it to life, and designer Lizzy Bromley has done a magnificent job, as usual. Please look at the case of the book- under the jacket- and you will see this:

Paula Wiseman Books and Simon & Schuster have done a beautiful job with this book. And I am ever grateful to my incredible agent, Laura Rennert at Andrea Brown Literary Agency– a powerhouse of women agents!

I thank you for reading this, and I thank you in advance for reading “Dear Little One” to your little ones. I hope you will make it part of your library and part of your heart.

Books

Planting Seeds of Change

by Nina Laden

I feel so lucky to have two new books out this year. “Seeds of Change,” which is officially out on February 6, 2024 literally started as a seed of an idea in my journal. During the pandemic I had started doing a combination of a drawing and a poem every day, reflecting on my life, and the world at large, along with a full page of journaling. I started this in April of 2020- and actually did it for a solid year.

On May 29, 2020 something happened that planted the first seed in my head:

The first seed was shock. I was in shock over the senseless murder of George Floyd.

Three days later, I wrote and drew this:

This seed was outrage. I was expressing my feelings the only way I knew how, and I was sharing these “Corona Life” pages on my social media, too. I wasn’t thinking about who was reading what I had posted, but to my surprise, my editor/friend Connie Hsu, who was my editor for “Once Upon A Memory” (and we share the same birthday) saw this and she sent a message to my agent.

The third seed was interest- and “Seeds of Change” started to sprout.

But books are always a journey. Ideas need water, food, time. I had actually helped myself by writing these notes:

So many of the seeds were there- and I wrote a first draft, and then a second, and a second version of the second one.

By July 7, 2020 Connie was definitely interested, and so was the editorial board. My original title, “Sow Seeds of Kindness” was changed to “Seeds of Change.” I just had to nervously wait for the acquisitions board at Roaring Brook/Macmillan to decide if they wanted to acquire it.

Then on July 23, 2020 an offer came in- and I was thrilled that “Seeds of Change” was going to be a book. Then the real work began. The first task was to find an illustrator. (I know. I am an illustrator. There are reasons that editors choose who they choose to illustrate books. I don’t always understand this, but I’ve learned to let go, and expand my horizons. I also got to help choose the illustrator.) Connie sent me some links to illustrators she was thinking about, but then just by chance, I discovered a young illustrator from Madagascar named Sawyer Cloud. She had not done any books in the US at that point, but I loved her style- the softness, the colors, her drawings of children- and it was all done in Procreate. I sent a link to her work to Connie and it started the ball rolling.

When sketches came in I knew Sawyer was going to do a fabulous job. We also had formed a friendship- messaging each other. I became a quasi-mentor- as the older woman who had done kids books for so long (this is my thirtieth year of being published) and I felt good sharing advice and encouragement across the world to Madagascar.

Sawyer got very busy. It seems that I was not the only person who discovered her- and it took years for the final illustrations for “Seeds” to come in. I was patient. I understand the process, and for the illustrator it is so much more work- creating something out of a few words. Sawyer brought more than her technique- she brought the story of life in Madagascar, dealing with bad weather, trying to build a garden, trying to build a community. My words became the soundtrack to her movie.

Connie asked us both to write an afterword to explain what “Seeds of Change” was for us. For me, what I wrote was more literal, as I discussed learning to grow my own garden, and that seeds are there- in the produce section of the grocery store- but from the very beginning this book was metaphoric for me, as it was rooted in wanting change, equality, growth and nourishment for all. People are seeds and they all have potential.

Sawyer wrote a beautiful note- you’ll have to read it. And I hope you will read our book, and “Seeds of Change” will grow in your heart. It certainly has grown in mine.

Books

Love is my Favorite Color- The Story behind the…

by Nina Laden

“Love is my Favorite Color,” my fourth collaboration with the amazing Melissa Castrillon came out on January 2nd, 2024 from Paula Wiseman Books at Simon & Schuster, and it could not have been a better way to ring in the new year! I had a horrible year in 2023, diagnosed with cancer in late January, it was a full year of chemo, radiation, two surgeries, and so many terrible things I don’t want to go into. The good news is that I am in remission and recovering, the even better news is that this book is here.

I am grateful that this book was in the pipeline, along with another book, which will be out February 6th- (More on that in the next blog post.), because I couldn’t work on new projects during treatment. But books take years to be born and ideas come in the strangest places and at the strangest times. I am going to share a little bit about how “Love is my Favorite Color” came to be.

“Love is my Favorite Color” actually started on July 23, 2018, when I was writing on my phone at my car dealership waiting for my Subaru’s first service. Then I added it to my journal- this is part of what I wrote. Many of my books have started on my phone when I’m away from home. Usually I’m walking on the beach or in the woods, but this time I was sitting in Dewey Griffin in Bellingham. I also wrote in that journal entry, “Trying to think of what Paula Wiseman (my editor) would accept as a third book to go with “Little Dream” and “Yellow Kayak.” Well, as these things go, “Love is My Favorite Color” wound up buried in my journal for years, and Paula chose “Dear Little One” as my third book for her with Melissa as illustrator.

Then the pandemic happened. In April of 2020 I started doing a daily “comic and poem” in my journal to try to reflect on everything that was happening in my life and the world at large. I also journaled a page to go with it. On March 8, 2021 I wrote, “Paula Wiseman has been asking for another text- she emailed again this morning. So I pulled out my “notes” on my phone- I had a bunch of partial poems- and I went back to one I had started July 23, 2018 called “Love is my Favorite Color” and I wrote the whole thing- puzzling and feeling my way through it. I wrote it on a sheet of paper, then typed it into a Word doc, editing as I went. Then I sent it to Laura… (my agent) and surprise- she replied right away- a good sign! Fingers Crossed.”

And the comic and poem were also what I drew and wrote in my journal that day.

Here is my official first hand-written draft of “Love is my Favorite Color.”

By April Fool’s Day, 2021, agent Laura emailed me a reply from editor Paula, and I was thrilled it wasn’t a joke. It said, “Here is where I am with “LOVE IS MY FAVORITE COLOR. In LOVE! I would like to make an offer for World Rights. What a gem of a book this will be! Take care. Happy Spring. Best always, Paula.”

As we all know, the pandemic kept going. Melissa Castrillon, by this time, had been doing gorgeous books of her own, and also illustrating for many other publishers, and she also got pregnant with her first child. She was pregnant while working on the illustrations for “Love is my Favorite Color,” and I want to think that all those hormones were bringing so many loving feelings to her art. She had a little girl this year- an adorable baby.

“Love is my Favorite Color” got a great review in Kirkus, and it was chosen as an Kids Indie Next Pick for January. It was also chosen by Parnassus Books, owned by author Ann Patchett for their Sprout Book Club subscription for January. It’s off to a great start!

I want to share a couple of spreads from the book- I couldn’t find an image of my favorite spread, which goes with my line: “Friendship is my favorite dance, there are so many dances to try.” Melissa’s art echoes that of Matisse’s “The Dance” in such a fantastic way. Here are two other spreads to savor:

This wonderful dog appears throughout the book.

And this is the title page spread- I wanted you to see that I dedicated the book to my sweet brother, my favorite brother, my only brother, David. It was about time in my now thirty year career that he had a book dedicated to him. Melissa dedicated it to her husband, Luke.

I also wanted to share the cover that graces the case. All four of my books with Paula Wiseman Books have had slightly different covers under the jackets on the case, and all of them have had gold foil stamping. They really make the book look like a treasure- and I hope that everyone will think that it is.

“Love is my Favorite Color” should now be available everywhere books are sold- in brick and mortar locations and online, but if you don’t see it, please ask for it. And if you live in Western Washington I will be doing a book signing for both of my new books- this one, and “Seeds of Change” at Village Books in Bellingham on February 7th at 6pm. You have to register to attend at EventBrite, but the event is free.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this- and to read books! Book people are my people, and I hope this book will become one of Your Favorite Books!

Shop.NinaLaden.com

Someday My Prints Will Come

by Nina Laden

I have exciting news! Something that I’ve thought about for years has finally happened… or should I say I made it happen? I’ve always wanted to sell my art and prints of my art, but it took a few things to finally kick this into gear. The first thing is a little shocking. I got a cancer diagnosis in late January. If you want to know more about that you can read my CaringBridge journal. The second thing is that after two years of great book sales, possibly due to the pandemic, sales dropped way down. It could be the economy, or the glut of self-published books flooding the market. Whatever it was, it is not the best timing with my huge medical expenses this year. And then the third thing happened:

I received an email from a mom through my website here. (I hope it’s okay that I used her photo.) She told me that her ten month old son was obsessed with the Zoo image in my book, “Peek-a Who?” She asked me if I had any prints of that image available for sale. I replied, “I don’t know why I don’t have any.” And the next day I ordered a really nice printer. I’ve never had a nice printer. I couldn’t swing the top of the line machines that cost thousands, but I’m very happy with the Canon Pixma Pro-200 that I bought. The inks are over $100, but that seems to be what you get these days. And I discovered beautiful acid-free paper from Red River Paper Company in Texas. The test prints- I started with the Zoo image- were gorgeous.

Then I had to figure out how to create an online shop.

First I went online and looked at many online shops that sold prints from children’s book creators. There were many out there, and many people used forums like Etsy. I have resisted Etsy since I heard that they charge you for every piece you post, plus take commission on sales. I called my genius web guy, Jeff. Jeff built this website for me. He built my first website around twenty-five years ago. He is a fine artist and digital designer. (You can visit his shop here.) Jeff immediately made me feel like I was on the right track. He said he would build Shop.NinaLaden.com as a sub-domain of this site. We both worked on it for a month- the month that I was recovering from two months of simultaneous chemo and radiation treatment. This was good work to help me focus on my future, and get stronger for major surgery to come.

It was a lot of work for both of us. Aside from me having to put all of the 34 images available as Art Prints into optimized web form and high resolution form for printing, and I had 54 framed pen and ink drawings to sell that needed to be photographed and then brought into Photoshop to optimize them, plus writing all of the text, I also had to do some “adulting” and set up a business checking account, and get Stripe (to take credit cards), get a business PayPal account, and research the sales tax thresholds. (once I reach the threshold I’ll have to charge tax) PayPal and Stripe do take percentages- but it is not as much as Etsy. But you do have to spend money to hopefully make some down the road.

Jeff definitely had the harder job. He built the shop using Woo Commerce and we needed other Plugins, and he had to write code- but he is a wizard and he figured things out. Shipping was tricky. A Plugin solved that issue. We tested and tested, and finally yesterday Shop.NinaLaden.com went live! There are 34 Art Prints available. They are 8″x10″ and look bold and bright on the acid free Polar Matte paper. They would look so good in children’s rooms, playrooms, in kitchens, as baby shower gifts, the possibilities are endless. I will be adding more Art Prints in the future. I’m thinking about doing some series: fish, mushrooms, cats, dogs, etc…

There are also Original Art (all framed right now) pen and ink and pen and ink with vintage rubber stamp drawings available for sale. These are one-of-a-kind. There were 54 pieces to start- some have already sold since the shop opened. These are pieces I’ve drawn over the past few years. I will be adding more original art (may not be framed) in the future. I am also planning on eventually adding my “Rugged Beauty Jewelry” to the shop.

For years I have made my Rugged Beauty pendants- and sometimes earrings- with semi-precious stones (mostly agates) that I find on our neighborhood beach, and then polish. I add tiny semi-precious faceted stone beads to them with beading wire. They hang on leather cords with mother-of-pearl button closures. You can dress them up or wear casually. They are unique and amazing little treasures from Mother Nature. These Rugged Beauties in the photo are my personal collection. I’ll be photographing the ones that are available soon.

Right now this is a grand experiment. I’m really hoping that it takes off so I can share my art with folks near and far, and brighten walls and lives with my fun, funny, quirky, off-beat, funky, lively, unique, vibrant work. I am dedicated to getting work that has sold shipped as soon as possible. There will be a short break when I’m in the hospital, but I hope that I’ll be getting orders and sending them out in the foreseeable future.

Thank you for reading, and thank you for checking out Shop.NinaLaden.com – I hope you like what you see!

Books

The Trainbow is here!

by Nina Laden

Rolling in to stores, libraries, places where books are sold starting August 16th, 2022, I am so excited to announce the arrival of The Trainbow! It’s a book… it’s a train… it’s a rainbow… it’s an accordion fold book that you can both read and play with.

I have always wanted to do an accordion fold book and I want to take you on a little journey so you can see how this super fun book came to life.

It’s no accident that I decided to do a train book. Trains have been in my life, literally since I was two years old. We lived in Rego Park, Queens, in New York City and the Long Island Railroad ran through our backyard- just behind the garage. All day and all night, all sorts of trains went by: passenger trains, freight trains, trains that worked on the tracks- and they all shook our house. I had a fish tank in my bedroom and sometimes when the house shook, the water would slosh out of the fish tank and I’d find guppies on the floor when I woke up in the morning. The “X” on this map is where our house was- the first house on Alderton Street after 63rd Drive- LIRR is the railroad.

I even drew trains when I was little. I made this train, which almost IS a rainbow train when I was around six years old. It was done by coloring the paper first with many colored crayons, then covering it all with black crayon and ultimately drawing with a pointy tool like a toothpick.

The book itself started years ago when I came up with the name, “The Trainbow,” and then wrote a little poem about it, with a song. Then I made a black and white dummy (yes, that is what we call a mock-up of a book) out of Bristol Board. I wanted the book to move sort of like a train, so that’s where the accordion fold came in.

This was what I sent to my editor at Chronicle Books, and she liked it enough to bring it to acquisitions, and to my delight, the decision was made to offer me a contract to turn The Trainbow into a book. That was great news, but it didn’t happen smoothly, or quickly. For a while The Trainbow got derailed- by both the pandemic, and by some circumstances beyond my control. Finally a designer, Lydia Ortiz, was brought on board and the book started moving again.

There was mutual agreement that the rainbow part of The Trainbow should stack on top of the book- and fold and unfold to form an actual rainbow. This took quite a few tries… and I had to make sure that the red arch was on top. I also wanted the book to read from right to left as it unfolded, and this had to work on both sides. So I created this little color dummy:

Unfortunately the arches were too thin, and they would never hold up when the book was die-cut, so I went back to the drawing board. I had been pushing for the smoke from the train to create the arches. At first, my editor didn’t think she wanted that because she was concerned it was pollution… but I convinced her that it was steam. It’s a steam train- and it was rainbow steam… and it was fun. So I made another dummy:

This time we were on the right track! (Sorry for all of the train puns, I can’t help it.) Then the real work began. The awesome design team at Chronicle Books worked with the amazing production team and they got me a template of the die-cut. I paint traditionally and I use Holbein Acryla gouache on my board books. I had to paint the front and back sides of The Trainbow as one continuous painting- the front side was almost five feet long.

I also wanted to paint the title so I could bring the rainbow into the letters as well.

As you can see, I paint my paper black to start. Then I paint over the black and leave little marks to give the art texture. I’ve been doing this style for my board books since I did “Peek-a Who?” over twenty-two years ago. I call it my “fake woodcut” look. It gives the art energy.

When all of the art was done I actually drove it from my home on Lummi Island (near the Canadian Border) to Seattle where it was scanned. This was in the middle of the worst part of the pandemic, and I barely left my home at that point, but I bravely wore a mask and started the art on its journey to really becoming a book. Chronicle Books took over from there- and I stood by, at the station, and helped fine tune this little book to be the best it could be.

I hope you will let The Trainbow into your home and into your heart and imagination, whether you love trains, or rainbows, or unique books that bring a sense of joy and play into reading!

Books

A Beautiful Beginning

by Nina Laden

Welcome to my website! My old website was over twenty years old, and it is now resting in pieces as an archive. (You can still find it, like a pentimento- a trace of a previous painting that was painted over in a link on my new site.) I am grateful to my friend- fine artist and digital designer, Jeff Mihalyo for developing and implementing both of these sites. You can see his work here.

This past year has been an especially difficult year for everyone. Even though I’ve always worked from home I’ve felt the isolation and loss of so many things that are dear to me. Writing, art, books, and the ability to reach out to friends online are the things that have carried me through. Virtual life has been a way to share real life, real love, real pain, and real emotions.

My latest book, “You Are A Beautiful Beginning,” written by me and illustrated by amazing Kelsey Garrity-Riley came out in August and expresses my deep feelings that it’s not the destination; it’s the journey. It’s not creating a masterpiece; it’s having the courage to start. This new website is a beginning and it will evolve over time. I hope you will join me on the journey.