Here it is! Louie (the illustrator) and Jen (the book designer) did a marvelous job creating a dynamic and colorful cover for the book and giving it a distinctly 90s vibe. Louie is working in traditional watercolor, and his style is so vibrant. Isn’t that chicken just the cutest?
August 19, 2025 is the publication date, and I’m excited to start scheduling some school visits soon after. I have some new information on my website about in-person and virtual school visits, so please check that out if you are interested.
Donations to Support Children Affected by the LA Fires
My family lives just outside one of the evacuation zones of the Eaton fire, and I have extended family who live inside those zones. We all evacuated safely and are dealing with a range of impacts from the fire, but I know not everyone was so lucky.
I volunteer with Mary L. Jackson Elementary School in Altadena through a reading tutoring program called Reading Partners, where one of my daughters is the program coordinator. Reading Partners provides extra reading support to children who are behind their grade level in reading. A third of Jackson Elementary students lost their homes to the fire, and many others are displaced due to smoke and damage to their homes.
If you would like to donate books to the Reading Partners program to be given to the children to take home and practice reading, please use this link to order books for them (the address to send them to will automatically go to Jackson Elementary). If you are willing to donate your time by tutoring in-person or online, that would be great, too! Many tutors also lost their homes and have had to pause their tutoring in the meantime, so your tutoring support would make a huge difference even if you don’t live in Los Angeles.
Another great place to donate is to the Pasadena Education Foundation. They will make sure that your funds go to the learning needs of the students affected by the fires.
Amplify Love
There’s enough hate going on in the world, let’s spread some love. Here’s a reading list I curated of some great, award-winning books about love that I’ve read recently — picture books, middle grade, and young adult. Four of these books are banned in some states. Can you guess which books?
Answer: A Case for Loving, The Parker Inheritance, House in the Cerulean Sea, and We Are Okay are all banned books. Love in the Library is not officially a banned book, but the author has had public disputes with the publisher over pressures to remove references to the racism of the US’s incarceration camps for Japanese Americans. Only Wolfie the Bunny is not banned. Hmmm.