Unboxing my picture book: The Power Tool Alphabet! Thanks to the amazing team at Sourcebooks for making my author dreams come true—and rest assured, no books were harmed in the turbocharged destruction of this box 🪚📚
Welcome to the world Powertool Alphabet!!! This book has taught me so much about what it’s like to navigate the publishing world as an author and I’m grateful to SO many people they could never fit in one post. For now, suffice to say that this book would not exist without my dad, Paul, whose inventive spirit and epic hugs I miss every day, the brilliant @jen_tayl0r who figured out how to make a jackhammer cute, my agent and advocate @ammi.joan.paquette , my lovely editor Emma Hintzen, and the whole team at @sourcebookskids who took a chance on a little chainsaw that could. Here’s hoping it finds its readers and gets them excited about building projects of their own!
Welcome to the world, little pumpkin! 🎃 Oodles of gratitude to everyone who made this book possible—the brilliant editorial team of @spanishbroom and @gopher_whimsy , the fabulous illustrator @heidiroo_art , the publisher, @randomhousekids , and all the kids in my life who served as guinea pigs along the way. Thanks to your nurturing and belief, BUT I’M A PUMPKIN is now available in bookstores everywhere. Happy Summerween, y’all!
Copies of my new picture book just arrived and aren’t they adorable?! If you’ve ever felt like the lone watermelon in a crowded pumpkin patch, this one’s for you. On sale May 12th 🎃🍉🥳 #picturebook #summerween #bookstagram
Happy publication day to Life On the Moon. After five years of waiting, we finally get to share it with you.
When I refer to this book as science fiction, Robbi rolls her eyes and reminds me that most of the science is nonsense. To which I reply that most of the fiction is true.
Life On the Moon is the story of a kid named Leo who moves to the Moon to start a new life. His dad goes missing, and Leo ventures out into the wilderness to find him. Leo gets lost. He makes friends and meets monsters and struggles to tell them apart.
Leo is lonely and worried, longs for meaning and importance, is baffled by his parents’ divorce. That’s me as a kid. *That* part is true.
The creatures he meets in the moon wilds are not. The Valrootens are gentle and kind and have fabulous tentacles. The Hortle is gruesome and constantly hungry. Leo makes it his mission to destroy the Hortle until he sees he has it backward. The real threat is Leo and his fellow colonists.
Leo is stuck with an impossible dilemma: protect his Moon friends or save his Earth family—unless there’s a way to do both?
Robbi’s drawings bring Leo’s Moon to life, adding texture and depth to each spread, quietly shouting what I could never tell. Why bother to describe the Hortle’s teeth or the soundless void of space when she does it so much better?
Life On the Moon is about moon rocks and lasers and phosphorescent moss. There are spaceships and helmets and tentacles. It’s about breaking old cycles by introducing new variables. It’s about the lengths to which we must go to protect the things we love.
I’ve never sacrificed myself to save the Moon. (Robbi might; I’m not sure I could.) But I wrote a story of a boy far braver than I am, and Robbi showed me what he looks like, inside and out.
We hope that somewhere in the blur between her drawings and my words is a gentle reminder that we’re lucky to be alive, that there are many worlds beyond our own, and that strange is not the same as wrong.
Thanks to all of you for your support. And happy reading, friends!
#lifeonthemoonbook
I failed kindergarten the first time around and had to take it again. The teachers told my parents that I was “not emotionally prepared for the demands of first grade”. I don’t doubt it.
In college, I finished my English thesis only to be told I’d written a religion thesis and had to start over. I started over. The new version was much better. It turns out, I was practicing for more important failures to come.
When our editor Katherine first read Life On the Moon, she loved it but thought the beginning could be improved. She sent me back to the drawing board armed with smart observations and open-ended questions. The thoughtful nudge helped. The beginning got better.
Katherine agreed but thought the ending called for further thinking. She liked it well enough—Leo on the lip of the canyon, home in the wake of great adventure, all problems neatly resolved—but she wondered if maybe there was more of his story to tell, one more question to pose, one more wrinkle to consider.
It is painful to think you’re done and be asked to dive back in. But Katherine was right. The neat ending was not the *best* ending. Thanks to my second year of kindergarten, I was emotionally prepared for the challenge.
I followed Leo a bit further and realized there was a narrative thread he’d left open, a looming catastrophe he hadn’t considered. As it turned out, everything Leo had learned and accomplished was just a lead-up to the bigger problem, the moment of consequence, the actual point of the story.
I remember the moment I figured it out—the deeper meaning of Leo’s adventures. I felt so grateful to Katherine for not letting the story end shy of the better book she knew it could be.
When you receive your copy of Life On the Moon, please think of Katherine. Without her, this book would have a boring beginning, a much less interesting ending, and all sorts of problems in the middle. It would be less clear and coherent, not as funny, and far less consequential. She didn’t write a single word, but I see her fingerprints on every page.
Editors don’t get nearly the credit they are due. I wish Katherine’s name was right there with ours on the cover.
#lifeonthemoonbook
Happy pub day to Mystery on Macaw Mountain! 🦜We were so lucky to have Maria visit the office last week to celebrate this twisty, warm-hearted mystery! 💛
With all the holiday sales going on, we just sprung for a new table saw! If you’ve got the shopping bug, THE POWER TOOL ALPHABET will be available in stores tomorrow! 🪚🎉 @sourcebookskids
Totally head-over-heels obsessed with all my Spring '26 middle grade covers! Do you have a favorite?
WILDERNESS HACKS: art by David Dean ; design by Suzanne Lee
LIFE ON THE MOON: art by Robbi Behr ; design by Jen Valero
MACAW MOUNTAIN: art by George Ermos ; design by Jen Valero
Thrilled to share the cover of my summerween picture book, BUT I’M A PUMPKIN for all you bookish ghouls and ghosties out there! It’s available for preorder too—just follow the link in my bio 🎃
