Tags
Graphic Novels, illustrator tips, illustrators, LeUyen Pham, picture books, Shannon Hale, writing tips
Southern California author-illustrator LeUyen (pronounced Lay-Win) Pham is the 2020 Caldecott Honor winner and a NYT, Indies, and USA Today best-seller. Her successful collaborations include illustrating Julianne Moore’s Freckleface Strawberry series and Shannon Hale’s The Princess in Black chapter book series. LeUyen was also co-collaborator on Hale’s popular Real Friends middle grade graphics series. And there’s much more—over a million books in print more!
CHRISTINE VAN ZANDT: Welcome to Kite Tales! You wrote and illustrated your latest picture book, Outside, Inside (Roaring Brook Press, 2021). The book beautifully addresses how weird it was when everyone suddenly had to be inside. Even though the pandemic isn’t mentioned until the back matter, the way we felt during that time is clearly communicated. Was it harder writing this book than some of your others?
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THE DREAM
You may think that kid-lit does not have a place at 
Fall brings fond memories for me. Even though I grew up in sunny Southern California, there were a few special trees in the neighborhood that would change color and drop their leaves. I’d dreamt about how endless forests of these trees would look and had read fairytales about how spirits would change the colors of the leaves. I’d wonder how they’d lived with all the other creatures in the wood, and if they would all gather into little caves, sleeping together through the long, cold winters. For a kid that never experienced the seasons, this magic seemed so real, even if just beyond my reach. But I was able to capture some of that magic when it came time for Halloween. 
As we prepare for the Los Angeles Comic Con on October 11-13, I’m hearing from some PAL members, “But I don’t write science fiction…”
SCBWI-L.A. PAL member 
Kite Tales 