The book industry is filled with tales of people who toil on a story for years before being published. Author and illustrator, Jennie Palmer, isn’t one of them.

Palmer had taken classes on the art and craft of picture books at the Rhode Island School of Design, where she was an illustration major. After graduating, she put that knowledge aside when she became a production designer whose credits include work on the television show Blue’s Clues and 12 years designing floats and balloons for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

And then came the idea for a picture book about witches – a glimmer of an idea that solidified as she was cleaning up after her family’s weekly pizza night.

In 2014, she attended her first SCBWI Summer Conference with an outline. She didn’t have a dummy or a portfolio, but three years later that story, The Wompananny Witches Make One Mean Pizza, would be published by Abrams.

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