Books

What happens when difference is celebrated instead of ridiculed?

Nikolas is about to find out.

Nikolas is a little shape who doesn’t fit in anywhere. Everyone he knows is a perfect circle, square, or triangle. But he’s different. He has curves where others have straight lines, corners where others have curves, and he can’t find the name of any shape in existence that describes him. The other shapes make fun of him and insist that he doesn’t belong anywhere. But Nikolas is certain that he has a place in this world and sets off to find it.

During his search, he meets other “misfit” shapes who are also looking for their place, including Paulina, a trirecovularangle masquerading as a rectangle, and Mateo, a star with squiggly lines and uneven angles in search of someone to fix him.

As the title states, Nikolas and the misfit shapes do indeed find their place, but it is NOTHING like they imagined it would be. It also turns out, they are not quite who they seemed to be...  

For ages 7 to 107.

Why am I here, and what am I supposed to do with my life?

A little seed named Zerah is certain he knows the answer to these questions: become a Great Tree, of course! But when the Wind carries Zerah from the field in which he is about to root himself to a desert, a life unlike the one he had carefully planned begins to unfold, and he is forced to question everything he thought he knew about the world and himself.

Zerah’s journey will take him through a Desert and to a City, from a Valley to a Mountaintop, from the depths of the Ocean to the depths of his heart. Many teachers will shape his path, including a very cruel Sidewalk who tries to convince Zerah to give up on life, and an indomitable Twig who tells him that he must carry on.   

In the tradition of The Little Prince, comes The Life of Zerah, a spiritual allegory with illustrations "that speak to the child that lives within each grown-up." It is for those who are wondering why bad things happen to good seeds, if the Wind is kind, cruel, indifferent, or nonexistent, and what to do when everything falls apart and it seems like your dreams will never come true.

For ages 12 to 112.

If You Ever Lose Hope... is an illustrated story about how to regain hope after you’ve lost it. When the sun disappears and a young woman finds herself in darkness, the Survivors—those who have been beaten, broken, and silenced, and then, have gone on to grow gardens and sing love songs—help her find her way back to light.

For ages 12-112.

I wrote this during the pandemic. I was in a very dark place, and not just because of the pandemic. A lot was going on in my head and heart at the time. And during that time, I was living with a friend whose house was only a few minutes’ walk from the woods. So a few times a week, I’d go to the woods and talk to the trees, following the advice of a very wise high school teacher, “If you’re ever sad or scared or lonely or don’t know what to do, go outside and talk to the trees. Listen to them. Hear what they have to say. They are so much smarter than people.” Those talks with the trees, along with a friend who told me to think of my ancestors’ and everything they survived – which then got me thinking about all the different things that people need to survive if they are going to continue living – was the beginning of this book.

Normal is a wound. Many are suffering from it.

Normal is a weapon. Many are controlled by it.

Normal is a lie. And refusing to believe it is the beginning of freedom.

The Fate of the Dragon: An Illustrated Essay on the New Normal is a poetic, heartbreaking look at the injustices that societies have normalized and the devastating consequences that so many face just for being different. However, this book’s message is not one of despair, for the dragon’s fate is still undecided. And the new normal can look very different from the old normal if we take better care of each other and celebrate rather than punish differences.

The new normal can be a repetition. Or it can be a revolution.

For ages 12-112.

This book began as an essay written during the pandemic about the concept of “the new normal”. It was for a mental illness essay contest that I didn’t even realize I wasn’t eligible to enter as it was only for people living in the UK. But by the time I realized that, I’d already written the essay and had started to illustrate it. A friend told me, “You’ve got another book! Publish it!” And so I did. Though out of all my books, this is the one I would most change if I were going to write it today, this book is also the one that most changed me. Working on it finally ended the tyranical reign of “not normal” inside my head and heart—a brutal reign that lasted almost 40 years. I felt like a freak most of my life. Writing this book finally laid that feeling to rest.

I’ve heard it said that every piece of art cannot only be created by the single individual that created it, but can also only be created in the exact moment in time in which it is made. As we are constantly learning, changing, and growing (at least, hopefully!), no artwork is repeatable. We now see things differently and would express them differently. I won’t make myself crazy by redoing every line and illustration that I would change. But this is one illustration that I would like to update as I know I didn’t say with the original (which had less words in a bigger font) exactly what I wanted to say.