The Chronicle Crush and My First Review

I love Chronicle Books. I can't express that enough. I'm sort of in shock that I get to work with them at all, I have felt that way since I was doing Paul Frank titles for them at my old job. Person after person that you meet is just rad and it starts to become an assumption. You're like, oh, I'm going to definitely like this person, just because they work there. That has continued to be the case in every instance.

I, of course have a shortlist of people there that I owe EVERYTHING to, starting with Andrea Menotti, a brilliant editor, former ballet dancer and current author turned MBA student at Cornell (possibly the most eerily well rounded human being I've ever met) who headed up the PF titles while I was there and absolutely pushed for me when I started doing my own thing, becoming my first editor and a total mentor. Amy Aichaibou, a design director that took me under her wing and made my early projects run waaaaaaaay smoother and look much more awesome than they would have without her, editor Naomi Kirsten who pulled Sports Matching Game and Around the World Puzzle over the finish line when Andrea moved on from Chronicle to begin her studies at Cornell. That's sort of my Chronicle Trinity. There are so many other amazing people that have pulled for me and I continue to make new friends in that mythical San Francisco Office all the time. That's my short list, but I have to keep adding to it!!! Julie! Lara! Amelia! Seriously, its like one adorable name after another. The radness is so common its almost radundent! Okay, sorry about that one...

Then, the catalogs show up and I get to see the list and all the incredible illustrators and authors I get to have as listmates. This review, my very first review EVER!!!, for Chloe, Instead (my first picture book ever!) is amazing because it says some great things about my book along with great things about so many other books previewed with mine at the same time on the Chronicle list!

I was in a band all through college with my best friends and I remember the feeling of it being such a privilege to be seen as a unit with these people that I loved and that made rad music together. I've missed that feeling. I feel a little bit of that these days about the Chronicle Books label on Chloe, Instead.

Here is that review, check out Chloe and all the rad books coming out this spring from that little office in San Francisco.

http://blog.schoollibraryjournal.com/afuse8production/2011/12/05/librarian-preview-chronicle-books-springsummer-2012/