Lynn Smith

That's hard.

And they learn that not everything goes away.

Our rejections from those publishers, it was really disappointing.

There wasn't anything somebody could say to make that not be disappointing.

But as grownups, we learn, hopefully, and there's a lot of learning to be done for all of us still, but hopefully we learn to manage those emotions and calm ourselves in our disappointments.

Why aren't we learning this as kids?

And so my hope is that this is one tool to be able to do that.

Here's what's very interesting that I did not expect.

So Sourcebooks Kids is my publisher and they were my finally yes.

And this is apparently because I've talked to other authors, publishers do not want the author to

select or meet with the illustrator so i never knew who they were going to choose nor did i get any input on the illustrations and it's because they don't want the author to influence the artistic vision of the illustrator and i thought that was brilliant

And because I trusted Sourcebook's kids so much, I was able to let go and say, you know what?

This book is in the universe.

It found its home in this publishing house for a reason.

And when they showed me Lauren Guyagos, who's our illustrator, I was blown away because it is very challenging to visualize movement in emotion

with art and a true artist does that and that's what Lauren did.

The energy that's around Maust when he's really anxious is sort of this black cloud that has these jagged edges.

And then when he takes those deep breaths, his ears come up and then they come down and it looks like they're moving.

It's whimsical and magical and everything that I dreamed of.

But I found it so interesting that they went through that process separating the illustrator and the author up until the end.