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Stacy Innerst ’s picture books have earned numerous honors including the BCCB Blue Ribbon, two Parents’ Choice Gold Medals, and a Smithsonian Notable Book Citation. His illustrations for The Music in George's Head: George Gershwin Creates Rhapsody in Blue, written by Suzanne Slade (Boyds Mills), received the 2017 Golden Kite Award for Picture Book Illustration. Visit  www.stacyinnerst.com . Stacy Innerst's breakout session at the Los Angeles SCBWI Summer Conference was absolutely packed with information about school visits for illustrators. He walked us through his personal school visit slideshow, beginning with the images he uses to introduce himself. In lieu of a typical biographical slideshow (Here's where I went to school; here are the books I made) , Stacy shares images from home, of his son, of books he loved and read as a kid, and things he did as a kid (like scribble in books when he shouldn't have) -- something almost any kid can relate to. He then explains the...

Raul Colón was born in New York City, went to school for art in Puerto Rico, has illustrated over 30 children's books as well as done public art for New York and his work has appeared in numerous illustrious editorial publications. Laurent Linn calls him a LEGEND, and if you know his work, you know you can spot his pieces out of any crowd. Laurent had the pleasure of art directing DRAW!  (among other luminous titles) for Raul. Raul jokingly says the original text for the DRAW! dummy was so good, that his editor Paula Wiseman said to cut it. Truly, the images stand alone without text, so they did decide to turn it into a wordless picture book. Raul says many teachers and librarians use the book as a creative writing exercise, asking students to write stories to accompany the images (and Raul thinks sometimes those are even better than what he had written!) Laurent asks what a typical day is like: "I get up early in the morning, have to have coffee, toast, take my time, hear NP...