June 30, 2025 - I’m at the ALA Annual Conference in Philadelphia PA. This is the big event of the year for picture books, with publishers displaying new and upcoming books to eager librarians. It’s my first time attending, and I haven’t yet met very many people in this field, so I’ve been really excited to get to put a face to the names of some of those I worked with at Simon & Schuster, especially my editor Celia Lee. She and my art director Lizzy Bromley put a lot of trust in me trying out a new technique I was developing to incorporate beadwork into my paintings, and were very patient when that turned out to need significantly more time than I originally anticipated. I’m so new to this event and this crowd of people that it’s hard…