Could you give us a brief overview of your career in publishing to date including how you arrived at your current role as Creative Director for Odd Dot Books?

I was an avid reader as a child, but never really thought about that as a career. I studied Advertising, Anthropology, and Studio art in college so moved to New York for Advertising. After quickly realizing that was not for me, I found my way to an internship at Penguin Young Readers Group and I fell in love with the whole process of how books were made. From there I worked on all types of books from readers and chapter books, to licensing and IP, to graphic novels and non-fiction, completed my Masters in Publishing at NYU, and worked with some amazing people along the way. I remember reading about Odd Dot when they first launched the imprint and was so impressed with all their innovative ideas. When they were looking for a new Creative Director a previous colleague recommended me to the role and as soon as I met the team I knew it was a place I wanted to be.

You oversee the design development for gifty, non-fiction, innovative formats for kids of all ages. Which 5 projects would you select to share with our audience and why?

It's a tough choice, but these are 5 that I think epitomize Odd Dot's ethos of learning and exploring through play.

Pop-Up Planetarium: This book includes a starwheel in the cover to encourage users to get out and see the stars they are learning about in the book, but also has a pop-up in the back that you can put a light under to shine stars on your ceiling inside. We hired an amazing cut paper artist, Sarah Dennis, as a nod to the paper elements in the book and she really brought all the constellations to life.

Outdoor School: This is a series that was inspired by Macmillan's backlist Golden Guide book art. The company still had some of the original art in storage and we were able to get it rescanned and reached out to some of the original artists, including John. D. Dawson, to create a whole new series that encourages kids to open the door and go outside. It was a big project including definitive field guides with metal corners, flexi binding, and a ruler on the back meant to be thrown in your bag for outdoor adventures, to waterproof/tearproof essential guides, to sticker books exploring all different topics. It was a true team effort!

Sticker Jigsaw: This was inspired by the puzzle craze during the pandemic. One of the core elements of Odd Dot's creative process is a weekly brainstorm meeting so this idea came from those discussions on how to make jigsaw puzzles portable while still being engaging all while creating a keepsake of your favorite public domain stories.

Fairy Tale Science came to us as an outside submission but was such an Odd Dot idea we couldn't pass it up. Could Cinderella's glass slipper really hold up a human, or would it really be possible to climb up human hair? This book explores classic fairy tales and tests the stories using real science experiments kids can do at home.

And finally the Antiquarian Sticker Book: Imaginarium. I can't take credit for this one, the first book was conceived as the coolest, biggest, most impressive sticker book you've ever seen. It's hardcover with gold foil and over 200 pages of stickers. Imaginarium was our 3rd in the series and it was such a joy to work with fellow designer and original collage artist Tae Won Yu on this one.

Who is the team behind Odd Dot and how many titles do you typically oversee per year?

Historically we've had a 10 person team with a mix of designers, innovators, editors, and production experts so that we can create about 20-30 books a year. Moving forward Odd Dot will publish a substantially smaller, more tightly curated list of titles, focused on both author-driven brands and select licensing opportunities.

When browsing portfolios on Childrensillustrators.com, what would make an artist's work stand out for you?

Since I'm reviewing portfolios with book design in mind, style consistency really stands out as someone who would be able to maintain that look for a full project. In addition, something with a unique look and feel that matches the Odd Dot aesthetic also helps portfolios stand out.

Aside from artistic talent, what other qualities do you look for in an illustrator?

Professionalism including answering emails, understanding deadlines, asking questions, giving and receiving feedback...it really is a collaborative experience so the more we can communicate and work together the smoother the process will be and hopefully we can push each other to make the best book possible.

Describe some of the challenges you've faced on projects in your career.

At Odd Dot every project is unique so that creates some interesting challenges from the actual production of the book and creating dummies and mock-ups to help the printers understand the vision and explain what's doable to explaining to sales, marketing, and our customers what the books are. We love getting books in people's hands because we always like to exceed and surprise readers once they start exploring the book.

Walk us through the process of creating one of your latest innovative titles, explaining how and where the team drew their inspiration for delivering such an exceptionally original product.

We have a book coming out next year called Read-and-Play Rocket. It's a board book that's shaped like a rocket with all kinds of wonderful information inside about the history of rockets, how they work, who was involved and more. And then the cover has velcro so it can be fully opened to create a 3D rocket that you can play with. This was a very typical Odd Dot creation as the idea was brought to our weekly brainstorm meeting, then went to our smaller Odd Squad to work out the details. Next we start to work on in-house prototypes, created by our amazing maker Phil Congliaro, so we can start talking to printers to see what is doable as well as present the idea to sales. Once the idea was approved we looked for creators to collaborate with and were so excited when author Bridget Heos and illustrator Sona Avedikian agreed to work with us to bring the project to life.

Are there any specific illustration styles or subject matters which are of particular interest to Odd Dot right now?

We're always interested in illustrators who can present non-fiction factual images in a fun, bright, colorful, engaging manner.

Tell us about some of Odd Dot's greatest success stories so far.

I'm especially proud of our Outdoor School series, it was an in-house generated idea, but then we brought together an amazingly talented group of artists, authors, copyeditors, fact-checkers, plus our in-house team to build a full brand that has something for everyone and encourages outside exploration. This was also fully designed during the pandemic so it involved lots of creative pivots in how we work together to get the books completed in a remote setting.

What would your dream project look like?

Working with the Odd Dot team to create joyful books for creative minds has been my dream project so we'll see what the future brings.