One year away day: Debut picture book Before I Lived Here, set in Colorado
My debut picture book BEFORE I LIVED HERE is scheduled to be published on April 29, 2025 August 26, 2025 (that was a plot twist that happened way after I published this post in April 2024).
While that’s one year away, I know the date could be iffy. Why? Because a lot can change. Think disruption of supply chains. Paper shortages. Pirates boarding cargo ships.
Dates can change. Anything can happen. I understand and that’s part of the publishing process.
I saw rough sketches from Illustrator Victo Ngai late last year. Her work is gorgeous.
I made this video to mark the “one year away day” with images from the neighborhood and the state that inspired this story that’s taken many years to get to publication.
I’m looking forward to sharing more about this book with you over the next year.
Before I Lived Here is a picture book about the history of where you live. It’s set in Colorado. I hope young readers will be able to imagine the story of their own neighborhoods before they lived there when they read this book.
In Before I Lived Here, a boy peels away each layer of the history of his house, which
may look a lot like yours. Follow along from the construction of the neighborhood back
to the planning of it; from the ranchers and log cabins that predated its modern
appearance back to the region’s indigenous people and their eviction from the land . . .
all the way back to the time of the dinosaurs.
Before I Lived Here reminds us that history isn’t something that happens far away, to
other people—it’s in our own backyards.