Whirligig, Providing Quantity, and Spaghettios

5 things from the studio this week

We’re careening towards the holidays at an increasing speed! Ginger bread cookies and socks hung near fire! ARGGG! It’s coming too fast! I’m ready for a break, but not breaking on the shores of the North Pole.

Here’s five more things from the week that was:

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1. SOME ART MAKING

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I’ve long been a fan of Melissa Crowton’s illustration work. It was a super nice surprise to hear that she’s helping to art direct a university magazine for kids, called Whirligig. Even more exciting to be asked to do the cover of an upcoming issue on Adventure. In her own words:

WHIRLIGIG is a non-profit publication housed within a university. That means that the magazine is primarily run by students interested in learning how to work in the publishing market, alongside professional directors and faculty mentors with more experience. WHIRLIGIG is intended for 7-11 year olds, and each issue focuses on one theme.

Very cool project. What’s more, you can grab this issue for free here.

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★ Become a Paid Subscriber ★

I’ll leave you with this comment from recent paid subscriber, Stacey Ramirez: “Hi Jacob. I just upgraded to your paid subscription. I’ve been getting your weekly newsletter and I look forward to it every week. I get so much out of it. Just a note to say thank you and keep up the good work!”

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2. WORK WISDOM

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Kidlit author Julie Falatko’s Do the Work is one of my favorite reads on Substack. This post, called Making Time for Practice and Play ripped right into my busy, distracted yet driven creative heart and stopped me dead in my tracks:

This is why spending time on the internet is bad for me, and why making things offline is so good for me. I need the repeated experience of taking my time to make something — making mistakes and trying again — so that the rhythm of it is normalized in my body. I need to remember, to understand deep in my bones, that good art and craft take time.

Repeating creative habits, showing up will yield results. But not on my schedule. So much of this is a daily head down, stylus, pencil, keyboard knocking out small, often imperceptible steps of getting better. She continues:

But the other key is to write a lot; to paraphrase Julia Cameron: “I’ll provide the quantity so the Universe can provide the quality.”

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3. THING I LOVED

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While not a new read to many folks in children’s literature, 100 Scope Notes (from School Library Journal) is just about always worth your time. This latest from (now on Substack) Travis Jonker, called 2025 Children’s Lit: The Year in Miscellanea is a perfect coda to the year in kidlit. This in particular made me happy:

BEST SPAGHETTI-OS COLLAB: SPAGHETTIOS X WALDO

By far the best SpaghettiOs collab of 2025. It’s the ultimate Where’s Waldo.

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4. A BOOK TO READ

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Full disclosure, Lauren and I are good friends and belong to the same crit group. She’s absolutely, 100% hilarious and 100% has the best ideas. A creative force for quirky, fun, and thoughtful books for kids. She’s helped sharpen things in my own writing and got me thinking outside the normal book box. I also messaged her specifically to tell her about how much I loved the marshmallows flying out of Gnome’s cup. This Kirkus review of the 1st book captures the heart of the series quite well:

The cartoonish artwork is incredibly expressive, whether bringing to life a moment of utter enthusiasm or a wordless nine-panel page depicting Gnome’s coping with a hatless existence. Readers might recognize themselves in Gnome’s single-minded exuberance or Rat’s even-tempered patience. No matter what these two get up to, they always have a good time together.

Just look at Gnome’s face! And those marshmallows! Pick up a copy or two!

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5. EPHEMERA, ETC.

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It’s been a fun sharing the process behind a self-initiated book project as deep dives for my paid subscribers. I’ve learned a ton about how I take a manuscript and build out a whole book. The goal was always to be “on the high wire, real time” and to be honest about what I’m thinking every step of the way. Good or bad, success or failure — being authentic about it is valuable to me and to you.

The other stated goal was to arrive at some finished art work and have it reflect some of that initial momentum of The Big Blank (a poem about the power of a child’s creativity and imagination)¹… here it is, in spread form:

Best,
Jacob

1. It occurred to me that this poem was written around the same time that I was thinking a lot about AI and how I fear a casualty might be a lack of critical thinking and creativity. Hmm…