Deborah Freedman's Blog

It’s time for storytime!

Please join me and the wonderful folks at Pebbles Toys & Gifts in New Haven, CT next weekend, Saturday, April 11 at 10:30 am, for the official 🌸FLOWERS FOR MAMA🌸 Book Launch! I’ll be reading and signing, and we are cooking up a fun & flowery spring art project to do together.

Can’t make it on 4/11? I’ll also be at RJ Julia on Saturday, May 9 in Madison, CT.

We’d love to see and make art with you!

What a wonderful way to start my spring, inspired by kindergartners! Enjoy this small sample of gorgeous artwork prompted by a reading of my new book, Flowers for Mama.

Flowers for Mama will be released next week! Order signed copies from River Bend Bookshop ● Pebbles Toys & Gifts ● R J Julia.

If you subscribe to my newsletter, you already know that my next book was inspired by the wonderful art that kids make, and the question, “how do you draw so good?”

FLOWERS FOR MAMA... will be out on March 31 and is available for pre-order now! For signed copies, pre-order from Pebbles Toys & Gifts or River Bend Bookshop.

And please stay tuned for flowery events coming up. I’d love to see you!

Thank you, Kirkus Reviews, for this wonderful, starred first review of Flowers for Mama!

Four kittens prepare gifts for their mother’s special day in this tender celebration of artmaking and family… An enchanting story that honors both the artistic journey and the blooms that—eventually—result.

⭐️ Read the rest here! ⭐️

Endpapers are the unsung glory of contemporary children’s publishing. Once a purely functional form—sturdy pages glued to the inside of a book’s cardboard covers—endpapers today are often full of wit, surprise, and deep emotion. As one of the first (and last!) visual elements readers encounter when interacting with a book, endpapers set the mood for the story inside…

More than 50 works on view now, including from classics such as Blueberries for Sal and The World of Pooh. I’m incredibly grateful to curator Bruce Handy for hanging my endpapers from Blue Chicken on the wall next to book art by so many illustrators I admire.

At the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, Amherst, MA, April 19 - November 9, 2025

"Meet Deborah Freedman" — in which I chat with a school librarian about Partly Cloudy.

"... you know, it's okay if that five minute walk turns into an hour. I mean, there are stones to turn over, there are holes to look down, there are leaves and acorns to collect..."

I'm honored to learn that TINY DINO is a South Carolina Association of School Librarians nominee for the 2024 - 2025 South Carolina Picture Book Award. Many thanks to the committee and those who nominated my book, and congrats to my fellow nominees. It's incredibly gratifying to know that children all over SC will be reading about my little hummingbird!

ICYMI... an interview with Reading With Your Kids Podcast!

We talk about the "value of using children's literature to expose kids to diverse perspectives... the importance of observing the natural world and asking questions to cultivate curiosity..." and the importance of research and the creative process.

Many thanks to Jed Doherty for hosting me.

"Because my projects are short, I can pretty much hold them in my head... I especially like to think about them to the rhythm of walking, since cadence is so vital to books that are ultimately read aloud..."

Many thanks to author, editor, and writing coach Laura Zinn Fromm, of Sweet Lab Writing Workshops, for inviting me to join her "Writers at Work" series.

…Travel through stories that break the fourth wall, where narrators and characters directly address the reader. Witness familiar characters acting out of character or find stories that contain other stories in them. In blurring the lines between author, narrator, and reader, these books subvert our expectations about the real world and the world of fiction. 

Aaron Becker, Richard Byrne, Lauren Child, Jason Chin, Raúl Colón, Lulu Delacre, Tony DiTerlizzi, Deborah Freedman, E.B. Goodale, Ekua Holmes, Oliver Jeffers, Barbara Lehman, Brian Lies, David Macaulay, Barbara McClintock, Oge Mora, Yuyi Morales, Julie Morstad, Christopher Myers, Kathryn Otoshi, Brian Pinkney, Jerome Pumphrey, Jarrett Pumphrey, Peggy Rathmann, Adam Rex, Dan Santat, Lane Smith , Melissa Sweet, Don Tate, Corey Tabor, Chris Van Allsburg, David Wiesner, Mo Willems, Pamela Zagarenski