Welcome!

My name is Leah Dean Thomas, and I am a writer, creative, and former teacher (elementary art for the past 10 years and English before that) who dabbles in graphic design and photography.

I’ve been writing since I first discovered poetry in fourth grade, but it’s only in the last few years that I’ve gotten serious about the genre I’ve loved all my life: picture books. Ever since I was able to shout “Turn da page!” on repeat readings of The Monster at the End of This Book at two years old, I’ve been captivated by picture books, but I never looked into the process or gave publication much thought.

That all changed in 2020, when I wrote, illustrated, and self-published my first picture book, Remarkable, as an assignment for a graphic design class, and the PB bug bit. I was thrilled to create something I could use in my own art classroom, and I’ve enjoyed sharing it with other teachers and friends for the past three years.

But more than that, I’ve begun to think that maybe I’ve stumbled into my calling. While I wrote a poetry thesis for my MFA in 2006, I never found a home in the poetry world. Samuel Taylor Coleridge once called poetry “the best words, in the best order.” The best picture books embody that same spare use of language coupled with art that does what words alone rarely can. As an English teacher turned art teacher, I’ve always been torn between my love of language and my love of images, and with picture books, I don’t have to be.

So, here I am, finally, on the route I’ve been ambling toward for the nearly 40 years since I first picked up a pen. Now that I know where I’m headed, I’ve discovered it’s a slow journey of queries and rejections, worries and revisions, just like any other writing venture. I don’t know what surprises lie at the end of this book, but I’m on my way to find out. What can I do but keep turning the page?