Elise Primavera...

Here are a few things I learned about Elise Primavera and her work:

• This picture book author/illustrator, famous for Auntie Claus, has a novel coming out in October called The Secret Order of The Gumm Street Girls.
• One of her new characters looks strikingly like Donatella Versace.
• She majored in fashion illustration.
  
• She collects things (photos, clippings, reference material), sometimes for years, before she starts writing a story.
• There were more than 20 drafts for the cover design for Gumm Street over the course of three years before she and her publisher agreed on a concept.
• When she was 40 she moved back in with her parents during a period of midlist doldrums.

Elise's words of wisdom: "Ideas are living things--have respect for them and give them time to grow. Let them lead you."