4.16.2019: Wee wee wee! WOLF is here!

April 16, 2019 Anica Rissi

Watch Out for Wolf picture book and flowers.png

This little piggy is excited: My new picture book is out today! Watch Out for Wolf! is my collaboration with illustrator Charles Santoso. Here’s what it’s about:

Piggle, Piggleton, Piggit, Piggums, and Pigbert are throwing a party and there is so much to do—but SHHH—watch out for Wolf!

I had a lot of fun writing this story about five excitable little pigs and their ambitious party plans (and Wolf, who might ruin everything). And I had even more fun seeing the humor and depth (and the game of seek-and-find) Charles Santoso’s fabulous illustrations bring to the tale.

To purchase a copy of Watch Out for Wolf! please follow one of these links, or request it at your local bookstore or library. Thank you!

Here’s how Rooga reacted when my author copies arrived:

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I look forward to signing books and meeting readers at festivals and library events in Kentucky, Louisiana, New Jersey, and Maine over the next few months. If you live in or near a town I’m visiting, I’d love to see you there. For more information, please visit my events page.

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Wee wee wee!

9.11.2018: Watch Out for Wolf! and Upcoming Events

September 11, 2018 Anica Rissi

Shhh…. Watch out for Wolf!

This little piggy is excited to share the cover for Charles Santoso’s and my 2019 picture book, Watch Out for Wolf!. It’s the story of five anxious but enterprising little pigs who are preparing a very big surprise. It recasts the “This Little Piggy Went to Market” nursery rhyme, weaving in other beloved fables and tales (including the story of The Three Little Pigs) along the way. It’s also a story about friendship, assumptions, and inclusion. I had a lot of fun writing it! And even more fun seeing Charles’s delightful illustrations bring it to life.

The book comes out from Disney-Hyperion on April 16, 2019. The hardcover is available for preorder now wherever you buy books. (You can ask your local bookstore or library to order it, or follow one of the preorder links below. Thank you!)

Charles and I did a fun interview with Mr. Schu about the process of creating the book. If you’d like to read it, please click here. That post also includes a peek at some of the interior spreads.

Meanwhile, Always Forever Maybe has been out in the world for three months, and in some ways it still doesn’t feel real. If you are one of the people who has bought, borrowed, read, reviewed, discussed, or recommended it, THANK YOU. My favorite part of this YA author life has been interacting with readers (that’s my favorite part of chapter-book and picture-book author life, too). I got to do some amazing bookstore and library events up and down the east coast over the summer, and I’m looking forward to upcoming book festivals and other events in Princeton, Warwick, Chicago, Brooklyn, Miami, and Manhattan this fall. (Three of those events—the Princeton and Warwick Children’s Book Festivals and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Ghouls & Gourds Festival—will include the Anna, Banana books and The Teacher’s Pet in addition to Always Forever Maybe, if you know a younger reader who would like to meet an author and get a signed book.) If I will be in your city or town, I would love to connect. For more details, please visit my events page. It’s going to be a fun and busy fall!

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3.16.18: Love, Sophia on the Moon

March 16, 2018 Anica Rissi

New book news!

I'm over the moon to share this news about my third(!) picture book. Love, Sophia on the Moon is an epistolary story near and dear to my heart, and I'm thrilled to be creating it with the talented Mika Song (if you're not already familiar with Mika's amazing illustrations, please check out the cuteness on her website), super editrix Rotem Moscovich, and the whole wonderful team at Disney-Hyperion.

There's lots of mischief and make-believe in this one, and some tugging at heart strings too. I hope you'll like it.

Here's the official announcement* from Publishers Weekly (plus a photo I took of a balloon last week in Tampa after AWP):

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Love, Sophia on the Moon doesn't come out until summer 2020, but I have three new books coming out this year to tide you over in the meantime, and all of them are available for pre-order now:

Anna, Banana, and the Recipe for Disaster (#6) comes out March 20 (next week!) in hardcover, paperback, and ebook. It contains baking disasters, friendship messes, snickerdoodle secrets, and, of course, a cute dog.

Always Forever Maybe, my YA debut, releases on June 5 in hardcover, ebook, and audio. I am really excited for you to read this one. I spent six years working on it, and it makes me nervous and giddy just thinking about it being real. It's about obsessive love, toxic masculinity, enduring friendship, and the risks we take with our hearts.

Anna, Banana, and the Sleepover Secret (#7) comes out October 2 in hardcover, paperback, and ebook. Cover reveal coming soon! This one includes a sleepover and many secrets (of course), not to mention Truth or Dare surprises and an enormous cat named Mewsic.

Click on any of the above titles for further information, including pre-order links. Thanks for your interest and support!

(*Photo text: Rotem Moscovich at Disney-Hyperion has bought Love, Sophia on the Moon, a picture book by Anica Mrose Rissi, author of the Anna, Banana series and The Teacher's Pet. In the story, Sophia writes letters threatening to run away to "the moon" to avoid being in trouble on Earth, and her mother writes back. Tea with Oliver author-illustrator Mika Song will illustrate; publication is set for 2020. Meredith Kaffel Simonoff at DeFiore and Company represented the author, and Erica Rand Silverman at Stimola Literary Studio represented the artist.)

6.20.2017: GULP! The Teacher's Pet is here!

June 20, 2017 Anica Rissi

*On the day the science project hatched, our whole class was amazed. We'd never seen Mr. Stricter so excited. "I always wanted a pet," he said.*

My first picture book, The Teacher's Pet, goes out into the world today! It's about a teacher who is so enamored of the new class pet, he can't see all the trouble it's causing. I had a lot of fun writing this silly, semi-autobiographical tale...and even more fun seeing how illustrator Zachariah OHora brought the story to life, telling a visual story that surprised (and delighted) even me.

(For those who don't know: Picture book writers and illustrators work separately for most of the process, and writers don't prescribe what should happen in the art. Instead, we try to leave lots of room in the text for illustrators to play, invent, and imagine new facets to the story--and that's where the magic happens.)

The book has been named one of The Best Children's and YA Books of June 2017 by Brightly, and one of the Best New Picture Books of June 2017 by The Children's Book Review.

In a starred review, Publishers Weekly wrote, "Rissi's very funny text is a model of understatement and restraint...allowing OHora to make the most of the story's physical comedy in thickly painted scenes spiked with neon orange. Mr. Stricter is a classic bumbler cut from Amelia Bedelia's cloth, and readers will hope that his class has more oddball tales in store."

Bookseller Todd Wellman selected The Teacher's Pet as a staff pick at Boswell Book Company, saying, "It's lovely to recommend a truly laugh-out-loud picture book in which the illustrations and text flatter each other so well. Rissi and OHora have devised a story that the reader will gleefully suspend disbelief for. Mr. Stricter has introduced a class pet, but it grows and grows into something unexpected that he loves but the students realize requires a different sort of compassion. All members of a classroom are shown to be contributors to the educational experience as the kids problem-solve and help their educational environment be successful."

I will be doing several book festival, library, and bookstore events in the next few months, including in Michigan, Maine, Georgia, New York, and New Jersey. If you're interested in coming to a The Teacher's Pet story time, I would love to see you there! Please visit my events page for more details.

The Teacher's Pet bookmarks and stickers for event attendees — *The Teacher's Pet* bookmarks and stickers for event attendees

6.6.2017: Watch Out for Wolf!

June 6, 2017 Anica Rissi

Picture-book news:

I'm the luckiest duck to get to work with editrix Rotem Moscovich and illustrator Charles Santoso (if you don't already know his work, check out the wonderful Ida, Always by Caron Levis and I Don't Like Koala by Sean Ferrell) on a new picture book featuring five little piggies and one very big surprise. Hey, piggies: Watch Out for Wolf!

Here's the announcement from Publishers Weekly:

Pre-order links won't be up for a while, but if you'd like to add the book on Goodreads, please click here.

Meanwhile, my first picture book, The Teacher's Pet, illustrated by Zachariah OHora, comes out in two weeks. It recently received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and was named one of the Best Children's and YA Books of June 2017 by the editors at Brightly. There's still time to pre-order a copy by following one of these links: B&N | Amazon | Indiebound | BAM | Target | iTunes | Indigo. I can't wait for you to meet Mr. Stricter, Bruno, and the clever kids who must save the day!