So, what's with the boots?

grew up in Texas, and everyone had boots. Most people call them cowboy boots, but in Texas, they are just "boots". Boots for work, boots for play, boots for dancing, boots for riding horses.

Yellow boots

Blue boots

Brown boots

Grey boots

Red boots

I have five pairs:

You

and Mama

and Aunt Trixie

wear fabulous boots in The Trail Ride. You wore the same boots in Popsicle Pony, and they even showed up in Alamo Across Texas.

ne great thing about being a writer and illustrator is that I get to reinvent my own history. I never really had red boots with white stars, but I wish I had. So now, I get to wear them in my stories.

my dream boots!

You have a lot of adventures in The Trail Ride. How much of that story is true? Did you really go on a trail ride?

h, yeah! My sister and I went on trail rides quite a few times. It was really hot, and we had to learn to handle our own horses without any guidance,

but it was paradise to live outside for a whole week. That’s the feeling I wanted to capture in the book.

You had some pretty uncomfortable moments in the book...

ell, sometimes it is in the uncomfortable and messy parts of life that you find the best stories. It’s hard when you are in the middle of tough times, but if you can turn it into a book, or a poem, or art, then you can see everything that you learned from the experience.

Do you have a horse now?

Or other animals?

have a great little mutt dog, Chaco. He is a central character in The Trail Ride!

And my daughter has a pet rat named Ringo.

So maybe you will write a book about Ringo the rat! Where do you get the ideas for your stories and pictures?

verything comes from my own experiences and daydreams. I keep lots of old pictures and toy figurines in my studio for inspiration. I often build characters for my books out of clay, and use them as models. So I get to play with toys as I work!

Patrick and Mayday... a genuine Texas cowboy and his pony!

before

after

You speak Spanish. Did you learn in school?

y dad speaks Spanish. Half the folks in South Texas speak Spanish. But I didn't really learn until I went to Venezuela as a foreign exchange student for a year. I really enjoy visiting schools with bilingual programs. I have a Masters degree in English as a Second Language. I was trained as a teacher, and do a lot of school visits.

Here's what a whole bunch of other folks have said about Jill and her work...