Cover, I AM HUMAN coming November 3, 2026

I am really excited to share with you my newest picture book, I AM HUMAN, which just released for pre-orders last week from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. I’ve been waiting to talk about this book for a while, and the timing honestly couldn’t feel more perfect.

The story is about an AI bot, a boy, and a really important question that seems to be on everyone’s minds these days:

In the age of AI, what does it mean to be human?

While 20 years ago a question like this might have sounded like science fiction, today it feels elemental.

Lately it feels impossible for a day to go by without hearing about AI. Every week there’s a new model, a new tool, a new prediction of what humans will no longer need to do. We are told that AI will write our emails, our books, our resumes, and even our children’s college essays. And it’s all happening very fast– faster than our laws, our schools, and our own lives allow us the time to stop, reflect, and truly understand what this all means.

A boy, a bot, and a question, illustration from I AM HUMAN

As a children’s book author and mother of two young kids, AI fills me with both wonder and worry. What will kids be learning ten years from now, and what will AI add—or take away? What jobs will still be relevant? Will the world become mundane and derivative, if art and creativity are taken over by machines?

As I took a walk with my son in our neighborhood, he reassured me, “Don’t worry Mom, at some point I’m sure we’ll all have to touch grass.”

Touch grass is my favorite expression that kids use today- meaning to go outside, log off, and reconnect with the real world.

I AM HUMAN is my way of ‘touching grass.’ It’s about reconnecting to who we are, so we can understand, now more than ever, where we are going.

I can’t wait for you to read it.

A breath of fresh air, illustration from I AM HUMAN

I AM HUMAN is available for pre-order today. Coming November 3, 2026.

Illustration from I AM HUMAN

Until next time,

Laura G. Lee

http://www.lauragleestudio.com

IG: @lauragleestudio

__________________________________

The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean—

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver

________________________________________

“It’s not about making machines more human, it is about making humans more humane.” - Elie Wiesel

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Welcome to the fourth edition of THE CLEVER SEED, a newsletter where I explore inspiration and creativity in everyday life. As a writer and illustrator of children’s books—and a former design researcher—I’m fascinated by why humans tell stories and what makes creative minds tick.

It is late Fall as I write this, and we are well on our way into December. This Fall I completed my third book, I AM HUMAN, with Little Brown Books for Young Readers which comes out Fall of 2026 (Stay tuned for news!) Never in my life have I painted so swiftly and assuredly– a hopeful sign that I am settling into my chosen path. After a whirlwind of production the past several months I am finally…. joyfully… making space to wind down.

As a creator working in these challenging times, I have of late been thinking a lot about the medium of picture books. In particular, why I create them, what they offer as a space of creativity, exploration, and experimentation. As someone who has descended from different design fields- architecture, interaction design, and film – I now find myself in a sweet spot of narrative exploration, visual form, and creative independence as both the author and illustrator of my own work.

My audience is both open-minded, fresh-faced (kids) and loving but world-weary (parents). Picture books, which are meant to be read by an adult and explored by a child, are one of the few mediums designed for the interaction between two (or maybe more) people.

Moonbow, by Taylor Sterling

In a world filled with frictionless digital media, picture books are tangible and intimate. I recently read Taylor Sterling’s excellent November Substack post titled, “What Even Is Children’s Literature Criticism & Why Is It Important?” and her reflection struck me as particularly interesting:

“For many children, these books are their first exposure to the visual,

literary, and collaborative arts, helping to shape them not only as

readers and creatives but as humans.”

Picture books are a chance to engage both sets of readers–children and adults– often for the first time–in feelings and dreams unexplored, in a magical space. For children reading picture books, anything is possible, and what could be better than imagining what could be? For adults, what could be more poignant than sharing this moment of discovery together, perhaps feeling one’s own heart opening after too many years of shuttering?

The Stories that Shaped Me: The Eyes of a Whale, a Feast through a Knothole, and the Taste of Peppermint Mittens

Tibor Gergeley’s GREAT BIG BOOK OF BEDTIME STORIES

I will never forget the times my father read to my sister and me growing up in the 1980s. We didn’t have the vast numbers of picture books we have today, but a few truly memorable stories stuck with me after all these years. I have honestly not looked back at these in any reflective way since then, but I encourage all of you to think about the stories you were read, and what they meant to you, and perhaps what they mean now. It is a bit mind-blowing how reading these again will take you back….

In Tibor Gergeley’s GREAT BIG BOOK OF BEDTIME STORIES, I used to spend hours of my childhood days pouring over detailed paintings of different scenes- animals, boats, forests, and people doing everyday things in everyday life, etc. Indeed this vast volume of 32 tales felt almost as big as the world to me. Even though I couldn’t yet read the text, there were stories in the images and I remembered every page as if it were a place where I inhabited- and a place where I could go in my imagination. But there was one particular story that my sister and I asked for all the time that my father would read to us nearly every night.

THE HAPPY LITTLE WHALE, by Kenneth Norris

“The Happy Little Whale,” by Kenneth Norris, is a tale of loss, captivity, and finding unexpected happiness that made a lasting impression on me. In Norris’ story, a baby whale lives happily in the ocean with his family until one fateful day he is caught in a fisherman’s net. His family tries to free him, but after failing to do so they sadly swim away, never to return.

The baby whale trapped in its net

I remember how I felt for the baby whale, wrapped up tightly in his net, his eye smushed beneath the net in discomfort. As my father would read, I could feel the cold blue water, and the steam rising from the boat to the sky.

The eye of the baby whale, that haunts me forever

Soon the whale is transported to a ‘Sea World’ like place where he is let go into a small, round swimming pool. I remember staring at the painting above, imagining what it was like to be in such a small pool after the deep, deep sea. What did the baby whale feel? Scared? Lonely? The calm green brushstrokes of water engulfed him as I stared at his dark, shining blue eye.

The story ends with the baby whale in a strange new world where he must perform tricks in exchange for silvery fish to eat. He meets a companion and despite the fact that he never sees his family again, he is (presumably) at peace. Looking back, I realized I loved this story because it created a place I could return to: rich in feeling, sensorily vivid and real.

THE TALL BOOK OF CHRISTMAS, cover

THE TALL BOOK OF CHRISTMAS, an anthology of many different tales with its unusually tall trim size was one of my favorite reads during the holidays. Inside were two stories that stuck.

The opening of CHRISTMAS THROUGH A KNOTHOLE

The first story was “Christmas through a Knothole,” by Katharine Gibson. In this tale, an old wood carver named Hans hunts in the king’s land and gets thrown into jail just weeks before Christmas. But this is a town where everyone knows everyone, and everyone knows that Hans is a kind old man. Without him, no one will be carving wooden toys for the holidays as he customarily does, and no one is sadder than Hans’ friends, two children named Max and Gretchen.

The wooden figurines of the townspeople, carved by Hans

Saddened that Hans will be missing Christmas, they cook up a plan to make Hans a full Christmas feast long and thin enough to fit through the knothole in his jail cell. As a child, the idea of this filled me with delight! The story appealed strongly to my tastebuds as it described the delicious roast goose, sausages, and warm dinner rolls sent through the knothole. I imagined the cake that Max and Gretchen rolled up thin, packed with sugar and nuts and my mouth watered.

Even more wonderful, the children receive small, handcarved wooden figurines of the entire town– including themselves– handcarved by Hans in return. “Christmas through a Knothole” is a story about creative adaptation. What could be more inspiring than a glorious experience made possible despite a situation that feels impossible?

Granny Glittens, making mittens in her humble home

The last story I’d like to share is another from the TALL anthology, called “Granny Glittens and Her Amazing Mittens” by Gertrude Crampton, a delightfully strange story about a scarcity and invention. In the story, Granny Glittens makes mittens every year to sell, and she makes them well. With the money she makes from selling colorful mittens, she is able to pay for the coal to light her stove, and for the milk to feed her cat (and presumably for food to feed herself.) But one year, a mistake by the yarn store sends her only white yarn, and she is stuck in a difficult predicament on a tight deadline for her holiday orders.

All that white yarn!

Instead of giving up, Granny Glittens explores her cupboards and finds jars of items in the colors she needs- red peppermints, green wintergreen, brown chocolate, black licorice, and yellow lemon drops. Then with an adventurous beat, she asks herself whether she could possibly use these candy to create the colorful yarn she needs for her mittens. “Well, the only way to find out is to find out,” she says, as she begins to experiment dying the white yarn.

Making colors for her mittens

After staying up all night color her white yarn, Granny Glittens sits back exhausted in her rocking chair. So hungry she forgot to eat, she playfully takes a bite of a small piece of red yarn to show her cat how hungry she is, and it’s delicious!

As a child it never truly crossed my mind that the mittens were inedible. Of course it was possible for the bubbling sweet candy stews to transform ordinary mittens into a fuzzy, warm, edible treat. As Granny Glittens’ happy customers first wore then ate her mittens, Granny Glittens saves herself from certain poverty through invention and experimentation.

As a children’s book creator, nothing is more rewarding to me than playing in the liminal space between reality and what’s possible. After all, there is no freer place to be than in one’s imagination, should you set it free.

Please post your favorite book childhood below in the comments, and if you like, what it meant to you. It would be lovely to see and share.

Thank you for joining, until next time,

Laura G. Lee

website:

http://www.lauragleestudio.com

IG: @lauragleestudio

This summer I’ve been tasked with fastidiously completing 23 handmade paintings for my next book with Little Brown, I AM HUMAN, about a boy and his AI bot. As my summer began and the family eased out of the hectic school year schedules, I eagerly purchased a stack of Arches Cold Press watercolor paper, refreshed my supply of Kuretake watercolor pans, and prepared to dive in.

(Title Page painting, I AM HUMAN, coming Fall 2026 from Little Brown Books for Young Readers)

Despite the state of the world and also, because of it, I’ve been hard at work in ‘the zone’ for the past several weeks holed up in my studio producing art for this book. Creating has been a salve for my worries and integral to my sense of well-being. As I’ve been working, I have been thinking a lot about what makes a creative environment, and the kind of space one needs to to feel safe exploring their innermost thoughts and feelings.

I’m happy to share what my own personal ‘safe’ creator space is like today. There are a few things that I noticed after reflecting upon my workspace:

- A creative environment is not perfect, but feels like a well-loved struggle. Functional but not entirely so, there are necessary elements that can slow you down and keep you from being a total robot creator. For some, it’s like a cat jumping on your desk and knocking off your pencils. For me, it’s a tiny robin that visits my courtyard every morning looking for seeds.

- Comfort is key. Whether it’s a cozy chair, or a dedicated spot for your favorite snacks and tea, you have to be comfortable and relaxed to create good work.

- Solitude but not loneliness. It’s important to feel free to be alone in yourself, but always good to know and feel that you have supportive creator friends closeby. It’s an energy thing. It’s easier to create knowing others have your back.

Anatomy of a studio

(My analog workspace.)

A- My desk. Covered with a green vinyl Vyco drafting surface that replaced the old one that I accidentally slashed with an exacto blade.

B- My drugstore hairdryer. The only one in the house, which leaps from my office to my bathroom whenever I need to dry my hair. One of the most important tools in my studio to quickly dry my paintings, but I refuse to get a new one!

C- Totally meaningless trash bin. Used for scraps, but rarely. Emptied once a year or so.

D- Two desk lamps. One warm, one cool, for lighting up paintings when the sky is cloudy outside. This one constantly gets unplugged. (Cord too short)

E- Brushes and pencils. Nearly everything that I need to make a painting. Erasers too.

F- Fancy stylish reading glasses. Needed for fine detail work. (hidden off pic)

G- Wall space. For pinning up drawings and ideas, color palettes and guides.

H- ‘Food and drinks’ zone. The right side of my desk stays flat when my drafting table is raised, allowing me to have a steady flow of tea, coffee, and snacks to fuel my brain and work. Total necessity. Every day, it’s an apple and a handful of nuts.

(My digital workspace.)

I- Scanner station. For computerizing my work and turning things into pixels.

J- Tiny zen garden. Constantly tips over and gets bits of tiny fine sand around my monitor.

K- Map of my high school campus, where I fantasize teaching someday.

L- Computer Workstation. For working in pixels.

M- Chair. This one goes up and down, like this desk which goes up and down.

Wall of motherhood. Letters and cards from the kids.

Encouraging notes. From friends, my agent, editors, a little door that Sophie Blackall painted for me on a visit to Milkwood last year.

Bookshelf. Filled with books I like to keep close on hand for visual reference. Some of my favorites are by: Guojing, Sophie Blackall, Jillian Tamaki, Isabelle Arsenault, Jon Klassen, Julie Morstad, Aimée Sicuro, Christian Robinson, Marla Frazee… Heavy books for pressing down paintings (thank you Rem Koolhaus S/M/L/XL!) Notecards and mementos. One very nice Caran D'Ache pen.

Supplies. Too many things. Pens, markers, paints, tins of office supplies. Ink. Papers. Notebooks. More paper. Tape. Leftover soy sauce from SOY SAUCE!

Flat File- filled with tiny books! Mini book dummies, which I love. Specialty hanji papers. A drawer of my kids’ best art. Color prints from the publisher.

I have never had this much stuff, in any office/studio I’ve ever worked. I’ve never dug deeper into my work and myself.

So go ahead, make that space your own. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be you.

Happy Summer everyone!

Until next time,

Laura G. Lee

website:

http://www.lauragleestudio.com

IG: @lauragleestudio

For this edition, I’d like to share my experience embarking on a book tour early this year during a time of great uncertainty.

“You must do something to make the world more beautiful.”  - Barbara Cooney, from MISS RUMPHIUS

At the start of the year, I (perhaps like many of you), was grappling with a foreboding sense of the world falling to pieces. I was exhausted, struggling to find meaning in everyday things. Everything I’d valued about civic life in my country felt at a precipice, and I could not help but wonder what elements of our own lives might soon evaporate- education, health care, safety. An ugliness reared its head. Of course now, only a few months into this new administration it is clear that everything is on a precipice as we see America’s institutions crumble before our eyes.

Amidst all of this, people around me (neighbors, friends, parents in our school community), seemed to fall on two sides of a fence. On one side, some blocked out feelings of anxiety or despair in a sort of ‘pandemic-like’ PTSD response, returning to nature and retreating. Others suffered a sort of existential angst- questioning their own meaning and self-worth in a society that has shifted- and may no longer exist. After all, what is the point of showing up to work if work no longer has meaning? In the tech-saturated world of Silicon Valley, this existential crisis is strongly felt but, in my immediate circle, rarely discussed. Do we really need robots and AI to guide our humanity? Do we really want to devise more ways to suck people into our screens? What do we as humans, really need?

As a children’s book author and illustrator, I fell somewhere in between. I took long walks, retreating into the beauty of nature to calm my inner turmoil. I remembered doing the same walks in early 2020, right after my daughter was born. I would hold onto her soft, tiny hand and carry her past blooming pines and flora, wondering why on earth did I bring her into a world full of so much uncertainly and pain? All around me, native flowers blossomed at the start of spring- wild, sculptural plants with colors I never experienced growing up in Appalachia. Each tree or plant I passed marked a strange, hyperpersonal passage of time.

As I was about to embark on my book tour, I asked myself, what do I really want to say, right now? Given the opportunity to speak to  hundreds of children and families, what can I say that will actually make a difference?

SOY SAUCE! is an illustrated journey about the making of soy sauce from three cultural perspectives- Korean, Chinese, and Japanese. The book itself centers around three children- Haru, Luan, and Yoo-mi, all who make soy sauce in their family’s traditional way. It is a charming look into the world of soy sauce’s history and culture, made for foodie children and parents alike. It is the first children’s picture book on this topic ever published in the United States, by Hachette Book Group.

But I didn’t want to just talk about the book to kids. I wanted to have a conversation about culture and identity in our world today, and talk about what SOY SAUCE! meant to me.

In sharing the book to kids, I opened up who I am, and the role soy sauce played in my own childhood: how it was part of my family memories (both the good and the bad), and how it ultimately shaped my cultural identity. I got to be a human, talking to other humans about how we are different, but at the same time, intimately connected.

Putting my personal story and vulnerability out there led to some beautiful things. I received warm hugs from kids, who resonated with my story growing up and feeling out of place in a mixed culture. I shared meaningful moments with dedicated librarians who show up rain or shine for their kids despite increased public school budget cuts. At two separate events, two different long-lost childhood friends surprised me in the audience making the fabric of my known universe feel more intertwined. I received countless handmade cards, drawings, and paintings by young hands inspired by soy sauce.

As a writer and illustrator, I might not be able to solve pressing problems in the world, but I can help people imagine new things. I can weave connections between seemingly disparate elements, and rebuild what feels fractured. And I can definitely double down on my dedication to making the world a kinder, more empathetic place for children to grow up in, and encourage them to be true to themselves. In the face of our unknown future, I can try to make the world more beautiful.

This newsletter is dedicated to my friend, Bo Lu.

With a busy book launch season and a multi-city tour (SF/Seattle/NYC? tbd) planned for SOY SAUCE! only weeks away, I decided to steer away from covering my writing and illustration work (I am a bit social media and marketing fatigued) to dive into a more intimate, self-reflective topic for this winter issue.

PARIS, BEFORE MIDNIGHT, 2024

In this issue, I decided to unpack one of my favorite film trilogies, Richard Linklater’s “Before” films, which I recently re-discovered en route to our winter holiday in Paris. After many years grounded in the US since the birth of my daughter in 2020, COVID, and the subsequent baby years, not much motivated us to travel as a family internationally. But the stress of the recent US election coupled with an opportunity to escape across the Atlantic presented itself, so we packed our bags, brushed off our passports and took off!

On the long flight from California crossing land and sea (once everyone fell asleep), I stayed up to indulge in Richard Linklater’s “Before” film trilogy. For those who do not know it, the “Before” films- Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight- were three films shot over two actual decades of two characters’ lives. Celine, played by French actress Julie Delpy, and Jesse, played by Ethan Hawke, meet in their 20s on a train in Vienna in Before Sunrise (1995), meet again in their 30s in Paris in Before Sunset (2004), and finally reconcile in Greece in 2013’s Before Midnight.

Linklater, who is known for casting actors as characters over time, (check out his gorgeous film Boyhood, shot between 2002-2013 also starring Hawke and Patricia Arquette), creates movies that span actual lifetimes, using the grit of time and age to add depth and authenticity to his works. No other filmmaker has quite taken on this conceptual twist, and it has always drawn me in. It almost seems like Hawke and Delpy are Jesse and Celine, as we watch them love and age twenty years together on screen.

(Scene from Before Sunrise, Vienna)

In Before Sunrise, the first film in the trilogy, a young Celine and Jesse meet on a train in Vienna and decide to spend a day together. I first watched this film as a teenager in the 1990s, and rewatching it evoked that youthful promise of exploring the world and ease of meeting someone new. As Jesse and Celine wander through Vienna and converse in real time, we share their intimate moments and conversations, as if we are also on their journey. Resonant with every teenage romantic I knew, I too had been attracted to the notion of connecting in this way- on route to places I had not yet been.

[scene from Before Sunset, Paris]

Linklater’s second film, Before Sunset (2004) takes us to Paris where Jesse and Celine, now ten years older in their 30s, meet again after their lives have gone separate directions. Hawke returns as a thinner, somewhat haggard Jesse (in real life, Hawke was in the midst of a divorce with Uma Thurman which finalized the year after Before Sunset released) and Delpy returns as a more worldly, but romantically conflicted Celine. Both are wiser in their age, but are battered by decisions they’ve made and paths taken. Before Sunset, which I watched in my late 20s, was both heartbreaking and redeeming, showing how choices we make can shift our life trajectory to or from the things we need or love.

[scene from Before Midnight, Greece]

By the third film, Jesse and Celine are at last together, but going through the travails of parenting and middle age while clinging to the seeds of their relationship. In Before Midnight, the least liberating of the films, Celine encapsulates her relationship with Jesse in a scene where she describes a setting sun. As the orange globe descends into the silvery Peloponnese sea, Celine is still hopeful, “Going, going…” then turning to Jesse, her face shifts into sadness, acknowledging the loss of their young, idealistic selves, “Gone.” When I watched this movie in 2013, I related more to 30-year old Celine and found the evolution of their love profoundly depressing.

But rewatching Before Midnight now in my late 40s- married, with children of my own- I can understand the nuances of the third movie with a greater degree of empathy. As we age and build our lives and (sometimes) create humans of our own, we become layered and complex, a blend of past and present. Our identities are often in conflict because of this- every day we glance at the mirror recalibrating who we once were, and who we might yet be.

The pleasure of watching Linklater’s trilogy transcends the story of Jesse and Celine. For Gen Xers, it was the experience of watching the characters’ lives unfold in tandem to our own.

(MY) PARIS THROUGH THE YEARS

As I sat on the plane contemplating Linklater’s time-spanning films, I began to think about my own time in Paris over the years. I’ve traveled to Paris five times, once for nearly every decade of my life. Here is a brief recap.

1980s

My first trip to Paris in the 1980s was with my family when I was ten. Jet lagged and dozing on a sea of luggage, my sister and I watched as an unbelievable amount of people crammed in to take the ferry across the English Channel. (There was no high-speed Eurostar rail at the time.) We were far away from our hometown of Charleston, West Virginia.

By the time we reached Paris, everything was bustling and grandiose. From our hotel window, we could look out and see the Palais Garnier, and everywhere we looked there was something beautiful to take in- gothic cathedrals, elaborate carvings on windows, art nouveau sculptures sprouting out of buildings. Young and unseen, I remember posing to have my profile cut into a black silhouette by a scissor artist, near the glistening dome of Sacre Coeur.

1990s

My last year of college visiting friends in London, we frolicked to Paris by Eurostar for the weekend. Nearly done with our four years at Brown, my literary friends who idolized the Romantics, daydreamed to Brit pop and spent copious amounts of time in witty banter joyously boarded the train to Paris. It was a fun, carefree time with no concern (yet) for the future. My most salient memory was snapping black and white photographs of my friends posing in a then-empty plaza of the Louvre after a night of revelries. (I didn't have a single shot of myself.)

2000s (En route to Cannes)

After graduating, I went to volunteer for the Independent Feature Project, (now known as The Gotham Film Institute) an organization that supported American independent filmmakers at Cannes Film Festival. On my way to what would become three months living in the French Riviera, I spent a day in Paris after arriving on a flight from New York. While waiting in line for the catacombs, I met a girl from Kenya and a girl from Brussels. After spending an hour or two navigating piles of bones and skulls beneath the streets of Paris together, we rejoiced in a cheap but satisfying meal sharing stories of where we were from. I no longer remember the girl from Kenya’s name, but I remember her description of Carnivore, a bustling open air grill in Nairobi filled with all kinds of delicious grilled meats that still remains on my bucket list.

2010s

Paris was our first stop after a whirlwind wedding in Carmel. Though the wedding was amazing, it was exhausting, and my husband and I couldn’t wait to relax and eat our way through Europe. By my 30s, I had settled into life in California in a job as a product designer at a tech company (life took a turn, indeed!) and after putting in time a couple years in Silicon Valley, we looked forward to decompressing together in Europe. Without kids yet in tow, we ate our way through Paris, and had one memorable meal after another with a favorite meal at Le Chateaubriand. We skipped the Eiffel Tower, didn’t set foot in a single museum, and walked and walked till hunger hit us.

2020s

It is difficult to navigate large cities with children. We returned to Paris this month with our four-year old daughter and ten-year old son in tow. While they are generally angelic children, over 27 hours on planes, trains, and a daily 5-story Parisian apartment walk-up wore on them. Still, it was a great pleasure to check into 'our Paris home' in the center of town near Pompidou and settled in for the holidays.

The View from our Parisian balcony

Like my parents, we dutifully visited the Eiffel Tower, Musee D’Orsay, and the reopened Notre Dame Cathedral, but we skipped the Louvre (too crowded) and managed to escape to Lyon for a few days. I discovered my favorite cathedral in all of France in Lyon, Notre Dame de Fourviere with its large mosaic paintings by Charles Lameire and George Décote. And for Christmas, we got a tiny tree and placed a single gift for each child beneath alongside makeshift cards we illustrated on Christmas Eve. We encouraged the children to eat bravely, and they happily tried oysters, escargot, quenelles (in Lyon), and fish seasoned with Pastis.

Our extra small Christmas tree, and cards made from brown bag paper

As we wandered through Paris as a family of four, I saw flashes of my former self: standing with my sister at Le Grand Cafe Capucines where my father gave me a beautiful pink and gold art nouveau postcard, walking in a rain coat towards a sign for the catacombs, kneeling at the Pyramid of the Louvre to take a photograph.

As I reflect upon this trip, and the episodic beauty of Linklater’s films, I wonder what will resonate in my own children’s memories of Paris. Will my son remember the relief he had escaping his little sister to take a rainy walk with me in the Marais? Will they recall the brutally cold wind atop the Eiffel Tower? Will my daughter remember how much she loved Paris, or the narrow staircase we climbed together every day? And if they return someday on their own, what will they discover?

Our five story walk up in Paris

Our last night in Paris, wandering around the Latin Quarter

On our last day in France, weary of our travels, my daughter turned to me and said with complete sincerity, “Mama, when we go home to California, I will appreciate our home more.” Time away, time in between- both make the heart grow fonder. And though she is just 4 years old, I very much want to believe her.

(Excerpt from TIME IS A FLOWER by Julie Morstad)

Time is a flower.
Cyclamen, marigold, poppy,
violet, verbena!

With petals so loud and bright,
calling all bees!

Until…
The flower droops.
Releasing its petals,

one
by
one,
or
all at
once.

Thank you for joining me on this journey.

Until next time,
Laura G. Lee

website: http://www.lauragleestudio.com
IG: @lauragleestudio

After decades of digital scrolling, and fatigue with byte-sized comments, I've come to a realization. I miss reading. I miss letters. Long letters, creased by hands and smudged with graphite. Carefully-constructed thoughts sent from other human beings that feel intimate, and weighty. I sincerely hope to tap into the letter-writing vibe, so here I go... I hope you enjoy the ride.

2023, MY YEAR OF SOY SAUCE

Cover of SOY SAUCE! by Laura G. Lee, coming from Hachette Publishing Group in January 2025

After a year of writing and painting in my San Mateo-based studio to craft my upcoming picture book, SOY SAUCE! (coming in January 2025 from Hachette Publishing Group- you can preorder now), I finally took a step back to take in some crisp fall air and ponder, why did I create a book about soy sauce?

I had to travel far back.

My thoughts returned to my years growing up in West Virginia in the 1980s, a place where 'soy sauce' felt synonymous with 'Asian,' and what that meant to me. I remembered feeling like an outsider the day I realized not everyone poured soy sauce on their scrambled eggs, and the grossed-out look on my best friend's face. (After which, I asked my mom to only pack me sandwiches for lunch each day.)

On the flip side, I recalled how my mom secretly added soy sauce to 'American' dishes to give them a kick, and how none of the neighbors could pinpoint why her spaghetti bolognese was so so delicious. I remembered how on warm summer nights, kids playing in the neighborhood outside reserved a special sigh for that amazing barbeque aroma (soy sauce-seasoned bulgogi) wafting from our family kitchen into firefly-lit streets.

Celebrating a birthday at the family table, in Charleston, WV.

My sister, mother, and me with our friends and neighbors.

Raising their daughters in a primarily non-Asian community, my parents chose a path that many first generation immigrants of the 1960s chose to assimilate to Western culture. By age 4, I only spoke English at home. While my parents tried wholeheartedly to embrace a Western way of life, they yearned for home in the food they made, cherishing Korean home cooking (when they could get it) and inventing substitutions for ingredients like gochujang when the nearest Korean market was two states away. As much as they accepted Western foods, their culinary history was a part of them and through our daily life, a part of me.

Food has always been a deep source of connection to my Korean heritage, even when I felt most isolated from it. As I grew up and became more accepting of myself and my identity, I realized how powerful family food can be. I wrote SOY SAUCE! as a way to build a bridge to my own cultural identity, but also between cultures. In a world filled with differences, SOY SAUCE! celebrates what weaves us together– a good family meal shared around the dinner table– all around the globe.

BEGINNINGS

Early days concepting SOY SAUCE!, from manuscript to sketches.

As a writer researching soy sauce, my first step was immersing myself in its fascinating history. Invented over 2000 years ago, soy sauce was carried across the globe through trade and migration. I was surprised to read how it was served in 1600s France at the banquets of Louis the XIV, and how it was likely a secret ingredient for England's very 'English' Worchestershire sauce in the 1800s. I discovered how soy sauce found its way into family recipes of 'native' cuisines like Russian beef stroganoff, Peruvian lomo saltado, and Cajun gumbo. My elementary school self would have been floored to discover how much soy sauce– a wildly popular ingredient now consumed around the world–is truly loved by all.

But not all soy sauces are created equal. The more I discovered, it became clear there was a massive difference between the machine-milled, pillowy packets I got from takeout, and soy sauce brewed using the traditional methods.

As I explored the difference between the production of industrialized and traditionally-brewed soy sauce, one variable stood out as the most significant: time. In industrial soy sauce making, chemicals added during production speed up the process of fermentation so greater amounts of soy sauce can be made, packaged, and sold. But speed comes at the expense of flavor. Flavors are flat, less complex–like a memory that doesn't quite take shape.

Jeong Kwan at work in her kitchen.

Master soy sauce makers, on the other hand, take great pride in the time it takes to make good soy sauce. Legendary chefs like Jeong Kwan, the Korean Buddhist nun and chef (featured in Chef's Table), approach the creation of soy sauce with a deep mindfulness, and appreciation for the patience needed for traditional brewing: “there are sauces aged five years, ten years, aged for one hundred years... passed down for generations." The more time it takes, no doubt, the better the flavor.

In Korea, there is even a tradition of gifting soy sauce at weddings for a future child– as an act of faith in the future. Jeong meditates on the interconnectedness of past and future in the making of hand-crafted soy sauce:

"If you look into yourself, you see past, present, and future... By looking into myself, I see my grandmother, my mother, the elders in the temple, and me. By making soy sauce, I am reliving the wisdom of my ancestors. I am reliving them."

Traditional soy sauce making is an art that preserves more than just taste- but family, identity and home. A bottle of soy sauce, sealed over time with a maker's hopes and dreams, is an extension of their love.

As I envisioned my story, I imagined a mother, washing a bowl of smooth soybeans under cool water before placing them into a steaming pot. I pictured a father and child, mashing a tactile mix of soy paste to form blocks of meju, left outside to dry in sun and wind. I saw loving siblings tending to fermenting pots of soybeans every day, opening their lids to bring in fresh air as they played in a nearby yard. I imagined a grandfather teaching his grandchild how to stir soybeans into fermenting moromi in dark, wooden barrels cherished by his own father and father before him. As the earth continues to travel around the sun, flavors deepen. Snow falls. Years pass.

Haru, Yoo-mi, and Luan exploring a forest of fermenting koji, in SOY SAUCE!

When I read about the owner of Nanyang Sauce Factory, a family-run soy sauce brewery in Singapore, I was touched by this notion of soy sauce as a family memory. Ken, the exuberant successor of his family factory, poignantly describes what it means to 'bottle up time':

"I have many customers, and they tell me, my kid loves your sauce. And I said, 'how do you know?' 'Because whenever I use your sauce, she finishes her meal." I'm like, THAT'S IT. They will never be able to find the same taste anywhere outside. So when they grow   up, they will always come home for dinner.... And I thought that was SO beautiful... for me, soy sauce is a bonding thing, and to this day we still keep that family bond."

Food memories, like all salient life moments, can turn back time the minute you take a bite of your mom's home cooking, or taste the alchemical blend of chicken broth and Chinese greens in your dad's Sunday hotpot stew. We treasure and write down recipes of our families with a belief that we can bring their memories of love to life, and cling onto them through an unknowable future. We travel with them millions of miles, hundreds of years.

Then one morning, we wake up and recreate that treasured family dish. And suddenly we are transported home again, the balmy West Virginia breeze flowing through the kitchen, with the ones you love, warm by your side.

A BOOK IS A SEED

"To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow."

                       — Audrey Hepburn, actress and humanitarian

I recently stumbled upon this quote as I've been piecing together community outreach ideas for SOY SAUCE!, and I thought to myself, in a world filled with challenges, what makes us plant a garden? Why do we create our stories? Acts of creation– whether they are bottles of soy sauce, family dinners, or children's books– are symbols of hope and belief in tomorrow.

Just as Jeong Kwan reflects on her soy sauce-making as a connection between the past, present, and future, I believe storytelling is an enduring link to our shared humanity—the act of planting seeds that to grow in the minds and hearts of future generations.

Thank you for joining me on this journey.

Until next time,
Laura G. Lee

http://www.lauragleestudio.com
IG: @lauragleestudio

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