THE CLEVER SEED, SPRING Edition 2026

Touching Grass

THE CLEVER SEED is a quarterly newsletter exploring creativity and inspiration through the eyes of a children’s book author and illustrator.

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:

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

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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

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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

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