The "Troop" Trailer is LIVE!

I am absolutely thrilled to present the amazing and charming new book trailer produced by Little Bahalia Publishing for Julie Hedlund's upcoming storybook app, A Troop is a Group of Monkeys! This engaging, colorful, musical, funny, inspiring, educational and interactive reading experience features words by Julie Hedlund, illustrations by Pamela Baron, and music and narration by Tim McCanna!

A Troop is a Group of Monkeys will be available on the Apple App Store in January 2013. So whether you've got kids or not, I hope you'll consider purchasing the app for yourself or a young reader when it debuts! (Don't worry, I'll be sure to remind you when the time comes.)

The Troop writer and musician

It has been such a pleasure to musicalize Julie's words, and I can't wait to see the singalong feature on the app. During our family visit to Colorado over the Thanksgiving break, I had the opportunity to meet Julie in person. In fact, we met at the excellent Tattered Cover bookstore in Highlands Ranch where my family lived before moving to California.

When I first decided to pursue children's writing, I started writing picture book manuscripts in the cafe at that Tattered Cover. They have a big, cozy children's section in the back, and I would hang out there for hours, poring over the new releases, studying the layouts and word counts, and buying my favorites for the kids. Anyway, as collaborators, Julie and I got to do what doesn't always happen in kidlit, which is meet and talk! We had a great conversation and I got to ask her all kinds of questions about 12x12. Which reminds me, 12x12 in 2013 is going to be huge. Julie is really kicking it up several notches, so when the time comes be sure to register.