2018 is a PARTY year for MM fans young and old. Stay tuned to your favorite Molly McBride social media channels so you don’t miss her latest book release information and trailer!
Tag: illustration
Dear Santa
Making a Molly
As a kid I was fascinated by the process of making cartoons. Although my mom started me early on E. H. Shephard’s drawings of Christopher Robin and Pooh, I grew especially to love the work of Charles Schultz and, a little later, Bil Keane.
My dream of becoming a cartoonist was interrupted by what I now think of as temporary insanity. I got it into my head that I didn’t want to be a “starving artist,” and opted for pre-med in college instead of design.
About 15 years later and $200K poorer, I left my Internal Medicine practice to be a full time stay-at-home mommy. Now, when I’m not writing or illustrating or working on the Molly books, I teach my kids cartooning.
I get asked a lot if I’ll go back into Medicine when the kids are grown. And, when I think of all that debt, I feel guilty that I hated being a doctor so, so much! But the truth is, I seriously hope not.
So, I’m going to wrap up this brief post of procrastination and get back to squeezing in 100 Continuing Medical Education hours that are due Jan. 1 so I can continue to pay the AMA and remain legit.
Each night I thank God for all my blessings, especially for my truly amazing and awesome husband who supports me and all my career whims. “What am I putting down as your wife’s job this year?” asks our accountant each January.
And when I wake in the night sweating and trembling, fearing that I failed to wake up to my pager and missed a Code Blue, or that I am getting my 20th ICU admission of the (36-hr long) night, or any number of what can only be called post-traumatic-stress-disorder flashbacks that all physicians suffer as a result of residency training,
I close my eyes and picture colors, paints, pencil sketches, and brushes.
And breathe again.
Silent Night
Time For Bed
Yep. That’s about right.
Trifecta in February
The header image above is an actual message I received, in a rather round-about way, from a reader. Fear not, faithful followers of the fiery-haired five-year-old! The “folks” over here in Mollyland have set a goal: in 2018, the month of Valentines and Mardi Gras will feature BOOK THREE! Rumor has it, it’ll be something to party about. Little teaser:
Stay tuned for updates!
Turkey Surprise
Thought about what to make with all your leftovers yet?
Never Alone
Cold Season
Religious Vocations Awareness 2017
National Vocations Awareness Week 2017 begins Sunday, November 5, and it’s been a really exciting time here at the “McBride” residence. I had the pleasure of writing a piece again this year for Peanut Butter and Grace, and that article is here. Additionally, I had the privilege of appearing live on Catholic TV’s This Is the Day show with Bonnie Rogers and Kevin Nelson. We discussed my favorite topic: fostering religious vocations through children’s literature!
Looking back, I was lucky. I treasure so many beautiful childhood memories, especially visits from my 2 nun-aunts, Sister Carla and Sister Mary Elizabeth. My mom used to say, back then, every Catholic family strived to raise at least one child to hear the calling to the religions life.
My grade school principal was a religious sister, as were several of the teachers and staff. These days a Catholic school kid can go a whole 12 years of school (or more, if you count pre-school and kindergarten) without ever meeting a religious other than his/her parish priest.
This makes me so sad. How will we continue to have religious sisters and brothers, as well as ordained priests and deacons, in the future of the Church when this generation of children never sees any? And so I write the Molly McBride series with the hopes that my colorful little character will influence other spunky little kids to consider the calling.
Besides reading books about religious to your kids, you can head over to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ page for a long list of suggestions for families. The following prayer is from the same site:
“O Holy Family of Nazareth, community of love of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, model and ideal of every Christian family, to you we entrust our families. Open the heart of every family to the faith, to welcoming the word of God, to Christian witness, so that it become a source of new and holy vocations. Touch the hearts of parents, so that with prompt charity, wise care, and loving devotion they be for their sons and daughters sure guides towards spiritual and eternal values. Stir up in the hearts of young people a right conscience and a free will, so that growing in wisdom, age and grace, they might welcome generously the gift of a divine vocation. Holy Family of Nazareth, grant that all of us, contemplating and imitating the assiduous prayer, generous obedience, dignified poverty and virginal purity lived out in your midst, might set about fulfilling the will of God and accompanying with far-sighted sensitivity those among us who are called to follow more closely the Lord Jesus, who has given himself for us (cf. Gal 2:20).”
Amen.