Nikki Rubio

Painter, and now a maker of picture books. I write and hand draw Chef Yeti & Friends, where every book gives a child one feeling to work out. Being overwhelmed. Staying with something hard. Finding your footing when everything changes. Children tune out the second they smell a lesson, so the lesson is wrapped in silliness. A star baking beaver, a yeti chef, a thieving pickle, a polar bear, a baboon, a bat, a snake, a train of snails. My four year old chose most of them. He thinks the animals nobody bothers to draw are the funniest ones, and he is right. Hand drawn throughout, with a real recipe in the back.

Drawn through a neurodivergent lens, for the wild ones. The dreamers and the fast thinkers, the ones who bore a page and a half in. They laugh their way through it, and the tools go in sideways.

The forest at night, starfruit ripening in the violet grass under white-drawn trees. The endpapers of the book.
Huey and the Moon Bakery, book one Written and illustrated 40 pages, ages 4–8

Huey and the Moon Bakery

Book one. Manuscript complete, artwork in progress.

Huey bakes stars, and what comes out is a little bit of magic. Tonight the wild stars of the forest are misbehaving, his starfruit goes missing, and his friends are hangry. The chaos overstimulates him, and he learns to find his calm.

  • Core emotionOverstimulation, too much at once, and finding a way through it
  • Special ingredientYolanda Yeti brings it, and what it is stays hidden until late in the book
  • Recipe in the backThe dessert from the story, written for small hands and tested by a chef
  • PaletteMidnight navy, passionfruit magenta, amber, aspen yellow, sage

Every book is built on a different palette. This one is Huey's.

The cover of Huey and the Moon Bakery: Huey in his apron under a starry navy sky, with the hand-lettered title and Nikki Rubio's name.
coverThe jacket. Huey in his baker's apron, a few wild stars already up to something, and the title lettered by hand.
Fruit, blossom and wild stars on deep navy, the front and back boards beneath the jacket.
caseThe case under the jacket, front and back boards: the special ingredient, hidden where the reader finds it last.
Empty pantry shelves, and Pickle Joe escaping out of the window with the stolen starfruit.
9–10The jar is empty and the starfruit is missing. And Pickle Joe, slipping out the window with it, which Huey does not see.
The guests arriving at the bakery while Huey thinks about cocoa.
11–12Four friends at the door, all hungry, and nothing ready.
Yolanda seen through a circle in the sky, answering the call.
15–16Chef Yolanda, it is Huey. I am in a pickle. I am calling you.
Yolanda Yeti arriving by snail-drawn sled through golden aspens at night.
17–18Down the hill she slides, pulled by snails, recipe book under her arm.
Fruit, sugar, salt and milk against a hot orange ground.
23–24The ingredient arrives. The only warm spread in a book of night.
The Moon Bakery seen through the birches as the night ends.
27–28Bye 4 now. The bakery going quiet, and the stars seeing everyone off.

Chef Yeti & Friends

A different character leads every book. Yolanda Yeti walks in with the special ingredient every time.

  • A feeling to get through

    Every story is built around one core emotion, worked out inside a silly plot rather than explained. The emotions are chosen deliberately, not at random.

  • Something new, made irresistible

    In book two, Barry was certain he bought bananas. He did not. Yolanda turns up with chia seeds, the doomed banana bread becomes plantain giggle cookies, and a child closes the book wanting to try a plantain.

  • Yolanda Yeti's ingredient

    She arrives with the thing that was missing, and it is never quite the thing anyone expected.

  • A recipe that works

    The dish from the story is printed in the back, written so a child can help make it, and tested by a professional chef before it goes in.

  • A palette of its own

    Every book is drawn on a different colour scheme, so the series reads as a set without repeating itself.

  • Room for every kind of kid

    Small practical tips are woven through, the kind that help any child, and that neurodivergent kids in particular tend to need and rarely get.

Plus a bit of magic, because a kitchen is already halfway there.

Character work

Huey across six moods, and the cast of the first book.

Six painted expressions of Huey, from strained to delighted.
Huey, expression sheet

Huey

star baking beaver · proprietor, the Moon Bakery

startsoverstimulated, every star at once
→
endscalm, and still in the room

Super powers

  • Lightning hands. He can catch a falling star before it hits the counter.
  • Baking with magic. If it is shaped like a star, he will bake it.
  • Good friends. He does not do the hard part alone.
  • Knowing when he needs to take a break, which is the rarest one.

Known weakness

he gets dizzy, and wild stars love to mess with him a very good cup of cocoa
The full cast of the first book.
Chef Yeti & Friends, the cast

Chef Yeti & Friends

the cast, and the books they are heading for

  • Huey book one Star baking beaver. Overstimulated, and finds his calm without leaving the room.
  • Yolanda Yeti every book her own book The chef. Turns up in every book with the special ingredient, and never says what it is until she is standing in the kitchen. Loves summer, overheats in it, and feels every sound and texture a little too much.
  • Barry Baboon book two Frustration, and how to be silly when you are not in the mood for it. Learns to compromise when the plan falls apart, and that the change can turn out to be the better one.
  • Paolo Bear his own book Building powers and a love of going fast. Learns to focus long enough to finish the race.
  • Millie Snake her own book Sensitive, and learning to be proud of her skin. Finds her confidence, and what her own voice can do.
  • Ecko Bat her own book A vegetarian bat who loves beets. Ask her about beet root spaghetti. Her world is full of flowers and bumble bees, and they are all friends of hers.
  • Dudley & Pine their own book The snails. Slower than everyone around them, and learning that their own pace is not a thing to apologise for. Somewhere out there is a whole snail village.
  • Pickle Joe his own book Collects wishes. Daffodil wishes, wishbones, starfruit, feathers he found. He is in every book, taking something.

About

Nikki Rubio.

Chef Yeti was invented at bedtime. My son would not sleep, so I made up songs about a yeti who runs a kitchen, and then more songs, and then the songs turned into a story we kept building together. The whole series comes from that.

Huey is overstimulated, which is the thing I know well. I wrote him from inside motherhood, where I am often the one trying to work a kitchen while the wild stars ricochet around the room. My toddler is the wild stars. Small children get overwhelmed exactly the way Huey does, and I wanted a book that sat with them in it instead of hurrying them out.

I write this from the inside. I am neurodivergent, and the small practical tips folded through these books are the ones that actually work in our house, not advice, just the things we have found. Every child can use them. Some children need them. My four-year-old does not settle into a book unless it rhymes. The rhyme is what lets him listen, and once he is listening, he understands. After healing my own stutter as an adult through music, I found that rhyme is the structure a neurodivergent mind tunes into most easily. It is predictable, it is rhythmic, and it is calming. It is what carried me to speaking well, and I have watched it steady other children the same way. So the couplets in these books are not decoration.

Before that I was painting. I have painted professionally in front of live audiences, teaching classes and on stage, I created my own private art therapy classes, and I have sold my work to private buyers. I grew up writing books about fairies and also self-published two novels in my twenties, so the writing has always run alongside the drawing. Having my son is what finally joined the two.

The feelings in these books are not chosen at random. In my professional career I guide adult clients through trauma, sitting with them as they unravel core beliefs that were cultivated in childhood, or sadly never cultivated at all, like confidence, or managing emotions. I firmly believe, and see through my work, that healing the inner child as an adult begins with a strong foundation built in childhood. Building confidence in the moments nobody talks about is the hardest part, and it is precisely what Huey learns.

Everything I make is drawn by hand. Huey and the Moon Bakery is the first book where I am both author and illustrator, and the first of a series where each book hands a child something new and makes it look like the best idea in the world.

Originally from California, currently wherever we are next. I work as an astrocartographer, and alongside the maps I guide adults through shadow work, the slow untangling of what was formed early and never named. When I am not on books or maps you will find me building something with my son, or meditating at the beach. The recipes in these books start with his ideas and mine, then get checked and corrected by my husband, who cooked professionally. We have a dog named Neptune.

Get in touch

Open to picture book projects, series work and representation.