A Recent School Visit

Last week I visited the children at Tuftonboro Central School. As the crow flies, Tuftonboro is maybe 10 miles away, but when you have to drive all around Lake Winnipesaukee to get there, it takes about an hour. It was a nice fall day and well worth the time.

Here's why: after driving for an hour, drinking my super-large-soda-with-ice-and-a-straw that accompanies me on every long drive (89¢ @ Irving stations!), my first stop is always the restroom. No surprise there. But what surprised me when I exited the bathroom was what I saw— Those clever little second graders had created beautiful artwork based on my book, Good Morning Garden. I loved them all! They were wonderfully expressive, energetic and full of life. Thank you for that wonderful tribute. Here is just a sampling. I'm sorry I couldn't include them all.

I would have love to have taken them all home! Of course, I saw lots of other great art there as well—self-portraits, collages, cartoons, etc. Thank you Tuftonboro Central School for inviting me and for keeping art alive in your school. Your children were bright, inquisitive, charming and engaging.

Some People Have Nothing Better to Do

Whilst googling myself the other day, I came across this post on the First Person Irregular blog, written John Ochwat. Now, John seems like an intelligent guy and he's entitle to his opinion but . . . he is clearly in need of more interesting pursuits in his life.

In his post, John opins about the evils of the author bio being longer than the text in children's books (yes, he counted them). He uses Good Morning, Garden, written by Barbara Brenner and illustrated by myself as an example. Ouch! He even shows the lovely cover (and thank you for that, if you're going to slam a book, you can at least have it look good and sell a few copies, right? But I digress.) He even complains that there are duplicate bios on the back page and on the jacket flap, making the text to author bio ratio something ridiculous like 1:2.

Here's the point, John: the text and author bios are written for two different audiences. The text is written for the kiddies, or to be read to the kiddies. The bios are written for the adults who buy and read the books to the kiddies. A few adults actually find them interesting. In a small way, it gives additional resources for the teacher using the book in the classroom. So please, take a deep breath. There must be worser evils in the world for you to cast your eye upon.

My Summer Submission for PBAA

Here is my summer art for the Picture Book Artists Association's (from here on affectionately known as PBAA) website. Currently you can view the spring art there, but be sure to return on June 15th for the unvealing of everyone's summer art.

The image is from my 2004 book, Good Morning, Garden, written by Barbara Brenner. I found out recently that it received a starred review in Kirkus and no one told me! It's available on Amazon or my website.

A little about PBAA. It started out as a listserve for professional picture book illustrators but has turned into much more. These people are my mentors, my crying shoulder, my sounding board and my peers. I would be lost without them, so thank you guys!