New blog! Welcome to Donalynn Miller, who writes The Book Whisperer for Teacher Magazine. The 6th grade teacher from Texas is the author of the series "Creating Readers," which ran at the magazine earlier this year.
What's your tribe? Authors offer opinions on "brown books" and the multicultural label, at the blogs Finding Wonderland and Mitali Perkins' Fire Escape. By the way, I hope you read A. Fortis's interview of Sherman Alexie (source of the "tribes" reference) at Finding Wonderland; it's a gem.
Nominations for the Children's and YA Bloggers' Literary Awards (the Cybils) close today. Go forth and nominate.
Karen MacPherson lists books for reluctant readers (apparently middle-school boys, to judge by her choices) at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Don't miss the first round of bidding at Robert's Snow, the online charity art auction at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
The online auctions for Robert’s Snowflakes begin today. The snowflakes are decorations created by children’s illustrators, and proceeds from the sales go to cancer research. So you can purchase an original, one-of-a-kind holiday keepsake AND support a worthy cause at the same time. There are some beautiful snowflakes created by illustrators, some illustrators whose work you may recognize.
You can look at all the snowflakes, and place a bid, here.
Auction 1 will begin accepting bids on Monday, Nov. 19 at 9:00 a.m. with a starting bid of $50 for each snowflake. All bids must be placed before the close of Auction 1 on Friday, Nov. 23 at 5:00 pm. Don't forget that 100 percent of the proceeds from this online auction will benefit sarcoma research at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and that all but $25 of the winning bid is tax deductible.
Read
LAST REMINDER 
WIN A PRIZE!!! I do hope you’ll stop by to read all of my
Blogging for a Cure interviews and to comment about the artists and their work if you have not done so yet. I have a special prize for some lucky person who leaves a comment at any of my six posts featuring a Robert’s Snow artist: a limited edition giclee print of an illustration from
Grace Lin’s book
Robert’s Snow! Here is a picture of the print:
Each time you comment at one of my Blogging for a Cure posts about a Robert’s Snow artist, I’ll put your name in a hat. If you comment at all six posts, your name will go into the hat six times! The drawing will take place around 11:30 tonight…so you still have an opportunity to comment and to win a prize.
Note: I also have several consolation prizes for commenters who don’t win the “big” prize: five small prints of the Robert’s Snow mouse(mice).
Don’t forget that bidding begins on the first of the three Robert’s Snow 2007 auctions today!
Read about the following Robert's Snow artists that I interviewed for Blogging for a Cure:
Here is a link to my interview with Scott Bakal.
Here is a link to my interview with Alissa Imre Geis.
Here is a link to my interview with Wendell Minor.
Here is a link to my interview with Susan Kathleen Hartung.
Here is a link to my interview with Mary Newell DePalma.
Here is a link to my interview with Wade Zahares.
Pingo (little devil in Spanish) was my 2005 snowflake—the first year I participated in
Robert’s Snow fundraising.
Here is a sequence of the making of the piece.
First I built the armature with wire.
Here is my snowflake ready to be painted.
I built the basic shapes of my little devil over the armature
Pingo was made from colored Sculpey and I did almost not painting at all over the figure.
I sewed the little underwear from a knitted shirt, and the blades for the skates I shaped from the thinnest wire.
Robert’s Snow: For Cancer’s Cure starts today at 9:00am. My 2007 snowflake, Little Night: See Me Shine, a music box, will be now available for bidding and until the November 23.
So, go see and fall in love with the snowflakes!
The Robert's Snow Auction is finally here!
Auction 1 will begin accepting bids today, November 19th at 9:00 a.m. with a starting bid of $50 for each snowflake. All bids must be placed before the close of Auction 1 on Friday, November 23rd at 5:00 pm. 100 percent of the proceeds from this online auction will benefit sarcoma research at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Read about all the illustrators who contributed to this auction at the sites linked below. (The order presented is the same as on the auction page.) Thank you,
Tricia, for putting these links together. And thank you,
Jules for organizing this incredible outreach effort to spread the word on Robert's Snow. If anything, this proves it truly takes a village.
To recap...the auction starts today, November 19th at 9:00 a.m. with a starting bid of $50 for each snowflake. Be sure to place your bid here, before the close of Auction 1 on Friday, November 23rd at 5:00 p.m. Thank you for helping to raise money to find a cure for cancer.
Today is the last day of the
Blogging for the Cure effort to raise awareness of
Robert's Snow, and I have the distinct pleasure of presenting an interview with author/illustrator
Teri Sloat. I sent Teri a series of questions, which she kindly answered. She began by saying "I always say too much, so edit away." Hah! Once you read her thoughtful responses, you'll be glad I didn't cut a word. So, without further ado, I give you the incomparable Teri Sloat.
Tricia: When did you decide you wanted to be an illustrator of children’s books?
Teri: To be fair, I think it was having a mother that read to me and to the other kids in the neighborhood that made me know picture books were special. After college, I taught for many years in preschool through 3rd grade classrooms in
Yup'ik villages in Alaska and also in Kindergarten before moving to California. It was during that time that I fell in love with books that read well enough out loud to please children whose English level was low. I ended up practicing in the village and making books during those long winter nights. When I found out that I liked the whole process I decided that someday that is what I was going to do.
Tricia: Which illustrator's have influenced your work?
Teri: I watched a movie with my students about Ezra Keats while I was teaching and loved the idea of making a book from marbleized paper. My class marbleized lots of paper and made collages. I took all the rest of the pieces and made my first book. Others that I keep on my bookshelf have been Arnold Lobel, Leo and Diane Dillon, Tomi de Paolo and Chris Van Allsburg. They always seem to take you to another world with their art. Also there is a wonderful artist in Alaska who has done a couple of picture books, whose name is
Rie Munoz. Our house is full of her art because it makes me happy.
Tricia: What media do you work in?
Teri: The media I use is different for each book. One of my favorites is Caran d'Ache watercolor crayons. They are vivid and blend into one another. They can be thick and pasty or used like a wash. You will find them in
Hark! The Aardvark Angels Sing! and
Berry Magic.
I'm a Duck! is done with pastels. I started with acrylic but they were too heavy and flat for the content of the story. Much of the time I start with an acrylic wash and burnish with a variety of colored pencils from Prismacolor to Aquarelle. Just as important is the kind of paper that I'm always experimenting with.
Tricia: I loved reading about you on your web site and learning about your years in Alaska. Can you tell me how your time there has influenced your work? Teri: I started illustrating at the Bilingual Education Center. They needed an illustrator and there were none around for 4-500 miles so I got the job. I learned as I did small story books and the first folklore from the region, and had a chance to make up some stories of my own for readers that were in the Yup'ik language. I realized how wonderful trade books were in quality and color compared to the books we were printing ourselves and became determined to learn the whole process and to publish some of the folklore at a major publisher. But most of all, we had a slower life-style, and without television, I had time to read and daydream. I took long walks, traveled by boat and snowmachine, sat for hours ice fishing. Living on the tundra literally put the white space all around me that lets my mind drift. I made up many stories and images while there, and now I'm putting them in prints that are on my web-site. There are some that may someday be books of their own, but most of my books start with images. I also learned to write on the spot, as the girls were always asking me to play story knife with them and they expected a story with images scratched into mud to appear pretty instantly. They taught me not to worry about how well I drew (which I still worry about) but to get with it and let the pictures tell the story.
Tricia: Can you tell us a bit about your work with Alaska Northwest Books First Language Program?Teri: The bilingual project I was working in was the second in the US and we had a staff of 7-8 people to create, translate, print, bind and ship books to the villages. In 5 years we created about 250 books, which is amazing in retrospect. But the entire time we wanted the kids to hold books in their language that matched the quality of books in English. We started working with a printer in Anchorage and soon we had basal readers, with recognizable characters professionally printed....a step in the right direction. But the only trade books they had with their wonderful stories and illustrations were pasted over in their language. So after 30 years we finally found a publisher that would print a minimum of 1500 books in one of the indigenous languages. . . almost a non-profit amount, if a native group or district would make the purchase. Translators worked to make sure their words fit artistically into the space provided to make handsome books. The
Yupiit School District was the first district brave enough to make the purchase and there were celebrations in the libraries in the villages when the books were presented. It is a slow process with brave translators, but now many other indigenous groups are seeing the value and buying into the program.
Tricia: You have written and illustrated your own books and illustrated books for other authors. How is illustrating a book that someone else has written different from one you've written yourself?Teri: I haven't illustrated that many for other writers, but when I have I still feel like I'm writing part of the story. I'm making up and filling in visuals for the story that they are telling and creating a world for the story to take place in. It is different because the text I'm handed is
fairly finished. When I illustrate my own books, I work on the writing, eliminating and adapting the rhythm to the images that come up so that both the writing and the art are finished together. Sometimes I write a wonderful story but know that I'm not the one that can make it the best book with my illustrations. So I turn it over to another illustrator to add their own side of the story. The result is a delightful surprise. I've been lucky to have Nadine Westcott, R.W. Alley, Reynold Ruffins and Stefano Vitale as illustrators as well as Mike Wright's hysterical joke book illustrations. Betty Huffmon and I are in the process of writing a third book together, and that collaboration is a wonderful experience.
Tricia: Are you currently working on any new projects? Do you have a new book coming out in the next year or two that you would like to tell us about?Teri: There Was an Old Man Who Painted the Sky will come out in the spring of 2009. It is a take off again of The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly, but is a creation song. I'm excited about the art which I have just seen for the first time. The book ends with a tribute to the girl who discovered the first cave paintings in Altamira, and is dedicated to the observation and wonder of children. I'm fascinated with cave paintings and how pigments were made and sprayed through tubes onto the wall and have used the book as an excuse to visit many caves. It tells the story of the old man who paints the world into being and then hands his paints to the people who paint themselves. As they dance round the fire their spots and stripes fly off onto the creatures watching them. Then the last first says: There was a young girl in a cave all alone, who found the whole world had been painted on stone. There were children like her; there was woman and man, there were creatures of water and creatures of land. There was earth and the planets that spun, one by one, as they whirled through the sky, while they circled the sun. She found the old man, painted high on the wall, and she wondered and wondered as she looked at it all. . . How did he do it, the old man in the sky? How did he paint the sky? It's so high.
Tricia: I love the What I Learn From Students section of your web site. Does this interaction with children ever make you miss teaching?Teri: I sometimes miss having my own classroom, but now I get to teach the thing I am most excited about. . . . imagination. I visit many schools a year, and often do workshops on fable writing, poetry and art with smaller groups. I think I have the best of both worlds. I get to use my imagination and to have exchanges with younger minds who are still so full of imagination and just need skills to share it with the rest of the world. The art of young students has changed my art forever and helped me take the limits of "realism" off my own art.
Tricia: Please tell us about your Arctic Christmas snowflake.
Teri: My snowflake is influenced by Yup'ik masks. The center of mine is the moon and if it were hanging on a wall, there would be spokes going out to the seals, the whales, and the fish on the ends.
(To the left is a print that Teri was making when she made the mask.) The print is called Seal Moon and is a story I made up about a seal that fell in love with the moon shining down through the hole in the ice. That love is turning the seal into a man.
Teri closed her message by saying that creating the snowflake was one of her favorite projects of the year. I will echo her sentiments by saying that featuring illustrators here, and reading about so many more all across the blogosphere has been an amazing experience. I hope we have raised awareness to a level where
Robert's Snow will make oodles of money for cancer research.
If you are interested in bidding on this wonderful snowflake, be sure to follow the link for
Auction 2. Don't forget that 100 percent of the proceeds from this online auction will benefit sarcoma research at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and that all but $25 of the winning bid is tax deductible! While you are there, be sure to view
all the snowflakes up for auction. Each and every one is a unique and amazing work of art.
Before you leave, be sure to check out the other snowflake illustrators being featured on this last day before the auctions begin.
Finally, help me in thanking Teri for sharing her time and talent. I have been inspired by her words and work. I hope you are as well. If you want to learn even more about Teri and the book
Berry Magic, visit
Just One More Book! and listen to this
great podcast from our friends Mark and Andrea. You can also learn more about Teri at her
website. Thanks, Teri!
Wade ZaharesI met
Wade Zahares several years ago when I attended
In Celebration of Children’s Literature, a three-day-long conference at the University of Southern Maine at Gorham. The final day of the conference started off with the
Maine Connection, a panel discussion with four authors and illustrators who lived in Maine. Wade was one of the illustrators on the panel. I hadn’t heard of Wade before and after listening to him speak I decided that I wanted to learn more about him and his art...so I attended his breakout session after the panel discussion.
Wade showed his session participants some of his original picture book illustrations. I was blown away by Wade’s huge originals—especially those from his book
Big, Bad and a Little Bit Scary. I had never seen picture book art quite like his. It was bold and bursting with color. I was taken with the power of some of his images; the close-ups and different perspectives; the deep, rich colors he used in his art.
Since that conference our paths have crossed more than once. Last April, I had an opportunity to chat with Wade after a presentation he made about the art he had created for his most recent book,
Lucky Jake, at the Newburyport Literary Festival in Newburyport, Massachusetts. We also talked at the
Robert’s Snow Artists’ Open House in Newburyport in October.
Grace Lin & Wade Zahares at the Newburyport Literary Festival in April
I jumped at the chance to interview Wade For Blogging for a Cure. I believe he is a talent on the rise. I know I'm not the only individual who thinks this illustrator is a mighty talented artist. Window Music, the first book he illustrated, was selected as a New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Book.
Here's what some reviewers said about Window Music:
“Zahares's bright and thickly painted palette is wonderfully light-infused. The sinuously curving lines reinforce the loopy track and the panorama, viewed from both inside and outside the chunky train, is ever-changing. The illustrations are idealized and dreamlike, a combination of childlike simplicity and the occasional surreal image. This quick and jolly read-aloud is right on track.” — School Library Journal
“In Zahares' first picture book, pastel drawings curve and flow with the train over bulbous hills and chunky tracks; a scene of a sleeping child on the title page implies a dream journey, so the stylized illustrations accentuate objects in adventurous ways, e.g., grapevines that resemble barbed wire, and waves as flat and white as spilled milk. A glowing trip.” — Kirkus Reviews
“[G]orgeous drawings... a lovely story line… telling us in pictures about a little girl returning home after a visit to her grandparents.” — The New York Times Book Review
(I'd like to note here that Anastasia Suen is the author of Window Music.)
Interview with Wade Zahares
Elaine: Wade, you create most of your art with oil pastels. Is there a reason why you like working with that medium?
Wade: Actually, I work with soft pastels, a combination of Schminikee, Sennelier and Unison sticks. I’ve been working pastels for 25 years starting with college. At the time I loved working with charcoal, the compressed kind, working only in black and white on large sheets of paper. I was going into my senior year of school at the Maryland Institute, College of Art, when my instructor really wanted me to add color to my charcoal drawings so I picked up a blue pastel , I think it was Rembrandt or Nu pastel, and started adding it to my drawing on the cool side of the subject matter. The next week I added another color and then another color until it was a full blown pastel drawing that I really liked. I like the immediacy of the chalk and the flat soft look of the finished piece.
Elaine: You really have a distinctive artistic style. You use bold primary and secondary colors and lots of odd perspectives in your picture book illustrations. Did you develop your style when you were in art school…or later?
Some of Wade's Artistic Creations
An Illustration from Window Music
An Illustration from Lucky Jake
Wade: I have always loved perspective and have been trying to take it as far as I can. My color has been developing over the years always changing. I started with a distinct style in school and have been pushing that continuously not knowing where it will take me. It’s funny, I teach a pastel class at an art school but have never had a pastel class myself. Maybe that has helped with my unique style.
Elaine: Has any artist or illustrator influenced your work?
Wade: I may have been influenced some by artists like Edward Hopper, Grant Wood Wayne Thiebaud, but I have always been a strong believer in developing you own style and not letting others influence your work to much.
Elaine: I have seen some of the original illustrations you created for your picture books
Red Are the Apples and
Big, Bad and a Little Bit Scary. They were really quite large. At the Robert’s Snow Artist Open House, you said you are beginning to scale down the size of your illustrations. Have you found it difficult working on a smaller scale?
An Illustration from Big, Bad and a Little Bit Scary 
Wade: Years ago when I was working large, 30” x 40”, I would find it very difficult working small so I didn’t—but slowly over the years I have progressively been working smaller and smaller. It makes life easier carrying an entire book of original art to New York in the back of my jeep or on the train. I think the publishers also like it. I am beginning to oil paint in my studio, on a very large scale. I also am working on a 12’ X 36’ mural at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. Last month, along with 500 plus children I did a mural on the floor, inside and out, at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York based on my book Liberty Rising, The Making of the Statue of Liberty, where they gave all the participants my book. Elaine: Window Music, your first picture book, was designated a
New York Times Book Review Best Illustrated Children’s Book. Do you feel that award opened more doors for you in the world of children’s book publishing?
An Illustration from Window Music
Wade: It was definitely a great jump start! I was working with Viking at the time and it got them very excited to be working with me and in having me do another book. As an artist it boosted my ego quite a bit, which was definitely needed at that time as I had just moved from Boston to Maine. Ten years later I am still using the fact as publicity.
Elaine: In addition to illustrating children’s books, you also create works of fine art. Is there a difference in how you approach the two?
Wade: It is almost exactly the same. You can’t tell the difference between my book illustrations and my gallery work. When I do art that is not in a book I generally work on one piece at a time—but when I do a book, I work on all the art at one time, bringing all the pieces to completion at the same time.An Illustration fron Lucky Jake
Elaine: Have you ever considered writing a children’s book?
Wade: I sure have. I have folders of ideas but can’t seem to put an entire story down on paper. I am trying to write it as if I were writing a song, which I haven’t done either. I have also worked with a few writers on a couple of ideas but so far that hasn't worked. I always say when the story is ready to come out of me it will just pour out.
Elaine: Do you have any new books coming out next year or any projects that you are working on at the present time that you would like to tell us about?
Wade: I just finished my roughs for my newest book Pony Island with Walker books which is due out in the spring of 2009. It a story by Candice Ransom about the ponies on Assateague Island, a small island off the coast of Virginia. Next week I will start the final pieces of art and have a deadline of March 2008. I work on all the approximately 20 pieces of art at the same time so they’re all at the same level of completion. I do have all the paper cut.
I am also working with a design company, White Dog Arts, designing a new web site for my self, zahares.com. I am drawing the entire site so it is taking a good chunk of my time. The site will be up and running very soon and when it is I will be sending an announcement out.
As I also mentioned, I am doing a 12’ x 36 ‘mural at the new student center at Philips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. I have been doing freelance work for the academy since 1994, including campus maps, bulletin covers and scratch board ink renderings of their many buildings.
An Illustration from Liberty Rising
Wade's 2004 Snowflake
Elaine: Liberty Rising was the inspiration for your 2004 snowflake. What was the inspiration for your 2005 snowflake?
Wade's 2005 Snowflake
Wade: The release of Liberty Rising happened during the time I was creating my snowflake for 2005. I had already used that book for my 2004 snowflake and was also stuck on the story of people coming from all over from the world to settle in America so the idea of “The World” popped into my head.
Elaine: Can you tell us about the snowflake you created for
Robert’s Snow 2007?
Wade: To me, painting the snowflake is almost as difficult as painting an entire book. I took my idea for the snowflake from my newest book Lucky Jake, having Pa, Jake and Dog walking over the mountain on a cold winter night. Being from Maine, those cold winter nights with a full moon are some of my favorite nights of the year.
An Illustration from Lucky Jake
Wade's 2007 snowflake is the "mystery" snowflake. As far as I know, no one has caught a glimpse of it yet. Snowflake investigators are hard at work searching for an image of it. I promise to post a picture of it as soon as the snowflake is captured on film.
All illustrations © Wade Zahares. They may not be used without his permission.
REMINDER: WIN A PRIZE!!! I do hope you’ll stop by to read all of my Blogging for a Cure interviews and to comment about the artists and their work. I have a special prize for some lucky person who leaves a comment at any of my six posts featuring a Robert’s Snow artist: a limited edition giclee print of an illustration from Grace Lin’s book Robert’s Snow! Each time you comment at one of my Blogging for a Cure posts about a Robert’s Snow artist, I’ll put your name in a hat. If you comment at all six posts, your name will go into the hat six times! The drawing will take place on November 19th, the day bidding begins on the first of three Robert’s Snow 2007 auctions.
I also have several consolation prizes for commenters who don’t win the “big” prize: five small prints of the Robert’s Snow mouse(mice).
Read about the following Robert's Snow artists that I have already interviewed for Blogging for a Cure:
Here is a link to my interview with Scott Bakal.
Here is a link to my interview with Alissa Imre Geis.
Here is a link to my interview with Wendell Minor.
Here is a link to my interview with Susan Kathleen Hartung.
Here is a link to my interview with Mary Newell DePalma.
Well, Robert’s Snow Auction 1 ended on Friday afternoon. I bid on five snowflakes—but, unfortunately, did not win any. I hope to win at least one in Auction 2. I already own eight snowflakes—four from Robert’s Snow 2004 and four from Robert’s Snow 2005. I also got my daughter a snowflake as Christmas gift in 2005. I take my snowflake bidding seriously!
Auction 2 will begin accepting bids on Monday, Nov. 26 at 9:00 a.m. (Eastern Standard Time) with a starting bid of $100 for each snowflake. Bid increments are $20. All bids must be in before 5:00 pm (Eastern Standard Time) on Friday, Nov. 30. Don't forget that 100 percent of the proceeds from this online auction will benefit sarcoma research at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. All but $25 of the winning bid is tax deductible. 
Read about all the illustrators who contributed to this auction at the sites linked below. (The order presented is the same as on the auction page.)
Mary Haverfield at Your Neighborhood Librarian
Amy Schimler at Please Come Flying
I’m sure many of you are eager to hear who the winner of the 
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I'm so bummed that the one snowflake I want (the Susan Miller) is the one you've bid on! I suppose this is what happens when you get the whole kidlitosphere involved in this effort. I've now got my eye on Hanging Popcorn in Beaver Lodge.
I hope you win a snowflake!
Tricia,
I hope I win at least one snowflake this year. Some of the snowflakes don't show as well on the Internet as they do in person. It's great to see fellow bloggers bidding on snowflakes. I believe at least three kidlit bloggers won snowflakes in the first auction.