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Set on a huge continental stage, from Europe to China, By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean covers over 10,000 years, charting the development of European, Near Eastern, and Chinese civilizations and the growing links between them by way of the Indian Ocean, the silk Roads, and the great steppe corridor (which crucially allowed horse riders to travel from Mongolia to the Great Hungarian Plain within a year).

The post History of Eurasia [interactive map] appeared first on OUPblog.

Desert scene in a minimalistic pixel art style, for a Talk Retro site redesign.

Available as a high quality art print.

More images: MetinSeven.com.

……………………… Kathleen Rietz Illustrator, Desert Baths with author Darcy Pattison ……………….. Please welcome to Kid Lit Reviews a prolific children’s book illustrator and fine artist Kathleen Rietz. She is here to chat with us about herself and her new book with Darcy Pattison titled Desert Baths. Hi, Kathleen, let’s start off with what first interested [...]

DESERT BATHS 

by Darcy Pattison
Illustrated by Kathleen Rietz

Watch the vulture bask in the morning sun, the roadrunner kick up a cloud of dust, the javelina wallow, and the bobcat give her cub a licking with a rough tongue in Desert Baths. As the sun travels across the sky, learn how twelve different desert animals face the difficulties of staying clean in a dry and parched land. Explore the desert habitat through its animals and their habits of hygiene. Told in lyrical prose, this story is a celebration of the desert lands of the American Southwest.

After reading Desert Baths, get into the spirit with a great coloring page below by Kathleen Rietz, or visit www.sylvandellpublishing.com to take the quiz to see what you learned about desert animals.

Darcy Pattison is published in eght languages. In addition to Desert Baths and Prairie Storms with Sylvan Dell, other recent titles include Wisdom: The Midway Albatross and 11 Ways to Ruin a Photograph. She also authored the ebook, How to Write a Children’s Book and the teacher resource book, Paper Lightning: Prewriting Activities to Spark Creativity and Help Students Write Effectively. Darcy is the 2007 recipient of the Arkansas Governor’s Arts Award, Individual Artist Award for her work in children’s literature. As a writing teacher, Darcy is in demand nationwide to teach her Novel Revision Retreat. She is currently the Co-Chair of the Children’s Program for the Arkansas Literary Festival.

A lifelong artist and lover of nature, Kathleen Rietz was drawing and painting before she learned to write her name. Originally from Peoria, IL, Kathleen received her formal training from the American Academy of Art in Chicago, IL. In addition to illustrating Desert Baths, The Tree That Bear Climbed, Prairie Storms, and Champ’s Story: Dogs Get Cancer Too! for Sylvan Dell, Kathleen’s other books include Conce Tu Parque, Little Black Ant on Park Street, The ABC’s of Yoga for Kids, and Prayers for Children. She taught art to children and adults at the Community School of the Arts at historic Wheaton College in Wheaton, IL, and through a local home school program in her community.

Write a comment and you could win an eBook of Desert Baths!

* Winners in the past 6 months are not eligible for contests.

Time to post some samples! Below is some (fairly) recent work that’s been published. This is a game kids can play by cutting out the squares and making unique stories (see sample, below, that demos how). Looks to be fun, really! I’ve done several Silly Story Cards and find them quite fun to illustrate. Thanks, Chirp!

A fun, drizzly day spent in the Gobi desert. (see previous entry about the camels)

I would love to know about your writing routine, because if someone asks me that I look at them funny and say, "What's that?" My four-year-old seems to think that whenever I sit down at the computer it's time for him to need food/attention/a playmate/you name it.


I have to admit I almost didn't include "writing routine" on my list of ideas to get you readers thinking, probably because my routine is never the same. My husband had a seminary professor that used to describe balance as "momentary synchronicity" -- a great way to also sum up my writing schedule. What works for me now didn't work for me while I was teaching and certainly didn't work when I was home with toddlers.

During my teaching years, my creative energy was spent by the end of the day. The school year was for revision; the summer for new drafts. As a stay-at-home mom, I aimed for three writing sessions a week. Some lasted ten minutes, others, when I had a sitter, were two-hour stretches. It took me a long time to move forward, but in those phases of my life, that's the way things worked.

Word counts stress me out, especially because I spend so much of my time working on verse or picture books. It can take me weeks, sometimes, to move past a handful of words. What I've found to work for me is general monthly goals. In the last few months, I've focused on working with my editor on revisions, line edits, and copy edits on one novel; returning revisions to my agent on another; and beginning (then beginning again) research on a third novel.

Have I met every goal? The ones with deadlines, yes. The others? No. My hope was to have finished the research by now. But when I look back over the last few months, I have done a huge amount of work. Writing, I've learned, isn't something I can quantify. Maybe this will change in the years to come, but for now, general monthly goals keep me motivated and free to let the words come.

What's it like to live in the desert?


The desert is my first love, so I've returned to New Mexico utterly biased. When I first moved here in 1980, I'd spent three years in the deserts of Saudi Arabia. This place was lush in comparison. When my husband moved to Albuquerque as a boy, he moved from Michigan, and this place took quite a bit of getting used to. I suppose what you love in part stems from what you've been exposed to. I've happily lived in and loved a variety of places across the country and around the world, but nothing compares to the New Mexico desert. With the low humidity and high elevation, everything is sharp and clear beneath a turquoise sky that reaches from the Sandia and Manzano Mountains in Albuquerque all the way to Mt. Taylor (150 miles to the west and visible from the city). The scrubby juniper bushes smell like my childhood. The chamisa and tumbleweeds add a natural beauty. The dirt smells glorious after the rain. It's heavenly and familiar and lovely. I've been happy everywhere I've lived, but I'm thrilled to be home.

Thanks, all, who participated in this question and answer session.

Image by Wolfgang Staudt via Flickr

My dad manufactures toilet seat protectors. He’s obsessed about the thinness of the paper, how to fold it the right way so when people grab one it’s ready to go and cutting the center out just right so it makes sense from a profit standpoint and makes customers happy. There’s a lot of math that goes into those things just so people can well, you-know disease free. I mean it’s an industry that never existed in the 60s, 70s, 80s or even the 90s. It’s a New Millenium Industry. People make fortunes killing germs that have always been around.

Which leads me to the last time math was my friend. I was somewhere between California and New Mexico and I had to make a break from a, let’s say venue, where the po-po were putting two-and-two together and I discovered I was broke. And as I was on the run and the first place I came across was a Shell station, I bolted myself inside the bathroom. I leaned up against the white tile wall trying to catch my breath, trying to figure out what to do. But it turned out I couldn’t think too well with those crazy bright lights blaring and those seat protectors staring. All I could think to do was rifle through my pockets. Which sounds easy but I had tons of them. It’s the first thing you do on the road–acquire pockets. But that’s another story.

Anyway, I’m rifling and in the lowest pocket of my cargo pants, I find it. A five dollar bill. It was like finding a small bottle of Magie Noir. Money and perfume was all I dreamed about once I’d scored my ride which I had to abandon. So I peeked outside the door and when the coast was clear I walked to the Stop & Go and put my $5 down on a $1 half gallon of water, which was so over-the-top expensive but investing twenty percent of my fortune on water was what I had to do as I had the rest of the desert to cross. And just as a police car pulled into the station, that ex-con behind the counter made my change, counting the bills as he placed them in my hand, “That’s five, six, seven, eight, and nine.”

Related Articles

• Interactive Maths (flatchat.wordpress.com)
• Mathwarehouse.com