Last May Dave and I traveled to England to research the book I’m currently working on, titled Strange Creatures: The Story of Walter Rothschild and his Museum (2011, Disney-Hyperion).

Walter Rothschild was the son of Lord Rothschild, banker to Queen Victoria. He was incredibly rich and seemed like a kid who would have had everything, but he struggled with being horribly shy. His father demanded a lot of him — yet Walter was so nervous, he could barely speak. He seems like an unlikely hero, but a hero is just what he was to me. When he was 7 years old he declared to his parents he would build a museum. He set out to collect bugs, butterflies, birds, fish, reptiles, mammals and even plants. By the time he was a late teenager, he was funding expeditions all over the world to collect animals. This was in the late 1800’s when scientists still had not discovered many of the world’s plants and animals. Walter’s father discouraged his dreams and insisted he begin work at the family banking firm, but Walter persevered and opened his museum to the public when he was 24 years old. With the help of two curators and many explorers, Walter created the largest natural history collection ever gathered by one person and furthered our understanding of the world’s animals in immense ways. I’m really enjoying bringing his story to life!

You can see how the visit to the actual museum helped in creating some of the sketches:

I’m getting pretty close to finishing the final art for the illustrations so I wanted to post a sneak peek at a couple of the paintings:

I probably should have known that giving a talk on Halloween was asking for trouble. But I didn’t expect the lights and power to go off halfway through my talk at the Keene State Children’s lit conference.  That was a new experience. Standing in front of 550 people, everything was going terrifically for the first 20 minutes, then BLACK! It turned out a squirrel had gotten into a transformer and blew all the electricity throughout the campus. Jane Yolen stepped up like a seasoned conference trooper and suggested we break up into small groups in different areas of the auditorium, so that the attendees could speak personally with each of the presenters (Lois Lowry, Katherine Paterson, me, and this year’s Caldecott winner, New Hampshire artist Beth Krommes.) That turned nightmare into a fun experience for all. Eventually a battery powered mic was located and Jane started her talk since I relied on power point to show visuals. After Jane, the power came back. Ah. I finished my hour-long talk. Surprisingly, it all came together seamlessly!

Time has flown by and I’m sorry to be behind on my blog entries. I’m half way through final art of my next book, which is always consuming. And the weather up here in New England has been exceptional this fall, so when not up to my ears in drawings and paintings, I crave to be outside, soaking up the last of the fall sun. This year we had a special treat, savoring autumn’s beauty with my editor Namrata and her husband Quinn. They came up from the city and we reveled in everything fitting for the season — hikes in fall color, hot apple cider and books by the fire, guitar and banjo music with friends, toasted S’mores, and even pumpkin carving! What fun we had with them. We even fit a little time for work over a book.

Nami and me by the river — my favorite spot to think about books and ideas.

Quinn is a talented musician, but somewhat unschooled at traditional New England pumpkin carving. He chose to create with a jigsaw.

It’s starting to feel more like winter these days. And as the days get colder, the wildlife comes in closer to select goodies from the yard.

Next summer I’ll be teaching a three day field seminar at Yellowstone National Park! I’m so excited!! Not only do I get to go back to a place I love, but I’ll get to share a subject I’m passionate about — seeing nature through the eyes of an artist. The seminar will combine exploration of the park  with on-location watercolor painting as we follow in the footsteps of Thomas Moran, William Jackson, Ferdinand Hayden and the 1871 Hayden expedition. The workshop is offered through the non-profit Yellowstone Association Institute. Just staying at the Lamar Buffalo Ranch should be a treat, but exploring and sharing with others the sights of Yellowstone during the summer will be a blast!

Here’s the description of my field seminar:

Explore Yellowstone through the eyes of an artist. Thomas Moran’s field sketches from the 1871 Hayden Expedition played a vital role in the preservation of the park. View the paintings of Moran and other early explorers at the Yellowstone Heritage and Research Center, and follow in their footsteps as you discover the pleasure of plein-air (open air) painting with watercolors. Through daily painting excursions, nightly lectures, and painting demonstrations, you’ll explore and learn the art history of Yellowstone. Enjoy three days of on-location painting that includes demonstrations, critiques and encouragement from your artist instructor. You may even get the opportunity to paint some of the same locations made famous by Moran.

If you’re interested in attending, please contact the Yellowstone Association Institute. All levels of painters are welcome!

Field Seminar: Moran Watercolor, August 10-13, 2010

Location: Lamar Buffalo Ranch, Yellowstone National Park

And here’s a video clip from the Yellowstone Association.

Written by Dave.

We just heard some good news for Pennies for Elephants! It’s one of the winners of the 2009 New Hampshire Literary Awards. Here is the complete list of the award winners:

• Outstanding Work of Children’s Literature: Lita Judge, Pennies for Elephants and Joseph Monninger, Hippie Chick
• Outstanding Book of Fiction: James Patrick Kelly, The Wreck of the Godspeed
• Outstanding Book of Nonfiction: Mimi Schwartz, Good Neighbors, Bad Times
• The Jane Kenyon Award for Outstanding Book of Poetry: Mimi White, The Last Island
• Donald M. Murray Outstanding Journalism Award: John Walters, Collection of articles from Kearsarge Magazine and Upper Valley Life
• Lifetime Achievement Award: David Carroll

Written by Dave.
Back in the 1960s and 70s Lita’s grandmother, Fran Hamerstrom, led a long term project on the captive breeding of golden eagles. The work produced the birth of Ithaca, the world’s first living eagle resulting from artificial insemination. Sadly, we just heard that Ithaca died several days ago at the age of 37. Here are a few pictures and a note from Jim Grier, the biologist who successfully hatched and raised Ithaca. Ithaca’s parents were Fran’s eagles, Chrys and Grendel.

Fran holding Ithaca, Jim Grier holding Ithaca’s parents — Chrys is on his right hand, Grendel is on the left hand (photo from Jim Grier).

Jim Grier flying Ithaca (photo from Jim Grier).

Fran with Chrys. The chick here is a surrogate redtail hawk (Hamerstrom photo).

Fran feeding a Golden Eagle (Hamerstrom photo).

ITHACA the Golden Eagle (1972-2009) (by Jim Grier)

Ithaca was hatched 13 May 1972 at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. He was named after the town of Ithaca, a Greek name which, according to a local librarian who I consulted at the time,  means “a rugged place suitable only for pasturing goats.” He had to be euthanized 29 September 2009 because of complications resulting from West Nile Virus.

It is sad that he encountered and suffered from the virus, that we lost him, and that he died so young (only 37 years old — he otherwise probably would have lived many more years and I expected that he would outlive me). As a biologist, however, I’m familiar with life (and death) and understand that it’s all in the nature of biology.

Ithaca resulted from an extracurricular project I conducted on captive breeding of eagles. (My primary, dissertation research at Cornell was on avian thermal regulation and physiology.) He was the second of three chicks that hatched in the project. The other two died prematurely. Ithaca [also almost died at the same time], but I discovered the problem in time while he was still alive and managed to rehabilitate him as a young chick. Cornell University produced a news release (click here) and the story was widely reported in the news at the time. National Wildlife magazine published an article on the work in the 1972 Oct-Nov issue, pages 44-45. The story was included in the latest editions of a book by Fran Hamerstrom, “An Eagle to the Sky” (Iowa State Univ Press, out of print). (Fran owned the two adult golden eagles that were Ithaca’s parents, see photo.)

Here is part of Lita’s reply to Jim: “It feels a little strange, kind of like loosing a relative you haven’t seen for a long time, but who at one time was a big presence of your life. Ithaca was born not long after me, and growing up, I knew his birth was far more important to my grandmother than her first grandchild was — something I always accepted since Fran and you had worked so hard. I really appreciate you letting me know.”

Written by Dave

Tomorrow, nominations for the 2009 Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards open up and will remain open until October 15th.

Be sure to stop by the Cybils site and nominate your favorite books published between last year’s contest and this year’s in the following genres:

• Fiction Picture Books
• Middle Grade Fiction
• Young Adult Fiction
• Nonfiction Picture Books
• Middle Grade/Young Adult Nonfiction
• Science Fiction and Fantasy
• Poetry
• Graphic Novels
• Easy Readers and Short Chapter Books

Last year I was on the Nonfiction picture book panel, and this year I’m a round 2 judge in the Middle Grade/Young Adult Nonfiction category.

Here are the panelists and judges in that category:
Panel Organizer: Susan Thomsen, Chicken Spaghetti

Panelists (Round I Judges):
Alicia Blowers, The LibrariYAn
Sarah Rettger, Archimedes Forgets
Jennie Rothschild, Biblio File
Jill Tullo, The Well-Read Child
Erin Walker, Erin Explores YA

Round II Judges:
Wendy Burton, Six Boxes of Books
Jennifer Donovan, 5 Minutes for Books
Dave Judge, Adventures at Wilder Farm
Colleen Mondor, Chasing Ray
Lisa L. Owens, L.L. Owens-Children’s Writing Blog

We just heard that Lita’s next release, Born to Be Giants: How Baby Dinosaurs Grew to Rule the World, is a 2010 Junior Library Guild selection! The book is on the Roaring Brook/Flash Point spring 2010 list.

Yellowstone Moran is the current (October) Junior Library Guild selection in the Elementary Biography category.

One Thousand Tracings has been selected by Jessica Doyle, the first lady of Wisconsin, (and an advisory committee) as a December 2009 primary pick for Read On Wisconsin! The other picks for December include: Preschool: Old Bear by Kevin Henkes, Intermediate: The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron, Middle School: How To Steal a Dog By Barbara O’Connor, High School: Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

And the board of the Keene Children’s Literature Festival has picked an image from Pennies for Elephants to be on the 2010 Festival Poster!

Lita is speaking at the 2009 festival (October 31st) along with Beth Krommes, Lois Lowry, Katherine Paterson and Jane Yolen.

Yellowstone Moran was a really exciting book for me to create. My parents are wildlife photographers and I grew up spending long hours sitting still in wildlife blinds, waiting for animals to show up. It was often cold, bum-numbing, and with mosquitoes so thick it could drive a person mad. We had to sit very quietly while we watched. Not having a camera myself, I often carried a sketchbook and wrote and drew about the animals we saw.

As I grew older I dreamed of being an artist explorer, like Thomas Moran, exploring the wilderness and painting it. Eventually I became a landscape painter, toting a French easel and a backpack full of canvases as I traveled to places to paint. The experiences made me respect what Moran had set out to do with his art even more- preserve the natural beauty of the land by painting it and convincing others it should be protected. I knew I wanted to write his story, how he played a vital role in the creation of our first national park.

Creating the art for this book was a challenge. How to capture spouting geysers, huge landscapes, and men and horses climbing over fallen timber. I had never painted horses before this book. But I found a rancher kind enough to take me out on horseback so we could explore land Moran had traveled. Both the rancher and my husband, Dave posed as models in the book.

My favorite part creating the illustrations for the book was capturing the natural beauty of the land. I drew form the experience I had as a landscape painter. Though I now use watercolors instead of oils, the principles are the same, and it was a joy to pull out the field easel again and paint on location throughout the Yellowstone.

Here are a few of the paintings I did before I created children’s book, when when my focus as an artist was to paint on location. I often combined my painting travels with trips to Europe to study art in museums. The experiences I gained painting from life, on location were vital to my creating this book.

Beugency, France

Venice

Thanksgiving in New Hampshire

The long awaited release date of Yellowstone Moran is almost here! So just in time for the book’s release (this Thursday, September 3rd) we just put the finishing touches on our mini website for Yellowstone Moran.

We’re especially excited to feature (Lita’s parents) Dale and Elva Paulson’s beautiful wildlife photography. They’re frequent visitors to Yellowstone and over the years they’ve taken some fantastic photographs. The pictures are special because of the animal behavior they capture — a bear stretching after a long winter hibernation, or cubs playing in a tree. These photographs include pictures of  wolves, bison, elk, fox, bears, raven, cranes, and more.

We also have pictures of some of the items that were on the 1871 Hayden expedition. These are on display at the Albright Visitor Center at Mammoth Hot Springs which we visited last summer.

And we’ve also got some great photographs that Lita took of the geysers and hot springs at Yellowstone.

There’s a timeline that has details of the three important expeditions into the Yellowstone Region between 1869 and 1871. And for students who want to get started with a nature journal, Lita put together a fantastic guide that can be downloaded from the activities section of the website.

If you get a chance, please take a look.

Last week we traveled down to the Boston area so Lita could tape an interview on The Secret Life of Animals with Vicki Croke. The show will be airing on Sunday August 2nd on NECN (New England Cable News) at 11:30am and 6:30pm. Vicki has a couple of Irish Wolfhounds that roam the set, and last week a 3rd Wolfhound joined, along with a Dachshund and one other dog. What fun!

They talked about Pennies for Elephants and introduced Yellowstone Moran. It was chaos when the taping was over — they cut it close — 2 minutes before the live news at noon was to start, in the same studio we were in! The news anchor lady and a bunch of the crew came storming in and we all grabbed dogs and dog treats and kids and food bowls and whatever we could carry and quickly got out of the studio as the anchor lady sat down in her pink pants suit. And the crew were screaming about chroma screens, and the TV cameras on robotic stands were whizzing around with minds of their own. When we got out in the hallway there was a big TV set up and suddenly the anchor lady was on and she was cool as could be. And we thought we could see some dog hair floating in the background, behind her.

Vicki is the author of several books including The Lady and the Panda (I think this is an older cover):

Also (in other news), there was a nice feature about Lita, Pennies for Elephants and Yellowstone Moran on the Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast blog this Sunday. And last week we saw a wonderful Pennies for Elephants review from Pam Coughlan (aka Mother Reader) on PBS Booklights.

I just got back from ALA, and it was fantastic! It was not only my first time at ALA, but an extra special year since our friend and neighbor, Beth Krommes received the Caldecott medal for her book The House in the Night.

My conference began with my participation in the panel discussion — Inspiring Young Citizens: The Library as a Forum for Engagement. It was a great morning. We’re thankful to all those who attended and contributed to the discussion. I was honored to speak with my fellow panel members: authors Anne Sibley O’Brien and Phillip Hoose, librarian, Kelley McDaniel and children’s book advocate, Kirsten Cappy . Please refer to this link if you’d like to learn more about the discussion.

I then zipped over to the Penguin/Viking booth to sign the first F&G copies of my book Yellowstone Moran!

How exciting to have this book soon to be released (September). I’ve literally been working on this idea since I was 4 years old, when I first saw and fell in love with Yellowstone National Park. Over the years, I returned dozens and dozens of times, photographing wildlife with my parents and plein-air painting when I was a landscape painter. All together, I’ve spent over a year’s worth of nights camping and exploring the region, so the release of this book is an extra special moment for me.

My conference continued with a signing at the Disney-Hyperion booth, celebrating the fact that Pennies for Elephants was just released a few weeks ago. Then I rushed back to the hotel to change for the Caldecott banquet. What a thrill to hear Beth accept her award, as well as Neil Gaiman and Ashley Bryan!

I’m savoring the experience now and for the next couple of days before heading out again, this time to the MD/DE/VW SCBWI conference at McDaniel College, where I’ll be speaking with my editor of One Thousand Tracings and Pennies for Elephants, Namrata Tripathi. It’s been a busy summer, and I apologize for not writing more “process” entries lately. But quiet days at the easel will soon return and I’ll share work on the current book!

Lita is off to Chicago tomorrow for an event filled Sunday at the ALA annual summer conference. First, she’s thrilled that Disney-Hyperion invited her, Kadir Nelson and E. Lockhart to the Caldecott/Newbery Banquet on Sunday night! It’ll be Lita’s first time at ALA and first time at the banquet. Very exciting!

But before that, she’s got a full Sunday of events. Here’s her schedule — in the morning she’s participating in the following program with authors Anne Sibley O’Brien, and Phillip Hoose, librarian, Kelley McDaniel and children’s book advocate, Kirsten Cappy (click on the picture for a pdf of the handout):

Inspiring Young Citizens:
The Library as a Forum for Engagement

Sunday, 7/12/09
10:30 am - 12:00 pm
ALA Annual Conference
McCormick Place West, W-190B
Chicago, IL

How do we excite young readers with possibilities for remaking their world without burdening them with responsibility beyond their years? Authors Lita Judge, Anne Sibley O’Brien, and Phillip Hoose, librarian, Kelley McDaniel and children’s book advocate, Kirsten Cappy will share books, strategies, and book-specific educational curriculum for engaging young people in age-appropriate social issues and actions. Applications will focus on historical figures and movements that inspire contemporary youth.

Then Book signings in the afternoon:

Lita Judge Signing,
Pennies for Elephants and One Thousand Tracings
Sunday, 7/12 from 2:30 - 3:30 PM
Disney-Hyperion, Booth #2247

Yellowstone Moran: Painting the American West
Sunday, 7/12 from 1:30 – 2:00 PM
Penguin, Booth #2120/2122

So if you’re at ALA I hope you get a chance to connect!

We’re lucky, here in Peterborough, to have the thriving Macdowell Colony. Writers, artists, composers, photographers, filmmakers and sculptors come to Peterborough to live in one of the 32 studios at the retreat. Once accepted, an artist can stay for as little as a couple of weeks, or as long as a couple of months. When they arrive, they find a kind of isolation — there’s no phone, no internet, no fax, and no family. It’s just a cabin in the woods.

(Alexander Studio at Macdowell Colony. Photo credit: Victoria Sambunaris)

And there’s a famous tradition: every day your picnic basket lunch is silently delivered to the doorstep of your cabin.

( Photo credit: Victoria Sambunaris)

In the history of the colony there have been over 6000 supported artists in residence, and in 2007, the colony celebrated its centennial with a yearlong celebration.

About once a month the Macdowell Colony sponsors a current resident at a downtown event. And this month it was Brian Selznick! Brian gave a very visual and entertaining talk and covered some of our favorite books, including The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins, Walt Whitman and, of course, The Invention of Hugo Cabret.

It was great to see a huge turnout and variety of age groups — very young, medium young, young and old. As a finale he showed the movie A Trip to the Moon, by Georges Méliès, and he provided the words while a cellist from the colony (I missed her name)  performed accompanying music. It was quite funny, and fantastic!

He also talked about what he’s working on while he’s at the Colony (I’ll repeat here what was in the announcement for the talk):

Familiar now with the rewards of risk-taking on the heels of Hugo’s success, Selznick remains interested in seeing what else he can do with books. “I like taking what I’ve learned and doing something new with it.” His current novel-in-progress, Wonderstruck, is a fitting example: Though it will feature visuals in a prominent and inventive way (much like Hugo), it will also weave together two separate stories that take place in two different time frames. “One story, which takes place in the 1920s, will be told entirely in pictures,” reveals Selznick, who is hesitant to give away too much about the book’s plot. “The other, from the 1970s, will be told with words.” Wonderstruck is scheduled to be released in 2011.

Lita and I just returned from England and jumped back into the world with last week’s release of Pennies for Elephants!

We’ve seen a few nice reviews so far in the local paper, at The Miss Rumphius Effect, and in the Concord Monitor.

But let’s go back to England for a moment. We pulled the plan together quickly after Lita got the green light on a new book. The book is about Walter Rothschild, a member of the famous banking family, who as a 7 year old announced to his parents that he was going to build a museum. He was born a few years after Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and, like Darwin, he collected bugs, butterflies, birds, fish, reptiles, plants, live animals and animal specimens. He eventually did work for the family bank, but he also followed his dream of opening his museum, and with the help of two curators and many explorers, Walter created the largest natural history collection ever gathered by one person. It became one of the most important collections for proving many of Darwin’s theories, and is still used extensively today for DNA studies.

The trip was part research, part vacation. We started our England trip at Kew Gardens to get some visual reference of strange plants and Victorian greenhouses.

Then we spent a few days at the Walter Rothschild’s Tring Museum, which is now part of the British Natural History Museum.

And finally we spent seven beautiful days up in the Lake district where we hiked about 7-10 miles every day, enjoyed afternoon teas, and visited Beatrix Potter’s Hill Top Farm, and the Beatrix Potter gallery in Hawkshead. The picture below is from a glorious hike above the Borrowdale Valley. I’m not sure there’s ever been such perfect weather in northwest England!

Lita has a busy summer schedule. In July we’re hoping to get down to Manhattan, then she’ll be at ALA in Chicago, then an SCBWI conference near Baltimore. And we’ve got a bunch of other events in the works for the summer! We’re ready for another vacation…

Lita just finished her last couple of classroom visits for this school year and we’re heading to England tomorrow! I was unloading pictures off the digital camera and found these images from our November 2003 trip to England.

That trip was to the Cotswolds and then up to North Yorkshire. We had a lot of rain but also some beautiful, moody weather. We were also in England about 18 months ago. I remember lots of miles of hiking (I think we did 100 miles in 10 days) and also lots of scones and clotted cream on that trip! This time we’ll be near London for a few days of research for a book, and then we head up to the Lake District.

When we get back, Pennies for Elephants will be released! Lita’s doing a talk and book signing event at our local Peterborough Toadstool Bookshop on June 13th at 2pm, so if you’re in the area, please come — we’ll bring some pictures of England too!

We just put the finishing touches on a mini website for Pennies for Elephants.

One of the main characters in the story is a little newsboy so we’ve put together some great Lewis Hine photographs of newsboys (and newsgirls). Luckily these images are all in the public domain and available through Flickr — really amazing photographs.

The research section includes several pages of headlines and pictures from the Boston Post Newspaper. Pennies for Elephants is based on true events that occurred in 1914. The Boston Post covered the story from March to June, with several articles and pictures every day. We captured these images (back in 2007 when Lita was researching the story) by taking digital pictures of the screen of the microfilm reader — they look better than I expected!

And we’ve included some fun old pictures of Fenway Park and the Boston Red Sox in 1912. The guy on the top-left is Smoky Joe Wood who won 34 games for Boston in 1912, and had 3 wins in the World Series (which Boston won against the old New York Giants).

We’re expecting the first shipment of Pennies for Elephants to arrive this week at the New Hampshire Educational Media Association Conference (NHEMA) where Lita is giving the luncheon keynote on Friday.

One Thousand Tracings has been added to several 2009-2010 State Reading Award lists including the Prairie Pasque Award in South Dakota, the William Allen White Children’s Book Award in Kansas, and the Misouri Show Me Readers Award. It was also on the list for the 2008-2009 North Carolina Children’s Book Award (NCCBA).

Most of these are lists of about 10-12 books—I believe all of these are voted on by school kids from 1st to 5th grades (varies by award). It’s great that so many kids will be reading Tracings! I added some links to the award logos above for more information on each of these. It’s really an amazing honor for Lita and Tracings to be included on such fantastic lists of books! Thanks Missouri, North Carolina, South Dakota and Kansas!

Lita just returned from a fantastic two day school visit in Danville, NH where she received a nice write-up in the local paper. Just last week we finished her new 2009-2010 School Visit Packet. It has all the information for planning the perfect school visit!

Lita has added three new talks to her school visit program:

• Pennies for Elephants—Connecting students to local news by becoming a part of it
• Digging Deep to Find Interesting Sources for Historical Stories
• Yellowstone Moran—Journaling and Sketching

And she will continue to offer these three talks:

• Path to becoming an author and illustrator
• The Story Behind One Thousand Tracings
• Daydreams, Digs and Dinosaurs!

For all of the new information, including descriptions of all the presentations and how to tailor them to meet the needs of diverse groups, download and print the school visit packet here or check out the School Visits section at LitaJudge.com.

We got the news the same day my lovely editor, Kendra, sent me the first F&Gs! This is a story I’ve wanted to do since I was 4 years old so I’m really excited to know that JLG liked the book. Yellowstone Moran will be a September 2009 release with Viking.

Our 175 year old Peterborough Town Library had a fun event a few days ago to celebrate Beth Krommes, the 2009 Randolph Caldecott Medal winner. Beth is a good friend of ours and lives in Peterborough, just down the road from us. She and Lita usually drive together to our two annual southern NH children’s book events: The Keene Children Literature Festival and the SCBWI Nashua Conference. (This year they’re both featured speakers at the Keene Festival.)

The House in the Night is such a beautiful book—here’s our new copy with the Caldecott sticker:

I spent most of the night talking with Beth’s husband, Dave, about software and websites and blogs. Dave designed Beth’s new site last summer.

We’re looking forward to Beth’s ALA speech—I’ve heard it may have some reference to the ice storm and 10 day power outage we experienced in Peterborough in December. Lita will be at the ALA conference this summer …

but we’re not sure if she’ll be able to attend the awards ceremony.

We recently heard that an organization called Wisconsin Braille has transcribed One Thousand Tracings and made it available for free to Wisconsin School Libraries. This sounds like a fantastic program and we’re honored that Tracings was included.

Here’s some information from their website:

Once again, Wisconsin Braille, Inc. is pleased to offer a selection of braille books for your school library because of grant money awarded us. As in the past, the committee has chosen books that are not already brailled. We searched the on-line catalog in our local library, as well as other sources, to locate recognized books of excellence.

Wisconsin Braille Inc.’s Special Book Project was started in 1998 with the production of one braille book offered at no cost to school libraries in Wisconsin. In co-ordination with teachers of the visually impaired and school librarians across the state, the Special Book Committee solicits possible titles for transcription. The books selected for transcription represent a wide range of reading levels, fiction and non-fiction material, and poetry.

Every effort is made to select books that are not already available in braille. In collaboration with the Oshkosh State Correctional Institution (OSCI), book selections are transcribed by transcribers certified by the Library of Congress/National Library Service (NLS) under the direction of the coordinator of the OSCI Braille Program. The books are available in hard-copy or on disc.

We’ve been working on this Pennies for Elephants video trailer over the past few days — I think it’s ready to premiere.

We included some of the original newspaper pictures from the Boston Post in 1914 so you can see that the characters in the story are visually based on real people. Lita is giving a presentation this Friday at the Wisconsin State Reading Association (WSRA) Conference in Milwaukee and will be discussing the visual research she does to create characters for her stories. She gave a similar talk last April at the Nashua SCBWI conference but this new talk is really expanded based on all the work she’s done recently for Pennies for Elephants and Yellowstone Moran.

Anyway, let us know what you think of the video!

To get ready for Lita’s new book, Pennies for Elephants (out in a June’09), we just put the finishing touches on our new website design and uploaded it last night. We hope you’ll take a look.

There are lot’s of new images of illustrations and sketches, information about books, school visits, and upcoming appearances. Lita and I had lots of fun designing new banners for all the pages. (I think they look fantastic!)

We’re already planning lots of new things to put on the site including activities for Pennies for Elephants, video trailers for Pennies and for Yellowstone Moran (out in September’09), and some images from the current work in progress. Anyway, please check out the site!

I am still on cloud nine after my school visit at Gilbert H Hood in Derry, NH! Thank you to all the students, teachers and especially Kathy Lane, for welcoming me to their school and making it such an incredible day. Thank you also for the wonderful letters on foot tracings that several students gave me. I loved our lunchtime conversation about writing and am still thinking about many of the questions and comments that were posed during that time. I’ve been working so hard on my current book, and a day with motivated, bright students really got me reenergized about writing and illustrating.