The illustrator copies of Beluga Whale, Grizzy Tales, and More Alaska Kidsnacks arrived from Sasquatch! It's ALWAYS fun to see the finished product for the first time, and these babies'll be cooking up a storm at a bookstore near you in March :)
Excited about lots of the images and the Alaska-themed patterns and borders in this one, but I've included two of my favorite page combinations below... plus a little "hidden Mickey" in honor of my dog Max.
Thanks to Alice for the great things to illustrate and to Tegan and Christy and the whole team at Sasquatch/Little Bigfoot for brining it all together!
What a difference a week makes. Just seven days ago I returned from vacation -- a nice little respite from an otherwise busy patch of summer reading visits and the nearly final stretch of a quite overdue book illustration project.
Seven days ago I was refreshed and ready to go. Ready to dive back into my work - to put the final touches on
Beluga Whales and then wade gracefully into my new book with Sterling and the fast-approaching fall high school xc season. Hmph. The best laid plans.
On Wednesday afternoon about 1pm, a wildfire started in the Twisp River area - about 8 miles south of my home near Winthrop, WA. One more fire added to an already boiling-over cauldron of activity here in eastern Washington. While my home and family remained -- and continue to remain --
generally out of harms way, there is, once again, a widespread impact to these events that will resonate for many months to come. In this case too, a tragic loss of three young lives that tends to put everything into even greater perspective.
And so. With some personal stress finally relieved by the generator-powered, evacuation-notice-bedamned completion of
Beluga Whales, Grizzly Tales, my heart goes out to all that are much more in the thick of it than I.
Between summer reading visits, weekly comics, summer sherpa duties, and a little running and hiking in the mountains now and again (although far less than ideal!) I've been cranking (hammering, laboring...) away at a new book project for Sasquatch. Its been a
bit of a struggle, to be perfectly honest, as I am working with some ornate borders and in a sense "matching" the style of a previous book (different illustrator) that was published by the same author 10 years ago.
That being said, I am
finally feeling some satisfaction with the end results and there is
indeed a light at the end of this tunnel. Wrapping things up the end of this week, and then I am going to SLEEP! And take a vacation. And breath...and sleep :)
Oh yes, and just in case you missed the "foodie" aspect of these images,
Beluga Whale, Grizzly Tales, and more Kidsnacks for Alaskan Trails (Alice Bugni, Sasquatch, 2016) is an excellent Alaska-themed collection of snack recipes for kids.
"Bon appetite" and more for sure on this as we get close to publication!
