Our beautiful WoodlandNutcracker book, which was chosen as The Children's Picture Book of the year in 1999 by the Canadian Book Review Annual, was orphaned earlier this year when the publisher went out of business. We are fortunate to have obtained the remaining books from the publisher's warehouse, boxes of mint-new copies full of Christmas magic and adventure.
As with the earlier Woodland Christmas, the story was inspired by many camping trips and cottage visits in Canada's boreal forest, "far away from highways and city lights", where one can travel for days and not meet another human being or even a camera-shy bear. In a story that parallels the Nutcracker ballet, Clara is given a wonderful carved Nutcracker Bear who transforms into the dashing Nutcracker Prince. After settling a midnight battle with the field mice with a Christmas Eve truce, giving the hungry mice food for their families, Clara and Nutcracker fly away to the Ice Palace of the Great Bear, Ursa Major.
At the Great Bear's palace an international cast of bears performs for Clara - juggling pandas and trapeze artist koalas and more, plus some of her dearest woodland friends. I have made two posters from the illustrations, grizzly bear Mother Ginger with her junior hockey team,
and the polar bear Yuk Tuk dancing to the strains of the Russian Dance, pictured below. For the purposes of the poster I have placed a copy of the book in her gracefully extended paw!
new posts in all blogs
By: Frances Tyrrell,
on 10/30/2011
Blog: Fairy Lanterns (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: book illustration, Bears, Woodland Christmas, Woodland Nutcracker, St. Matthew's House, Add a tag
Display Comments
Add a Comment
Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: St. Matthews House, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 1 - 1 of 1
By: Frances Tyrrell,
on 10/30/2011
Blog: Fairy Lanterns (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: book illustration, Bears, Woodland Christmas, Woodland Nutcracker, St. Matthew's House, Add a tag
It is always so sad when a publisher goes out of business, especially when they published such quality works. Please let me know when your book hits your Etsy shop and please reserve one for me to add to my Frances Tyrrell collection.
Thanks for your recent comments on my blog, of course we would love to invite you over for tea one day if you have the time.
Thank you Valerie, I would come to tea with you anytime!
The upside of this publisher's closure is that the rights to two of my books have been fully returned to me, so I can look at self-publishing and e-book options, as well as old-fashioned hand-selling.