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“Hot Dogging”

Well the only thing about Boswell that’s hot dogging is his tubular physique. He’s much more familiar with the snow plow than any sort of shredding.

Why not schuss on over here to check out my fellow SkADaMoers at work.

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Some small paintings I created for a Memory-style card game that appeared in this past January's issue of Spider magazine. Each one is available for purchase in my Etsy shop:

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Mx showed this to me last night and I knew I had to see this documentary. So, I wanted to share it with you. Have a great weekend!

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Here's another ski school sketch...

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Just found this old sketch from a few years ago.

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I've been on a bit of a book binge lately (alliteration!), sitting on the floor and tearing through all of my bottom shelfers, the big clunkers picked up at library book sales. A lot of these revolve around my favorite outdoor activity, skiing. (By the way, I'll have to do a post on my old ski collection at some point, although half of it is in a shed back east right now. Lots of 200+cm boards. Very nice.) Anyway, I'm always on the look out for some good ski books, especially anything illustrated.

Skiing was really picking up steam in the 1940s and 1950s with ski areas popping up anywhere anyone had a chain saw for clearing trails and an old diesel engine to power a rope tow. So you start to see a lot of fiction popping up at this time that centers around the sport. Especially children's novels. Here are a couple of great examples. The first one, The Ski Patrol, by Roy J. Snell was published in 1940 by Goldsmith Publishing and is about a bunch of American kids on a ski trip in Finland where they end up hunting bears and Nazis. "Gee-wiz, what did we get ourselves into?" Here's the cover.

Another good one from a decade later is Avalanche Patrol, written by Montgomery M. Atwater and published by The Junior Literary Guild and Random House. The opening page says it all:

"Well, hotshot, how does this sound to you? A paid ski vacation at Snowhole?"
The question fired at Brad Davis casually and without warning made the young forester blink. He had been yanked out of his class, whisked from college to Forest Service headquarters, and now this from his uncle.
"Ski vacation... Snowhole."

The name of the area doesn't inspire a lot of confidence, but the title page is classic.

Another great one sitting on my shelf is a little coffee table book, Learn to Ski, illustrated by R. Osborn in 1942. Couldn't find the publisher. It's mostly sketches of life in the lodge and on the train into the mountains. There's also a nice series of a skier praying and then wiping out. Good stuff.

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And more bios!

Writing biographies for children has to be difficult. You need to faithfully tell of someone's life, while still being mindful of possible content issues. Then, there are the issues of writing nonfiction for children in general-- being mindful of your audience without talking down to them. The standard bearer for children's biographies is the wonderful Newbery winner, Lincoln by Russell Freedman.

Some of these books hit the mark, and some don't-- all the subjects are people I hadn't previously read a biography of.

First up, Winston Churchill: Soldier, Statesman, Artist> by John B. Severance.

This was a good introduction to a complex man who lived through, and led England through, a very complex time. Unfortunately, a lot of these complexities are glossed over with gross understatements such as, "Churchill loved cigars and brandy" (p65) the only mention of his love of alcohol. A lot of these more fascinating aspects aren't explored in ways I feel they could have been.

Still, I learned some fun things-- Churchill's mom was American (gasp!) and, when he was young, he was quite the looker.

The book contains lots of wonderful photographs to support the text and a great section at the end of some of Churchill's most memorable quotations.

I also must mention because it is my blog, and my pet peeve, that this book uses the term "Britishers" instead of my preferred "Britons" or "the British".

There Ain't Nobody That Can Sing Like Me: The Life of Woody Guthrie by Annie Neimark

This book is a great example of how to write a biography for children of someone who's life content might not be suitable for younger readers. Blackballing! Multiple Wives! Adultery! Alcoholism! Mental Illness! all dealt with in a sensitive manner without whitewashing the facts.

A compassionate and honest biography of a troubled man that changed America. It also has a great section of lyrics and uses Guthrie's lyrics well to introduce each chapter.

Fascinating and well done.

The Brothers Grimm: Two Lives, One Legacy by Donald R. Hettinga

This is another well done book, this time about the Brothers Grimm and how they gathered the German folktales we now attribute to them. This book did two things exceptionally well-- it used illustrations to complement the text, which is hard when writing about a time period before the camera. It also used language to its advantage-- the beginning, especially, read like a fairy tale.

It also well-explained a very confusing time in European history. Their corner of Western Germany continually changed hands between the French and Germans. This book discussed the confusion, the realities of living in a nineteenth century war zone, as well as the political tensions of the time very well and in a very accessible manner.

Also! Did you know that Grimm's law, which is really a big part of comparative linguistics was named after Jakob Grimm of the Brothers Grimm? Because I sure didn't!

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