Holiday Herald - The Art of Christmas at My House

     Of all the arts and crafts projects I have ever created, I think my Advent banner is the one of which I am most proud. During a particularly difficult December about 33 years ago, I made this banner from scraps of felt and bits of craft materials I found in my sewing basket. Finances were tight that year, and I made do with what I could find. The banner, itself was ready on the first day of December, but many nights I stayed up late piecing together the ornament for my son to put on the tree the following morning. A few were patterned after pictures I found in magazines or books, but most were works of heart.
     The Advent banner has hung in my homes in four states, and traveled with my son and me when ever we went "...over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house." It is a constant in my Christmases, whether a child or a spouse shares the trimming of the tree each year. I was deeply touched when my husband's niece called to ask for pictures of it, as she wanted to recreate it for her niece and nephew.

Holly, Jolly Dragon

      It's fun to choose the ornament each day from the bright red basket with it's cheery holiday bow. Some have special significance. The sleigh with a gift in it always goes up on my son's birthday, which falls on St. Nicholas Day. I usually put the wreath ornament up the same day I put the evergreen wreaths on our doors. The snowflake is added the day of the first December snowfall, and the tree on the day we put up our tree. Santa arrives on the tree on December 24th, and the star goes atop the tree on Christmas morning. So, in a way, the banner is the diary of our Christmas preparations.
     We have a drum for the drummer boy, a lollypop, a candy cane, a gingerbread boy and a Christmas mouse. More spiritual symbols include an angel,  one of the abiding shepherd's sheep, a candle, a sprig of holly and an evergreen wreath. Santa, a toy train, a teddy bear
and the Cat-in-the-Hat's hat are joined by dinosaurs,
a trumpet and a bell.
                                                                           For the crafters among you, the ornaments are
stuck to the tree with Velcro (c) dots. Before it is fully dressed, the dots are white balls on the tree. They are interspersed with shiny snowflakes sewn to the tree. Each ornament is slightly stuffed with batting to give is a 3-D look.

Christmasaurus

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

      Each ornament is about 2 inches high. Some have googelly eyes. Some include bits of ribbon or bells. Each is hand stitched with love and stuck together with craft glue and affection. This is a treasure that I hope will become an heirloom for future generations.

Stuffed Teddy

So in the days and weeks ahead, as we continue to dress the house for the holidays, write Christmas cards and letters, listen to hymns and Christmas songs, and read beside the fire, the banner, created for my little boy, will be a constant reminder that the days are drawing nearer to the special
day when we received that most
special gift: Jesus, the Christ Child.

As I wait til after the holidays to hear more from my publisher about my book proposal (I got another encouraging email this week) I plan to work on another story which I think I will self-publish. I will get back to work on my illustrations and, of course, create a Christmas letter for my husband and me to send to family and friends. I will also create some new Christmas decor, and bake dozens of cookies and batches of granola. The Longest Night is closing in on us, and I will endeavor to fill these short days with creativity and the spirit of the season.







   

Stories are Calling to Me...

Sometimes, it's nice to just let the wind blow your creative spirit where it will. As I wait to hear details from the publisher, I continue to stir up new stories in my mind. This morning's email in-box contained a message from Liz, who just may become one of my new best friends. She was writing to let me know she has read my text and seen my illustrations and is moving the process on. "It's a lovely story with beautiful illustrations!" She tells me the team will be reviewing my book proposal and she will keep me posted. Can you hear me smiling????? I signed my return email to her, "Hopeful Author-in Waiting." Keep your fingers crossed for me, please.

 This last weekend was a picture-book-perfect weekend in Vermont. We drove up Friday for the annual barn dance at Olivia's Crouton Kitchen. If you don't know about Olivia's Croutons, check them out on line. They are the yummiest, and Francie, Olivia's mom, has come up with new gluten-free versions of croutons, crackers and stuffing mix too. Francie is our niece and we LOVE going up to the farm she and David live and work on. The traditional croutons are made in the barn at the farm, and each year, on Columbus Day Weekend, they hold a barn dance for family, friends and neighbors. We figure there were over 200 folks there this year. Great food, great fellowship and a wonderful time to be in Vermont. The weather was magnificent and you could have fooled me that the foliage was past peak!


Francie and David's farm reminds me SO much of one of the books I most loved reading to my son: Our Animal Friends at Maple Hill Farm, by Alice and Martin Provensen. After my boy was grown up, I spent years looking for a hardcover copy of this (before Google made such searches simple). All day on Saturday, as we were working to get everything ready for the barn dance, I kept glimpsing perfect images for a picture book, and overlaying them with illustrations from this classic in my mind. The dogs, the chickens, the horses, the fall colors and pumpkins and sunflowers. I am SO ready to sit down and write the story that Francie gave me the title for. I won't tell you any more about it, except to say that this is the title character.

My camera was busy clicking all day and well into the evening. As we gadded about purchasing pumpkins and searching for sunflowers, collecting chrysanthemums, getting gourds and investing cash in Indian corn, I was collating colors, tracking text , creating context and conflict and beginning the book in my brain. SO much fun!!

Here are a few images which one day you may see in illustration form in my new classic. (Oh let me dream!!! I KNOW I'm so far ahead of myself, but if I can dream it, I can do it! Right?)

Welcome to the Barn Dance

We never did find mums, so I arranged corn stalks, sunflowers, a bit of sumac and the pumpkins. Great nieces and nephews spent the morning carving  jack-o-lanterns that lined the path to the barn doors. A pot of petunias from the patio lent a bit more color and, "Viola!" Martha Stewart couldn't have done better.

The Provensens wrote about each animal on their farm. We had chickens and roosters wandering at will. Amazingly none of the five dogs (three visiting pooches including our Mugo, and Rufus and Maggie who live on the farm) chased the little feather balls, but the great nieces and nephews found a stash of eggs in the hayloft. The two horses quietly watched the action, between nibbles of grass and handfuls of hay. Pigeons were displaced from their perches in the upper barn and we swept and cleaned and disinfected places where food and folks would be congregating. Fairy lights were lit in the barn and while the musicians got their equipment set up, and company began to arrive with pans of pork and casseroles of coleslaw, containers of cookies and plates of pies, we set out the spiral hams, the rolls and mustard.                                                     

Pastoral Pasture

As the long day of preparation drew to a close, the evening of entertainment opened. That barn was full of so many stories, so many characters and incredible food, family and friends, that "I could write a book!" doesn't even begin to cover it. Traditions in rural America are the stuff of so many classics, we'll just have to hope that the bookshelves have room for one more. It's on its way. SO don't expect me to be raising my hand to volunteer for much this year or next. I have a mission! The stories are out there calling to me: begging me to write them down and to share them with you. SO here goes...

On the Cusp of the Barn Dance.

While I Wait... Keeping Skills Sharpened

 

While I wait to hear from a publisher, I am keeping busy and trying to keep creative juices flowing. 'Have spent lots of time in the yard, around the laundry lawn, weeding, watering and doing general fall clean-up. Our scarecrow, Jeremiah, has returned for another season, and the October decor in the yard is coming in to focus. Some other visitors to our yard this week have included a preying mantis, downy woodpeckers, robins, a golden-shafted flicker, several types of warblers and a great blue heron, which may save me the trouble of setting up an aquarium indoors for the gold fish from the pond. I think the circle of life is turning here at Tongueslip. My 6 year-old giant goldfish, Draino, has not been seen for several days. He may be flying over New Jersey wetlands in a new form.

Jeremiah II is the latest version, created to replace the original that teenagers swiped from the yard year before last. This version is fairly well secured, and we'll hope he stays with us at least through the Christmas season, when he will don his Santa hat and a warm scarf. I couldn't resist the LED pumpkin. We saw one in a neighbor's yard last week (even before October arrived) and when I saw it at our local hardware store, my 20% off coupon called to me. My patient husband smiled when I marched home with it after I went to check out the non-functioning orange lights for the fence. Since I only needed a new fuse, rather than a new string of lights, it seemed reasonable to spring for the pumpkin. It is so lightful!

Writing this week has been focused on the program for the 61st Ole Bull Music Festival. The event takes place on the 26th of this month, in Galeton, Pennsylvania, and I have much writing and designing of ads to do. Last night I did an abbreviated retelling of the story of King Hakkon of Norway and his escape from the Baglers. I discovered a charming rendition of this story by Lise Lunge-Larsen, with lovely illustrations by Mary Azarian. Look for The Race of the Birkbeiners at your library or independent book seller.

I try to fill the festival program booklet with information and trivia about Norway, and the history of the Oleana Colony that violinist Ole Bull tried to establish in Potter County, PA. Although the colony failed, it sowed seeds of music in the ridge and valley provinces of the Commonwealth. The program this year includes a retelling of the saga of Hakkon, a list of words we use that have Norwegian roots and some troll tales. Check my website, SpunkyNorwegianFoundation.com for more on this topic.

From trolls to Brownies... Brownie Scouts that is! This week I had to create a Kaper Chart for my Brownie/ Jr.Scout troop. Kaper Charts are a Girl Scout tradition, designating assignments to be done by each Scout at a meeting or at camp. My chart defines the responsibilities of each job and allows for the movement of girls from one job to another. The avatars for each girl were colored by them after I drew three versions of Brownies and Jr Scouts. The girls colored them at the last meeting and they are now laminated and have Velcro (c) dots so they can be moved from one job to another.
I'm pretty pleased with how this projected turned out. It also proved to me that I can draw people (if not overly realistic ones) so maybe I can get on with a new picture book I am considering. The idea was generated following a creative meeting with one of my friends and cheerleaders, Andrew. Following a productive chat with him, I am seriously thinking of revamping a chapter book I wrote and turning it into a picture book. So creative juices are still flowing and the always inspiring beauty of autumn nature in the Northeast is energizing me.

'Hoping all my readers are keeping up with THEIR creative projects too. This season is a wonderful one for finding inspiration. If you haven't read this one, although it is a week late, please take time to enjoy one of my favorite seasonal verses.

By Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885)

              SEPTEMBER
    THE golden-rod is yellow;
        The corn is turning brown;
    The trees in apple orchards
        With fruit are bending down.
    The gentian's bluest fringes
        Are curling in the sun;
    In dusty pods the milkweed
        Its hidden silk has spun.
    The sedges flaunt their harvest,
        In every meadow nook;
    And asters by the brook-side
        Make asters in the brook,
    From dewy lanes at morning
        The grapes' sweet odors rise;
    At noon the roads all flutter
        With yellow butterflies.
    By all these lovely tokens
        September days are here,
    With summer's best of weather,
        And autumn's best of cheer.
    But none of all this beauty
        Which floods the earth and air
    Is unto me the secret
        Which makes September fair.
    'T is a thing which I remember;
        To name it thrills me yet:
    One day of one September
        I never can forget.

Making the Deadline: Submitting the proposal

HEY WORLD!!

I SUBMITTED MY BOOK PROPOSAL TODAY!

I had set September 20th as my personal deadline to submit my proposal to a publisher. Today, on 9/20/13 I dropped hard copy of my proposal at a publisher's and also sent the proposal via email. SO now the waiting begins. 

Since my last blog-post I redid two illustrations and completely reformatted one page using PhotoShop. I bought the program this week, and my friend Maddy showed me the basics. It really is amazing what it can do, even without an experienced operator!

I learned how to make pages, how to erase, how to add and edit text, how to work on layers. It's really a super tool. I thought that technological applications had no place in my hand drawn art. But it's so neat the way that you can modify a drawing, move elements around, copy all or segments of a drawing. For example, this box turtle can now be introduced into other pages than the one on which he was originally drawn.

Box Turtle

He was on a page that was originally formatted to be vertical, but now the page is horizontal. I was able to redesign the page in a few minutes, rather than having to redraw eleven images. I was even able to re-size things to better fit the new format. PhotoShop is still a mystery to me in many ways, but it has saved me hours of work and it was certainly a big part of what allowed me to meet my deadline.

So what now? I have submitted a proposal. I know that it will be weeks - or more probably - months, before I hear back from the publisher. So what will I do while I wait? This weekend and next week I will focus on other projects: the program for the Ole Bull Music Festival, creating my fall garden and making a kaper chart for my Girl Scout Troop. But the following week, I plan to get to work on other illustrations for my book. 

It has become clear to me that, just as the text improves with each revision, so the illustrations become more finished with each iteration. Every time I work with pen or pencil, I find new ways of making the illustrations come to life. Working on the same drawing over a period of time allows the drawing to evolve. I see the early versions of some of the pictures and I wonder that I thought they were pretty good. Now I see how very much better they have become with repetition and revision.By the time the book is published, I hope that they will be something to truly enchant my young readers.

I will also continue searching for pictures on line and in nature to use as references.

Photos like this one of dew on clover will help me to improve the drawing of clover wet with dew. I will continue to study other artist's work. My dear friends Gene and Ashley just sent me a wonderful book called Show and Tell by Dilys Evans. It promises to provide hours of enjoyment and many revelations about other artists and their work in illustrating children's books. There is so much to learn!

I'll be busy reading for the Book Fair, gardening, Scouting and working for The Spunky Norwegian Foundation, but I'll be on the lookout for emails or letters so I can report to you on the next stage in writing and illustrating a Caldecott winning book.

Til then, I will work on polishing my writing, my illustrations and my patience. I expect they will all be stronger by the time I hear "Yay" or "Nay."

What Keeps Me From Writing

It's 9 days into September, and I am not much further along with my writing and illustrations than I was on the 1st. What is my problem?  In a word, overcommitment.

Stave Church at the Ole Bull Museum

 

 

Planning for my Girl Scout troop, volunteering at the library, working on a variety of projects for The Spunky Norwegian Foundation, keeping up two of my three websites (1963Mounties.com and SpunkyNorwegianFoundation.com), blogging, FaceBooking and reading for the book fair. It all takes time. I think I need to do less FaceBook, to start with. Unfortunately many of the other projects are in crunch mode, or will be if I don't keep up with them. Sigh! Less TV will help too, but a lot of my time on TV is multi-tasking doing email/FB or blogging while keeping one eye on the U.S. Open, "Who Do You Think You Are?" or other faves.

Today at the library, I picked up another book to read for the book fair and told my friendly librarian, Nola, how much I had enjoyed two others I've read this week. For those who don't know me personally, I have served as the Book Fair Ambassador at the school where I used to teach, for the past four years. This involves reading as many of the books we'll be selling as possible, so that I can help students find books they will enjoy reading. So far this year, I've read 46 books, including 10 for the book fair. I have eight more books in my fair pile so far, and have read a lot of the other books we'll be selling in previous years, so I'm doing reasonably well on that schedule. I have 'til the beginning of November to get really into the mode. Of course, by then, I also have to come up with a cool costume to go with the theme "Reading Oasis".  Suggestions are welcome!

Nola said I should blog on the books I liked, so, Nola, this one's for you.

The books I read are ones featured by Scholastic on their Book Fair website, best-sellers from a variety of book lists, or books that our committee chooses as "special orders" for a variety of reasons, including that the authors are visiting our school.

I have noticed that many of the books have quite different themes from past years.  Hold Fast by Blue Balliette and Almost Home by Joan Bauer, both deal with the topic of homelessness. In our current economic situation, it seems like a very important topic for young people to be able to read about, since they, or their friends or classmates may very well find themselves in this situation at some point. Both books handle the situation with great sensitivity and are more thought-provoking than depressing or worrying. I enjoyed both and look forward to meeting Blue and hearing about her writing when she visits our fair in November

The two books I read this week that particularly struck me were Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper and Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz. The first is about an eleven year old girl with cerebral palsy. While it is a novel, it clearly reveals much of the reality of life with this dreadful disease: how it effects the individual and his/her family, as well as how others perceive the wheel-chair-bound person. It helped me to better understand our church-friend, Joseph and his frustrations in trying to communicate with me and others. It has made me much more aware of the concerns and challenges facing special needs students in schools everywhere. This book would be an awesome book-club pick for students in communities or schools with CP students or others who are being mainstreamed. 
 
Dante and Aristotle, in the second notable book of this week, are teenaged residents of El Paso, Texas. Both are loners, until they meet at the swimming pool one summer and Dante volunteers to teach Ari to swim. This is an extremely sensitive coming-of-age book with a gay-self-discovery twist. A great read for boys who are trying to figure out those big secrets of the universe: Who am I? What is love? Where do friendship and loyalty fall in the greater scheme of things? What is the place of family secrets in a teen or a grown-up world? 

There are so many wonderful books out there!! I better quit blogging and get busy making another one!! Let me know what you think of these books. I'd love to hear from you.

Recording FIrst Weeks at College: E-Books vs Paper and Pen

Lots of you have probably seen the article that appeared in the Star Ledger yesterday. If you missed it, it's worth a look, whether you have a child going to college this year or not. It's an interesting view on then and now. http://blog.nj.com/njv_guest_blog/2013/09/taking_my_son_to_college_where.html

The blog got me thinking about my first days and weeks at Boston University, where I spent my undergrad years and set the goal of writing and illustrating a Caldecott-winning children's book. The first thing I noticed about the article was something I've been noting for several years. College begins WAY earlier than it did in the 1960's. My first day of college (Moving In Day) was Sunday, September 8th, 1963. Like the author of the blog above, I had no computer, no Apps, no cell phone and no clue!

No iCal and no iPad, so I bought a paper calendar. It was a Charles Schultz, Peanuts calendar with a square for each day. Even without a digital camera and Instagrams, without a computer and without a single App, I can tell you where I went, what I wore and what the weather was like every day of my first 4 months of college. I can tell you when I met my college boy friend and when I visited my newly-wed sister and her husband. I can tell you how I wore my hair  and when I did volunteer stints at the University radio station (WBUR). I know when I first learned a number of folk songs and when I got home for Thanksgiving vacation.Yes, I have a great memory, but I also have that Peanuts calendar in which I drew each day of those first four months in Boston. Art endures in a way that electronic records don't. Maye this is part of why I still believe in real books, as opposed to e-books.

This is what my first month looked like. Well, the Saturdays don't show, but I can tell you that on my first Saturday it was sunny, I wore a turtleneck  and an a-line skirt and attended three open-houses at three different fraternities on Bay State Road. I also met a cat.

The next day, which was partly cloudy, I wore a jumper (probably my rust colored corduroy one), with a black turtleneck. I went to church at Marsh Chapel and went for a motorcycle ride, I think with a housemate's boyfriend.

It was my third day in Boston that some of my housemates took me to meet some of their friends, and I met the boy I dated for the next two years. It was Tuesday, September 10th and we all played guitars and sang folk songs. My long hair was braided that day.

So what does this have to do with writing and illustrating? Well, I was illustrating my life and making "journal entries" about my daily life. It was these "in the moment" sketches that allow me the joy of reliving those months with rich detail fifty years later. It is this illustrated calendar that could provide me with a fine primary source if I ever choose to write a book about college life in the 1960s, including the historic event shown by the black draped frame and flag at half-mast on Friday, November 22nd. I spent most of that day working at the radio station and most of that night crying on my boyfriend's shoulder.

If you have a child going off to college this month, plant this idea (an illustrated journal - on paper) which he/she can look back at 50 years later. Stories and pictures and books on paper will outlast electronic diaries and FaceBook Timelines. Despite great strides and wonderful aspects of technology in publishing, I am banking on books on paper well in to the future.

Here is one way in which I envy today's students regarding "real" books. I remember the cost and the weight of the books I had to buy and lug around campus. One semester I had 17 novels to read. (Tell your students not to take two novels courses the same semester). It would have been a lot easier to read those books on a Kindle, I bet. And less costly too.

New technologies allow me to "take notes" quickly with my camera. For example:

Gazpacho with additions









City crest with murcielago (bat)

                                    Candies in store on Calle Di Pi, Barcelona


So use the technology. Record the moments. Draw or doodle. But whatever else you do, keep drawing, taking photos and journalling, so that you can write and illustrate rich, real, readable stories to share with the world.  And save important things on paper!

Reading About Writing and Writing About Reading

One of many books recommended to me recently is A Family of Readers: The Book Lover's Guide to Children's and Young Adult Literature. It has sat in my "To Read" pile, but is now on it's last renewal from the library, so I finally put it at the top of the pile. On this rainy afternoon, listening to rain on the cabin roof and looking out over the alternately silver and pewter surface of Lake Hopatcong, I lost myself in back-stories of some of the finest children's literature currently residing on the shelves of bookstores and libraries around the world.

I loved the segment by Naomi Shihab Nye with the story of the grandfather who woke his grandson each morning by reading him poetry. What an inspiring and gentle way to begin the day: it certainly beats waking up to the world news and traffic reports.

I wondered at the interview with Maurice Sendak about his triumvirate of books:  Where the Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen, and Outside Over There. I will have to add the latter to my pile. Somehow I missed it. I totally got it that Sendak didn't need to, and didn't want to, do a reprise of Where the Wild Things Are. Some books stand alone: no sequels or prequels required. Do we need a Polar Express II? I think not.

As both an author and illustrator, I found nuggets of wisdom in "The Pictures" by Margot Zemach and "Design Matters" by Jon Scieszka. The essay, "How to Read the Pictures:John Steptoe's Baby Says," also provided food for thought.

New ideas from "The Pictures," included the idea that you can have things in the pictures that are never even mentioned in the text. The dog Margot added in "The Three Wishes," wasn't part of the story, but she used it to reflect and assist in revealing the emotions of the characters. It's nice to know that she, like I, researches deeply to make her illustrations believable and convincing.

"Design is an essential part of any picture book." This is both the lead and the final sentence in Scieska's essay. I am trying to do as he has done: make design almost invisible, and yet let it do all it has potential to do in making an excellent picture book. From the size of the book and the font, to the colors and use of spreads and page turns, design elements make the difference between a script and an award-winning Broadway show. Every new iteration of the book brings me closer to a finer design. 

I find that thinking in two-page spreads is essential to designing my artwork. I am tying to think creatively about providing the reader with the keys to various dimensions of my book. If I just print in a foreword that this or that is included in each picture, I think some of the magic will be diminished. But if I don't give the reader a hint, a child may miss some of the fun of the book. I will have to keep working on this. Something to think about while watching the clouds forming in late afternoon sunlight on the lake.