World Enough and Time

Around the World in 114 days

It was a mild January afternoon in 2007. My husband Bill and I were rocking on the front porch, enjoying the last rays of a Savannah sunset when he asked, “When is your next book for Charlesbridge due?”

“I’m just beginning the sketches for Plant Secrets and final art is due in November,” I replied.

He asked what my schedule was after that. I told him I had quite a while before my next project. I looked at him quizzically and said, “Why do you ask?”

“Our fortieth anniversary is next year. How would you like to spend it in Venice?”

“Sounds great,” I replied.

He then said it would take a while to get there. In fact it would take months! He was proposing we go on a four month around-the-world cruise. I could hardly wrap my mind around such a possibility. I’m the type you might describe as a homebody. I love the life we are enjoying since my husband’s retirement and subsequent move from Connecticut to an island on the coast of Georgia. I have a fabulous art studio where I write and illustrate children’s books, paint landscapes, pet and people portraits, and teach an occasional art class. Not to say I don’t enjoy travel. We have done quite a bit over the years, but never much longer than two weeks. As an artist and writer I had to consider the insights and inspiration such a life altering experience would offer. To Bill’s delight, I found myself saying, “Why not!"

On January 4th we boarded the ms Amsterdam in Fort Lauderdale to begin Holland America’s Golden Anniversary Odyssey, World 2008 Grand Voyage. Our first stop was Grand Cayman, where I visited a butterfly farm while Bill snorkeled. We continued on to Costa Rica, then into the Panama Canal. My engineer husband was fascinated with the complexity of the locks.

During eight days in the Pacific we enjoyed ship life, lectures, shows, learning Tai Chi, making friends, and I even worked on sketches for my next book. Finally, “Land ho!” The South Pacific islands like, Tahiti, Moorea, and Tonga were enchanting. The people were friendly and happy with their simple life style. I did a drawing of a lovely young girl in Samoa. It is easy to see why so many artists and writers found inspiration in these tropical paradises.

We were anxious to get to our four ports in New Zealand. From the rolling hills of sheep farms, and the incredible seal, albatross and gannet colonies along the rocky shores, to the spectacular Fiord Lands, it did not disappoint us.

Our itinerary included three ports in Australia. Since many of my books celebrate wildlife, I enjoyed the variety of weird animals like the Tasmanian devil and wombat.

Continuing on to Indonesia, I particularly liked Bali where it seemed everyone was an artist. In Brunei, which is part of Borneo, I entered our first mosque, with headscarf, bare feet, and in a modified burqa!

Although Hong Kong and Singapore are a shopper’s delight, I preferred ports where we could mingle with simple people. For that reason I loved Vietnam. My fondest memory is of the happy children in a little village next to a rice field. They were anxious to meet us and practice some English words. A young father brought his baby out to show us.

India was a study in contrasts of modern and ancient, rich and poor, but always colorful and vibrant. We visited Hindu and Buddhist temples in Chennai and viewed an immense open air laundry in Mumbai.

Oman and Egypt brought us back to Biblical times. It is impossible to describe the immense impact of the pyramids and tombs of pharaohs. I have always been in awe of the sophistication of art and architecture in past millennia.

I can’t mention here all our ports, but we traveled through the Suez canal, into the Black Sea, to Sochi, Russia (where I practiced the little bit of Russian I knew) and Sevastopol, Ukraine, Istanbul, Turkey, Santorini, Greece, and finally to Venice for two days to celebrate our 40^th in a romantic city. I had studied art in Italy in my senior year of Rhode Island School of Design, so Italy is very special to me.

After Lisbon and Madeira, our Atlantic crossing was calm and relaxing and a time to reflect on all that we had seen and look at our thousands of digital photographs. As we entered New York the sun was rising behind the familiar skyscrapers. Lady Liberty’s glowing torch welcomed us back. We had been a speck circumnavigating this wonderful blue-green globe suspended in the vast universe. We were Americans, but now felt like citizens of the world.

Posted by author/illustrator Phyllis Limbacher Tildes

Practicing What We Publish

Friday the 13th was a lucky day for the Watertown banks of the Charles River. The hardworking staff of Charlesbridge picked up their sticks with pointy things on the end and put on their gardening gloves to pick up trash that mysteriously collects around the river.

Inspired by April Pulley Sayre's Trout Are Made of Trees, the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, and in celebration of American Rivers' National River Clean Up, Charlesbridge staff made a day of it down the road at the riverside putting right what once went wrong and enjoying a beautiful day outside.

The Charles River, which begins at Echo Lake in Hopkinton, MA, snakes about 80 miles through eastern Mass before emptying into the Boston Harbor. It has a great history of industry and travel, and today is a major source of recreation--most notably the Head of the Charles Regatta held every October.

The river is home, or provider, for many native plants and animals... although not trout according to Richard, our DCR guide. Ah well, bass are made of trees, also. At Charlesbridge, we enjoy having the river, and the walking trail around it, right across the street. We don't just like to publish books about nature, we actually like nature!

Here, Erin wins the Deep Woods Off Award for going deepest into the foliage.






Even our fearless leader talks trash.



Editorial Director Yolanda LeRoy sifts through the muck and the mire.





After ridding our beautiful river of unwanted debris, we had a pizza picnic in the park by the river. And we picked up all our trash. Carry in, carry out!

Charlesbridge goes west

Enjoy this past due review of BEA... well, at least I got to it before ALA happened.

BEA is always a great show. There are so many different reasons to attend: introduce the new fall books that we're excited about, meet old friends and catch up on what's happening in bookstores and libraries around the country, meet new friends and business partners and hopefully impress the living dickens out of them with our books and gracious manners, visit with friends at other publishers and walk around their booths stealing ideas, have meaningful conversations with authors and illustrators (both on our list and not on our list), and travel to exotic locales like the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Meg and Taylor and I enjoyed L.A. so much, we think it's high time Charlesbridge opened a West Coast office. Here, Meg and I discuss the finer points of sales and marketing at our new beach front office space in Santa Monica.

And Taylor works on the new catalog cover.

The absolute best day of BEA (certainly no offense to the other days) is Thursday. That's the ABC New Voices luncheon. This year's speakers included the inspiring and delightful Cecilia Galante whose new book The Patron Saint of Butterflies is a fascinating story of two best friends, one of whom is devoted to their religious cult upbringing, and the other is not. We had the opportunity to meet Cecilia on Friday night at the ABC Not a Dinner and (Mostly) Silent Auction. Cecilia is a smart and funny new voice not to be "new" for long as she'll be most likely be turning up a lot.

The best part of Thursday, though, is that after the luncheon, we were free to go shopping in Hollywood as the booth was all set up and there were no pressing meetings to attend. Here, we found the footprints of homeboy Matt Damon at Grauman's Chinese Theatre.

This year we were ever so lucky to be accompanied by children's lit great Jane Yolen. Her new book Sea Queens: Women Pirates Around the World is new this July. Jane knew everyone, or, more to the point, everyone knew Jane. We were never wall flowers with Jane on our arm. The best part was when we made her climb the only hill in downtown Los Angeles to go to dinner at an Italian restaurant that shall remain unnamed. The doorman assured us it was walking distance. I suppose if you're really fit and looking for a challenge on an empty stomach. And, even though I did really love L.A., how come the entire city only exists on the inside? We could not find that restaurant for the life of us because it was tucked away inside some insidiously discreet hotel courtyard. And, don't ask for the water.

And, yes, we did work the booth also:

And this lame (but funny) video. I haven't quite figured out my new camera.

Posted by Donna... sorry.

Children's Choices Book Awards

There are three more days remaining in Children's Book Week. Travel to the CBC site to see all the fantastic things that happened in the past week to celebrate books, reading, and children.

One of the highlights of the week was the first annual Children's Choices Book Awards. The children are no longer just seen, they have spoken and they say they like books.
Especially these ones:




Frankie Stein by Lola M. Schaefer - honorary Charlesbridgian, though we no longer have her book.




Big Cats by Elaine Landau, author of Popcorn.




Encyclopedia Horrifica by Joshua Gee, a book we would have totally stolen from the library when we were in fifth grade.




Ian Falconer was voted Illustrator of the Year.





And, underdog J.K. Rowling was voted Author of the Year.




Perhaps not the best part of a trip to New York City to celebrate great books and our privilege to publish them, but certainly a close second, was getting to stay at the Ye Olde Carlton Arms Hotel. Forget the money because it's wicked cheap. It's cheap for Kansas, let alone New York City, but you want to go for the funky, fresh art. Every inch of the joint is covered in paint lovingly applied by the hand of an Artiste. While my travel companion's room was beautiful, it did not whisper 'sweet dreams' in my subconscious. Still, it was clean, it had it's own bathroom, and it was original. At Charlesbridge we appreciate the original (which explains Jerry Pallotta).

On the other hand, my room was a beautiful Chagallian dreamscape of floating, rapturous lovelies pointing the way to Heaven and the sleep of the innocent. The woman yelling for attention on 6th Avenue at 3:00 AM was in juxtaposition to my idyllic wonderland.

All in all, I would gladly return to NYC for the Children's Choices Book Awards next year. The tiny tacos were awesome!

Posted by Donna

Finding Ideas

One of the questions I’m often asked as a writer is where I find my ideas. For me, there are several answers to that question. Frequently ideas come to me in dreams. Sometimes I take them from situations in my real life. And, quite a few ideas have actually come from kids.

Once I had a dream about a redwood forest. In the dream, there was a gold band with words in big, black block letters, “THIS IS A NOVEL”. I woke up, wrote the dream down, and thought, “Wow!” Two years later, it really was a novel about a woman determined to save ancient redwood trees. I was very excited. My dream had come true.

Sure that it was brilliant, I sent my novel out to quite a few publishers. Unfortunately, they weren’t quite as excited about it as I was. So I went back to the drawing board and rewrote Painted Forest a few more times. This time the responses were more favorable. Although it was not accepted for publication, many people suggested that it would make a great movie. Not to be deterred by a mere few hundred rejections, I rewrote it as a screenplay. A movie producer read it and said she might be interested if I’d rewrite the entire story again from page one. I did, and now Saving Stella is being seriously considered for production.

Real life inspired Princess Justina Albertina. I have two pet crazy kids. Sometimes it feels like I live in a zoo. There’s a hamster living right beside my computer, a co-dependent dog with abandonment issues following me around all day, a cat nipping my toes as I type, a horse that always seems to need more hay, and bunnies breeding out back. In a fit of pique, I sat down and wrote a story as joke, Katie Justina Albertina Smith Wanted a New Pet. That was the beginning of the dozens of versions that led to the story Princess Justina Albertina. In one version, the gryphon swallows the bratty kid but she makes such a ruckus and a rumpus inside his belly that the gryphon gets a tummy-ache and throws her back up. One thing I’ve learned from having to rewrite everything so many times is that there are a zillion different ways to tell any story.

And kids seem to know lots of them. While writing my novel, Stolen Voices, I was teaching 7^th and 8^th graders creative writing. Whenever I finished a chapter, I’d bring it in to share. The kids offered so many great suggestions about how to tell the story that I probably received enough ideas to write ten novels. Some of their tidbits fit Stolen Voices perfectly, and I used them.

Ideas seem to be just about everywhere. I don’t have time to develop all of them, especially now that I’ve finally resigned myself to the fact that my first draft probably won’t be brilliant. I know that I’m going to be working with the ideas I choose for a long, long time. I’ve learned that, for me, the challenge is to pick which ideas to write about.

Posted by Ellen Dee Davidson, author of Princess Justina Albertina.

News from Robin Brickman

On April 16 and 17, I visited the Sewickley Academy, in Sewickely, PA, to present my Community Mural workshops to students in the Lower School. I taught Pre-K and Kindergarten students how to cut, color, and shape paper into butterflies, leaves, ants, and feathers. Then we assembled the art into a "Wings" mural at the school. Grades 1-3 created a Log's Life Community Mural, also following Robin's unique sculpted paper technique. They researched plants and animals in a northeast forest. Everyone is delighted with the murals, and my ability to teach some special art skills and a little biology to students this young.

While I was in Pennsylvania, I was asked by my hosts when I would find out if my painting from WINGS, "Green Darner and Pitcher Plant" won a purchase prize from the Focus On Nature X juried show. The show was opening at the same time and they were familiar with this painting's inclusion in the show. Also, they were certain I had a very good chance of winning this! Well, I figured they were being very polite and supportive, and I love them for that, but their opinion was not based on much evidence. After all, this is an international show, with amazing art! I have had my art included in a Focus On Nature show three years before and I know that the quality is extraordinarily high.

Well, I kept telling everyone that I really wasn't thinking about it!
And in order to keep my ego protected, I tried to forget about it.

I did check my e-mail the night the announcement was made in Albany, NY. No messages. I checked that morning, too; nothing. That was fine, just as I expected, really. When I arrived back home to Massachusetts, I had quietly concluded that I didn't win any award, and found a message on my phone machine telling me that I did indeed
win! I'm really happy, and of course: it's a winning painting!

To, be fair, there are over a dozen artists who won purchase awards from the FON X show this year, and I understand that over 13 countries are represented. I haven't seen the show, yet, but it is an easy hours drive so I can visit it very soon.

To me, one of the best parts of being a book illustrator has been working with students and educators in school visits all over the country. I love showing people how to create their own natural science art. Besides, I've been an illustrator for over thirty years and my studio work is very isolated, even lonely sometimes.

Although I missed being able to get the purchase award at the New York State Museum in person, on April 17. I was with a wonderful group of students and educators that night and they believed I could do it, and I did.

Posted by Robin Brickman, illustrator of Beaks! and Wings by Sneed B. Collard III.

Inspiration in Children’s Art, by illustrator Frank Dormer

I am a voracious lurker.

Actually my grandfather’s last name was Lurker, but that’s beside the point.

I look forward to finding new art to look at. Not so much to steal as to feed the artistic appetite.

I get hungry about once a month.

When that happens my wife takes the kids to a ball game, or to view chest x-rays at the local hospital. They’ll do anything to get away from the Hungry Artist.

Recently I have been able to limit my travels. And this is where my confession comes in.

I like to visit the hospital and view chest x-rays too.

Only kidding.

Ok, here it is.

I am not just an illustrator. I am also an art teacher.

There, I’ve said it. Whew. I feel better already.

Not only that, but I’ve been seen joyously exclaiming my love for my students art. It inspires me after I’ve seen the original Monet’s far too long, and have seen Van Gogh on everything from coffee cups to polish sausage casings.

Children’s art is simple, uncluttered, and all about them. How can you not love it? In their art one can find out many things about how they feel about someone, what is important to them. It’s all there.

Now, I will admit that it can take some information to decipher these 2-dimensional jewels. But who hasn’t looked at a Jackson Pollock and wondered if it’s real art, or his breakfast on that canvas? It’s the same for children’s art, too.

Children see the world in simple terms. And here is where I will put down my dusty soapbox, and stand on it in my fuzzy slippers and hold my coffee cup, ready to overpower you with my feelings.

If you like, go find a hospital and look at some x-rays. I won’t be insulted.

If you are still reading this, I’ll make it simple.

And in case you are in doubt about my sanity, I am a certified teacher, and have been teaching, or faking it well, for over 15 years. I have a Masters in Education and been known to have beginning teachers actually visit my classroom.

Ok, here it is, that thing I wanted to tell you.

While I am standing on my soapbox.

Children’s art reflects pure lines and shapes. The beginning elements of art. The First thing any art maker does after placing pencil on paper. It also reflects pure emotion.

No subtlety, no layers to hide things in.

I have been known to try and emulate it. I fall far short, as my art education fights with the inner child in me. But I get the child out most times these days.

So leave the hospital X-ray room, wander out of the museums of artistic perfection, and go over to the local school art show. Visit with the art teacher, and gaze in wonderment at what these miniature people can do when given the power.

You can visit my students’ work. It is much more interesting than mine, I assure you.

Their work can be viewed at: www.slineyart.blogspot.com

If after all this you still have an interest in what I do for books, you may visit me at: frankwdormer dot com.

I promise I won’t bite.

You’ll notice I haven’t gotten off my soapbox, though.

Posted by Frank Dormer, illustrator of Aggie and Ben and Not So Tall for Six and the upcoming Good Dog, Aggie.

Brian Lies -- Knee Deep in the Swamp

Yikes! As I step forward, my knee-high clamming boot sinks effortlessly into the tidal mud, right up over the top. No resistance whatsoever. I feel a jolt of reptilian-brain panic, and back up hastily into safer ankle-deep mud. I’ve just missed being swallowed up by a tidal marsh!

On the grassy shore twenty feet away, four people laugh. This has all been captured on film by a film crew from Scholastic Book Fairs, shooting a segment for this spring’s author interview DVD. A Charlesbridge book I illustrated, Donna M. Bateman’s Deep in the Swamp, is one of this spring’s featured books. The DVD will go to every school in the country hosting a Scholastic Book Fair.

It had seemed like a good idea to film an introduction with me standing knee-deep in a saltwater marsh a few miles from my house. The producer wanted me to wade through the water, beckon with an arm to the camera and call out, “Come on! Let’s go deep in the swamp!” But when the crew arrives for the filming, we find that the tide is at dead low. There’s nothing but a narrow serpent of water lying in the middle of a sea of mud.

After the close call, we shoot a few more takes of me tromping around in mud, but my on-camera confidence flags. I’m no longer sure I’ll get out of this without a call to the fire department to haul me out with a ladder truck, and embarrassing photos in our local paper.

After the outdoor filming, we drive back to my home studio. Glaringly bright lights go up in my studio. Will the circuits blow? We tape an interview, and I try to act natural. I do a sketch of a mother alligator from Deep in the Swamp, while a camera looms over my shoulder. I’ve seen animators and other illustrators drawing on TV, and they all seem so talented and sure—drawing with quick, beautiful strokes. This drawing looks scratchy and rough to me. Are those other illustrators really as confident as they seem on camera?

It all seems to go quickly, but it’s been several hours. It’s dark outside now. The bright lights are turned off, and my office feels shockingly dim. I work in this light? The film crew packs up the cameras and lights, packs them in the van, and drives off into the night. It’s been a lot of fun—but I won’t be wandering out onto tidal mud again anytime soon!

Posted by illustrator Brian Lies, illustrator of
Deep in the Swamp.

Wendie Old Takes Time to Write

Check out this blog from author Wendie Old. If you write, you'll appreciate Wendie's take on how to prioritize the need to write in a busy schedule.

I moved to France two and a half years ago. I have had a summer home here for about 18 years (I grew up in Paris as a child), but I gave up my New York apartment to live here full time when a new construction there bricked in all my windows.

At first I commuted to the US twice a year to meet with editors, execute portraits, and visit schools, but it has been difficult to maintain interest in my work from here, despite the internet and having a website.

However, I am celebrating rather than fretting about this transition.

Living in the country means getting by on a much reduced income, and I find that I at last have the time and space to do my own work. I have suddenly realized that I have been reigning myself in artistically as a teacher/illustrator/art director/designer for years, and am loving my new uncensored artistic freedom.

I have always kept up with world affairs. I find that I don't have to compartmentalize myself as before. My politics, my concerns, my feelings (negative as well as positive) are allowed to emerge and converge and I am pretty excited about the power of my recent work. This also probably has something to do with working in oils again. I am known for my watercolour illustration.

I have started a blog on which I occasionally post reports, but my interest in this medium tends to flag. I am put off by the rampant exhibitionism of much blogging. Nevertheless, I hope that my story might inspire others to take a leap of faith.

There comes a time when one has to stop cutting bait and start fishing. For me, that time has arrived.

Posted by illustrator Catherine Stock. Her latest book with Charlesbridge is Vinnie and Abraham, by Dawn Fitzgerald.