Library Love
Happy National Library Week! I’m still floating from last week’s Maine Library Association’s 27th Annual Reading Round-Up of Children’s and Young Adult Literature. No better place to be than in a fine flock of kidlit advocates. Winning a Lupine Award with Eva Murray for our book Island Birthday is a spectacular honor. Inspired by Maine artist, Barbara Cooney’s Miss Rumphius, the Lupine is presented to a living author or illustrator who is a resident of Maine, or who has created a work whose focus is on Maine, shown through the characteristics, plot, or setting....
Read MorePortland Stage Season Launch
Around a year ago, I was scrambling to finish all the posters for Portland Stage Company’s 2015-16 season. On the launch night, Social Media/Marketing Associate, JJ Peeler, and Executive and Artistic Director, Anita Stewart, happily showed my rough sketch for the final show, They Don’t Pay? We Won’t Pay! Called again to create a cohesive look for the 2016-17 Season, I scrambled ever harder to be ALL done. Two shows remain in the current season; I felt complete seeing this one on stage at last. Meanwhile, My Name Is Asher Lev is on stage. Based on the novel by Chaim Potok,...
Read MoreLaunching Land Forms at Ocean Avenue Elementary
Thanks to Side x Side, I had more adventures in second grade, this time at Ocean Avenue Elementary School in Portland, Maine. I’d received an out-0f-the-blue letter from a Professor Amir Sneedlebaum of the University of Papua New Guinea, as did my colleague, Pamela Moulton. He also wrote to each of the second grade teachers as well. He needs their help in creating a model island of diverse land forms, so that his team of researchers can study earth’s changes. Cool! Count me in! I arrived in a costume quite suitable for me, a native of the White Mountains of New Hampshire! I...
Read MoreLost Boy Found in Whole Foods
Portland Stage’s production of Tammy Ryan’s play Lost Boy Found in Whole Foods is powerful, thanks to strong performances by Tyrone Davis Jr. as Gabriel and Jamil Mangan as Panther, young men from South Sudan struggling to bridge two worlds. I worked on the poster last year, around this time. Researching for any illustration project leads to discoveries, and this one broadened my awareness big time. Gabriel is a one of the 20,000 boys of the Nuer and Dinka tribes who were orphaned during the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983 – 2005.) He fled war to refugee camps to a job at...
Read MoreCelebrating Literacy at PIES
It’s a treat to visit schools where literacy is celebrated. But it’s downright spectacular when it’s the island school down the street, where your own child learned to read. The Peaks Island Elementary School invited Scott Nash, Anne Sibley O’Brien, and me to meet teachers and students who read our books and created book reviews, skits, and reports. Teacher Leader Renee Bourgoine-Serio opened the evening with questions from kids. Mainly they wanted to know: WHEN is Scott coming out with a sequel to The High Skies Adventures of Blue Jay the Pirate? And then the Draw...
Read MoreEast End Fairy Tale
Once upon a time, on a cold winter’s day, Red Riding Hood set off through the woods to her Nana’s house. Her basket was full of pencils and paper because she loved to draw. Just for a moment, Red thought she saw a wolf. She decided it was just the shadows in the snow tricking her eyes. She kept going, all the way across Casco Bay to Portland where Nana lived. She climbed a steep hill and heard children’s voices. Red Riding Hood couldn’t resist going inside the big building with so many windows. She gasped when she saw all the welcoming words in so many languages! A...
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