Adventures at Wilder Farm

I try to do a decent amount of research before inflicting technology onto Lita. She’s been using an iMac since early 2006 and we both love it, but she has an older Dell laptop that she uses for travel and presentations and we’re looking to replace it with a MacBook Pro. The dilemma is that Apple is probably about to introduce updated models soon and I’d like to wait until that happens. The other problem is that they are expensive!

The Dell isn’t that bad – but it’s probably about 3-4 years old and it’s starting to feel very slow. It seems like it takes 5 minutes when booting up to actually get some program – like word or email – to start up. The other issue is that Lita’s gotten used to everything on the iMac so whenever she switches to the laptop, everything is different, and sometimes things go wrong at inopportune times, like in front of class of 5 year old kids.

I guess I should also admit, it’s really me that wants the MacBook Pro. And that new wireless time capsule thing looks nice too…

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Alison at ShelfTalker posted her Morris Medals yesterday. Alison is the children’s book buyer at the Wellesley Booksmith, which is one of the three nicest independent bookstores within a few hours of our home. The other two are The Toadstool Bookshop in our town of Peterborough, and the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester Center, Vermont. Anyway, Alison’s list is impressive in its quantity of categories and number of selections in each category. But she has good taste. I bought a copy of Shaun Tan’s The Arrival at the Wellesley Booksmith based on a little note of Alison’s, taped to the bookshelf, that said something like, “this book is amazing”. And she was right – it’s an amazing book.

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We just heard that One Thousand Tracings was chosen as an ALA Notable Book! And where did we hear it first? The Miss Rumphius Effect

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I read Dear Genius, The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom several months ago, or was it several years? Anyway, Ursula Nordstrom was the director of Harper’s Children’s Books from 1940 to 1973. She worked with Maurice Sendak, EB White, Margaret Wise Brown, Garth Williams, and many others. It’s an excellent book – her letters are delightful.

Ursula carried a crumpled note in her purse and often pulled it out to share with her authors and illustrators, and she reread it to herself at her most tired and disillusioned moments.

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all of time this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.”

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For the past year, my husband, Dave, has been encouraging me to start a blog. We get so many terrific questions from readers and illustrators who visit my website, he thought it’d be a good opportunity to share the day to day adventures of creating children’s books, answer frequently asked questions, and share information about my working method and current projects. I had resisted until now, but the recent selection of my book, One Thousand Tracings, as a Cybil Award Finalist for a non fiction picture books (an award created and given by bloggers) has prompted me to plunge ahead into the blog world.

I’m naming my blog Adventures at Wilder Farm for two reasons. First, because my husband and I live tucked away in the NH woods at the end of Wilder Farm Road. Here, black bears, moose, deer, fox, fishers, and wild turkeys roam through our land, browse in our garden and leave a highway of tracks in the snow. Secondly, Adventures at Wilder Farm was the title of the first picture book manuscript I wrote and illustrated. I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I started it! The story was never published, but it did help me find my agent and a few weeks later, helped me get my first publishing job – illustrating “Ugly” by Donna Jo Napoli with Hyperion Books for Children. Three years later, I’m now working on my sixth book (my third as author and illustrator) and I have three more picture books in the works. So I have a very fond connection to the name.

Dave and I both plan to write this blog. Dave works closely with me. He designed my website and is a valuable editor and critical eye to my work. He solves all my technical headaches with computers, scanners, digital cameras and printers and plans to share a lot of his experience on this front with readers.

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