Adventures at Wilder Farm

Written by Dave

Tomorrow, nominations for the 2009 Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards open up and will remain open until October 15th.

Be sure to stop by the Cybils site and nominate your favorite books published between last year’s contest and this year’s in the following genres:

• Fiction Picture Books
• Middle Grade Fiction
• Young Adult Fiction
• Nonfiction Picture Books
• Middle Grade/Young Adult Nonfiction
• Science Fiction and Fantasy
• Poetry
• Graphic Novels
• Easy Readers and Short Chapter Books

Last year I was on the Nonfiction picture book panel, and this year I’m a round 2 judge in the Middle Grade/Young Adult Nonfiction category.

Here are the panelists and judges in that category:
Panel Organizer: Susan Thomsen, Chicken Spaghetti

Panelists (Round I Judges):
Alicia Blowers, The LibrariYAn
Sarah Rettger, Archimedes Forgets
Jennie Rothschild, Biblio File
Jill Tullo, The Well-Read Child
Erin Walker, Erin Explores YA

Round II Judges:
Wendy Burton, Six Boxes of Books
Jennifer Donovan, 5 Minutes for Books
Dave Judge, Adventures at Wilder Farm
Colleen Mondor, Chasing Ray
Lisa L. Owens, L.L. Owens-Children’s Writing Blog

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We just heard that Lita’s next release, Born to Be Giants: How Baby Dinosaurs Grew to Rule the World, is a 2010 Junior Library Guild selection! The book is on the Roaring Brook/Flash Point spring 2010 list.

Yellowstone Moran is the current (October) Junior Library Guild selection in the Elementary Biography category.

One Thousand Tracings has been selected by Jessica Doyle, the first lady of Wisconsin, (and an advisory committee) as a December 2009 primary pick for Read On Wisconsin! The other picks for December include: Preschool: Old Bear by Kevin Henkes, Intermediate: The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron, Middle School: How To Steal a Dog By Barbara O’Connor, High School: Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

And the board of the Keene Children’s Literature Festival has picked an image from Pennies for Elephants to be on the 2010 Festival Poster!

Lita is speaking at the 2009 festival (October 31st) along with Beth Krommes, Lois Lowry, Katherine Paterson and Jane Yolen.

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Yellowstone Moran was a really exciting book for me to create. My parents are wildlife photographers and I grew up spending long hours sitting still in wildlife blinds, waiting for animals to show up. It was often cold, bum-numbing, and with mosquitoes so thick it could drive a person mad. We had to sit very quietly while we watched. Not having a camera myself, I often carried a sketchbook and wrote and drew about the animals we saw.

As I grew older I dreamed of being an artist explorer, like Thomas Moran, exploring the wilderness and painting it. Eventually I became a landscape painter, toting a French easel and a backpack full of canvases as I traveled to places to paint. The experiences made me respect what Moran had set out to do with his art even more- preserve the natural beauty of the land by painting it and convincing others it should be protected. I knew I wanted to write his story, how he played a vital role in the creation of our first national park.

Creating the art for this book was a challenge. How to capture spouting geysers, huge landscapes, and men and horses climbing over fallen timber. I had never painted horses before this book. But I found a rancher kind enough to take me out on horseback so we could explore land Moran had traveled. Both the rancher and my husband, Dave posed as models in the book.

My favorite part creating the illustrations for the book was capturing the natural beauty of the land. I drew form the experience I had as a landscape painter. Though I now use watercolors instead of oils, the principles are the same, and it was a joy to pull out the field easel again and paint on location throughout the Yellowstone.

Here are a few of the paintings I did before I created children’s books, when when my focus as an artist was to paint on location. I often combined my painting travels with trips to Europe to study art in museums. The experiences I gained painting from life, on location were vital to my creating this book.

Brittany, France

Venice

Thanksgiving in New Hampshire

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