Adventures at Wilder Farm

For the past several years we’ve had a pair of Phoebes nesting in our woodshed. They’ve just started on this year’s nest! Here are a few pictures from last Thursday (May 3rd):

(Click on the images to see them a bit larger.)

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Please check out this article on The Secret Language of Birds in BookPage: http://bookpage.com/interview/the-secret-language-of-birds

If you’ve ever wondered—or tried to explain—what birds are saying as they flit about in trees or preen on their perches, help is here: Lita Judge’s new book, Bird Talk: What Birds Are Saying and Why, is a wonderfully illustrated compendium of bird behavior and communication for young readers.

BIRD TALK will be released on March 13th!

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USA Today
“Talk about joy rides…It’s a perfect book for reading aloud, especially by expressive readers who can do justice to a walk in the snow: Scrinch scrunch scrinch scrunch scrinch scrunch.”
http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/reviews/story/2012-01-05/winter-kids-books-roundup/52381758/1
 
Washington Post
“.. a delightful winter book for very young readers. Each double-page spread features a serene snowscape bathed in moonlight, the perfect foil for the explosive humor of the animals’ antics.”
www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/lita-judges-red-sled-almost-wordless-story-of-a-bear-enjoying-sledding/2011/12/21/gIQAoiy3YP_story.html
 
PEOPLE
“Just the right blend of danger and delight, this book is perfect for a wintry night.”
http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20552540,00.html
 
San Francisco Chronicle
“It’s strikingly original and totally inspired.”
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/23/RVMP1MEF6C.DTL
 
Concord Monitor
“As with many a treasured children’s book, the details are left to the fertile young imagination…the book is exactly what a book about sledding should be: pure fun.”
http://www.concordmonitor.com/article/301399/gleeful-romp-worth-the-ride
 
Book Page
“Parents and kids will enjoy this sweet, energy-filled tale.”
http://bookpage.com/feature/let-the-snow-days-begin!
 
Shelf Awareness
“Like the red sled’s riders, young readers will be pleading, AGAIN!”
http://www.shelf-awareness.com/readers-issue.html?issue=54#m1127
 
Newburyport News, Newburyport, MA
“Charmingly depicted”
http://www.newburyportnews.com/local/x1068808201/New-holiday-books-to-help-children-enjoy-the-season
 
Ithaca Child
“A delicate, beautiful book about the wonder of winter and play.”
http://www.ithacachild.net/current/current%20html/Export13.htm
 
Winter Indie List
“This is my new favorite snow book! The minimal text highlighted with fun sound effects is complemented by beautiful art…In this sweet and wonderful picture book, Judge successfully captures all of the joy of a great sled ride.”
http://news.bookweb.org/news/winter-2011-2012-kids%E2%80%99-indie-next-list-preview

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(Written by Dave) Lots of our friends have commented on the short video that Lita and I created for Red Sled, so I wanted to post it to the blog and mention a bit about how we produced this. So first, here’s the video:

When Lita and I work together on these types of things, she does all the story-boarding and then I produce something quickly to get started from and then we tweak and change things until it feels right. There are many, many iterations of tweaks and changes. To get the right feel for the animation we did a lot of experimentation. We used Adobe After Effects CS5 (mac version) for the whole thing and for the animation. Here’s what the project looks like in After Effects:

We had various ideas for the music but then I saw a snippet of Prokoviev’s Romeo and Juliet on Pianopedia. It wasn’t quite long enough so I made up the rest and recorded it and it seemed to set the right mood.

There are many video settings, and I’m not sure if I went down the optimal path, but I find it quite helpful when other people post their settings, so here’s what I did. I made the “master” copy at 1280 x 720 pixels, 29.97 frames per second, using Apple QuickTime mov format. This created a 230 MB file for just over a minute of video. Then I compressed the file using Adobe Media Encoder to an MP4 format, still 1280 x 720, but now more like 20 MB. Then I upload that to YouTube where it gets compressed again into whatever format they use.

We hope you like the video!

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We just posted a new Strange Creatures discussion guide on Lita’s web site.

It contains projects and activities for Vocabulary, Music, Art and Science, and includes an author interview. The guide was created by Tracie Vaughn Zimmer, a reading specialist and children’s author (visit her Web site here).

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We’re back again after taking a brief blog break since the end of last year. We just received our first box of STRANGE CREATURES from the publisher and were psyched to see a nice review of  STRANGE CREATURES in the Wall Street Journal this weekend. [WSJ Review]

And last week we heard that STRANGE CREATURES was picked as a featured elementary biography selection of the Junior Library Guild!

Here are a few things we picked out of the reviews so far:

“There’s much in Walter Rothschild’s story for a tyke to like, particularly the timid boy’s end run around his father’s ambitions, and Judge makes the most of the battle of wills in her humor-tinged watercolors. Wild animals pop up all over the swanky estate while portraits of ancestors glare down from their frames in disapproval of the family ado. A final note comments on Rothschild’s contribution to the burgeoning field of zoology and on the way collection practices and wildlife study have changed over the past century and a half. Primary-grade children who are encouraged (assigned?) to read a biography will find Rothschild to be one of the most engaging guys they’ve never heard of.” BCCB

“In richly colored paintings Ms. Judge shows readers …  nautiluses and octopuses, lizards and kiwis, okapis from the Congo, capybaras from Colombia, and marabou storks.” WSJ

“Energetic, expressive paintings, many with unusual perspectives, fill the pages. Not surprisingly, the odd creatures that fascinated Walter are among the most engaging characters, like the giant lizard that peers out from Walter’s mother’s lily bed. Human characters are more sketchily drawn, which emphasizes Walter’s preoccupation with the natural world…“ Kirkus Reviews

“Judge’s picture-book biography of the shy genius may encourage readers to follow their own creative ideas…” School Library Journal

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