Question: Tell me about your muses

My favorite muse is my cat, Pu. She is the inspiration behind many of my characters!

And then there is the grizzly bear I grew up watching with my parents (they are wildlife photographers). I knew someday I’d have to do a story with this bear.

Since the bear lives out in the wilds of Montana Pu finds it necessary to supervise my projects.

If you’re interested in the art and creators of picture books please read this blog. It’s the best one out there. Thanks to Jules Danielson for creating and working so hard on such an awesome blog for us all to enjoy!

It feels like it was ages ago that I finished my upcoming book, Red Sled, but I just received my first copy of the book from my editor at Atheneum. Turning through the pages reawakened the delight I had in creating this book and I am reminded and overwhelmed at what a gift it is to create my stories. I still feel like I’m that earnest little 4 year old who was so moved at seeing my first picture book. I was forever changed and sculpted by it. That first picture book not only fueled my imagination, it gave light to a lifelong passion for creating art. From the day I opened the very first book, I knew I wanted to make my own, even if I couldn’t imagine how I’d ever make that dream come true. Red Sled was a story that began long ago, around that time my imagination was first startled awake. In my childhood musings and daydreams the characters of this book kept me company. It took years for me to grab their abstract elements out of the ether and put them to paper. But I’m grateful for all the happy hours I spent chasing them down in the wandering paths of my imagination, before setting them down in just the way I would have loved as that 4 year old girl. Somewhere in this sore, achy body that little girl is smiling bright.

So I am very excited by the fact that Red Sled is soon to be coming out – November 1st to be exact! I wish I was fully recovered and could charge on ahead with life, working hard on new stories, and hitting the road to share this book with my readers. But for now, I must persevere with my treatment and embrace all the kindness that comes my way when readers reach out to me and send me well wishes. I hope readers find this book. Its creation was such a celebration for me. And I was thrilled when my editor sent me the first review – a STARRED REVIEW from Kirkus!

Here it is:

Red Sled

Written by Lita Judge
(Atheneum; ISBN: 9781442420076; November 2011; Fall catalog p. 31)

Judge’s latest may be virtually wordless, but it packs a powerful visual punch that will stick with readers long after the final page is turned. At the end of a winter day, a child props the titular sled outside a cozy cabin. A bear finds it there and sets off to enjoy the ride of all rides, joined in turn by some other forest denizens. As each joins the ride, the animals’ positions change: The bear is on his back with the rabbit perched on his feet, then he is atop the moose’s antlers, a position next occupied by an exhilarated-looking porcupine. By the end of the hill, the tower of animals on top of the sled is quite shaky and collapses, “fluoomp…….ft” in a heap. The entirety is wordless but for the carefully chosen onomatopoeic words that perfectly capture the sounds and bring the adventure to life: the “scrinch scrunch” of footsteps in new snow, the “sssssffft” of the sled on its run and the “whoa” of the animals as they enjoy the ride. When the fun is over, they return the sled to the cabin, where the child puzzles over the footprints in the morning. Though rendered simply, Judge’s pencil-and-watercolor animals are gloriously full of life and infectious joy. Readers will be hard-pressed to finish this without letting their own joy show through. Pure genius.

I hope everyone is having a good summer. Some of you may have noticed a lapse in my blog posting over the last several months. I’ve been taking a bit of a hiatus to recover for health reasons, but hope to be on the mend soon and look forward to being much more consistent with postings in the near future!

And I wanted to thank all of the students and teachers who have sent well wishes over the spring. Thank you. It means a lot to me!

Lita

STRANGE CREATURES is about Walter Rothschild and the museum that he created, and the bugs, butterflies and animals that he collected, starting from when he was just 7 years old! It seems logical to begin where the process begins – with the researching and gathering of information about my subject.

Primary Sources:
Very little has been written about Walter Rothschild. The challenge to bringing this character to life was to not only record the invaluable contributions to science that he made, but to honestly capture his eccentric charm and incredible will.

As an author I love the challenge of digging up interesting sources and uncovering the facts about my subject. To learn about Walter Rothschild I was able to travel to the museum that Walter created – now called The Natural History Museum at Tring — which is about an hour northwest of London. It was a fantastic adventure to travel to England. I viewed the public collection at the museum and then was fortunate enough to get an appointment with the Museum Manager and with the Director of Education. They generously opened up the world of Walter Rothschild to me.

I stepped into the museum archives, searched through old documents, photo albums, and the extensive collection that Walter left behind. I walked along the grounds of his family home, and thought about what it must have been like to be the son of a Lord, heir to a banking empire, but more interested in bugs, butterflies and the natural world.

(The two pictures above are of the Natural History Museum at Tring and the present day grounds around the former Rothschild Estate at Tring, which is now a school.)

Walter’s life was a contradiction of privilege and wealth alongside an overbearing amount of expectation that was placed on his young shoulders. And though few are alive who remembered Walter, I was even fortunate enough to speak to people who remembered family stories about him. These direct sources were invaluable in creating a story of the life of this complicated character. And since I’m also the illustrator, everything I learned and saw also went into the pictures in the book.

The next day, Dave and I did one of my favorite things – went to the Natural History Museum to draw dinosaur skeletons.

I’m working on my new book – How Big Were Dinosaurs? with Roaring Brook Press. The museum was pretty crowded, which is always a mixed blessing as it makes drawing more difficult, but I love seeing all the excited kids and adults exploring the wonders of the museum. So I embraced the crowds, and I did find some quiet corners to draw T-rex towering over all of our heads, tiny Protoceratops that were the size of border collies, the even smaller Psittacosaurus, and all my other favorites dinosaurs. This book is an exciting challenge because I want to break the myth that all dinosaurs were the size of skyscrapers and show how big they really were. There is no better way to learn than to draw the skeletons. A lifetime of daydreaming in front of dinosaurs skeletons has led to this latest project.

We stayed at the Lamar Buffalo Ranch which is the place where they regenerated the existing Buffalo herd from just a few survivors back in the 1920s. It’s a rustic place with a couple of classrooms and a kitchen in the main Bunkhouse, and small cabins for the students, instructors, and volunteers. Each night the Buffalo herd migrated from lower in the valley, through the camp, to higher ground. In the morning, we painted as the sun rose and sand hill cranes called from nearby. Coyotes howled and yipped at night and we saw nine bears!

We felt so lucky to stay in this enchanted place within Yellowstone, and so immersed in the land and surrounding wildlife. Dave and I have already decided to return next year, to teach and spend more time in a place that we love.