Adventures at Wilder Farm

Pennies for Elephants is a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award!

You can download the full list of finalists — books in Children’s/Young Adult Lit here.

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This entry was posted on the Mackids Blog last week, but I wanted to re-post it here so I could include larger images–click on any of the images below to see the larger versions.

One of the challenges I enjoyed about this book was capturing the immense difference in size between baby dinosaurs and their parents. I started the illustration process by sketching loose thumbnail sketches, exploring different compositions to convey the scale of dinosaurs.

Then I began refining these ideas into detailed drawings and final art.

Throughout the sketch process, I try to keep ideas fluid. In this case, I thought an aerial view of a parent next to 5 school buses would show the immense size of a mother Argentinosaurus. But I thought there might be even a better to way to show her scale. Then I calculated that a parent weighed as much as 17 elephants. I love drawing elephants, and thought the idea was better than the first.

Originally I sketched backgrounds around the dinosaurs. But the thing I wanted to emphasize the most with each illustration was life-like gestures of the dinosaurs. My editor, Deirdre, and my art director, Danica, suggested I try a white background around the art. I loved it!

The negative space also helped tie the layout of the book together. The book has a pattern of 2-page spreads. The first offers clues (or facts) that scientists have discovered. The second is a full spread conveying educated guesses about how baby dinosaurs and their parents behaved. Combining all these details worked with this layout.

I loved creating illustrations that demonstrated how dinosaurs must have behaved like animals alive today. The challenge was to tie illustrations of living animals with dinosaurs and show their similarities.

I chose poses that were reminiscent of things we’ve seen in the animal world. For example, a dinosaur nest seen from above, as if you were looking down into a bird’s nest.

The cover – that’s always the most fun! Here are just a few of the thumbnail sketches I drew to explore how to create it.

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We have a spindly tree on the way to our front door that seems to mysteriously get decorated when we leave the house, most recently with a Bird Talk theme!

This isn’t the first time. Even before the tree was in the ground we came home one afternoon to find some strange objects on it.

Hmmmm. It all looks strangely similar to our friend Kim Cunningham’s found object art.

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I was speechless after receiving this lovely letter from South Elementary in Jackson, Missouri. With the librarian’s permission I’d like to share it:

Dear Lita,

I am a school librarian at South Elementary in Jackson, Missouri. After the recent earthquake in Haiti, I used your book One Thousand Tracings for a text-to-world connection. The students were asked for ways they can help the people of Haiti just as the children after WWII helped the Germans. The students then cut out their footprints and signed each with their own way of helping the earthquake victims. Many brought money for the American Red Cross. This morning over $1200 was turned in to the Red Cross. Attached is the picture of the presentation.

Thanks for sharing and know others have benefited from this story.

WOW!! I’m still speechless. Congratulations to South Elementary for such an amazing effort!!

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I don’t think I’ve mentioned it to a lot of people, but I have another book lined up with Roaring Brook/Flash Point for 2011! The book is called BIRD TALK and it’s a 48 page non-fiction picture book about the different ways that birds communicate, and why. I’ve been working on a finished dummy and thought it’d be fun to share a few images (click on any image to see it larger).

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(Written by Dave) We were just updating several of the pages on Lita’s website and thought we’d post a few pencil sketches. These are part of a story that’s currently percolating. (Click on any of the images to see them larger)

More sketches are here and more illustrations are here.

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