And the Winners Are...

Thank you to everyone who bid on the auction, donated to the campaign, shared and posted and entered this competition!

Your contributions raised $3982 which, thanks to the generosity of The Curious Reader, will stretch to send 230 picture books to 23 schools! Which schools you ask??

The studio sorting hat was put to good use again (thank you Brian Floca and Sergio Ruzzier!) and these are the winning schools:

Auten Road Intermediate School, Hillsborough NJ
Cannaday Elementary School, Mesquite TX
Cerra Vista Elementary School, Hollister CA
Crestview Elementary School, Springfield TN
Discovery Elementary, Grand Forks ND
Dr. Debbie Emery Elementary School, Katy TX
Eagle Cliffs Elementary School, Billings MT
Grundy Center Elementary, Grundy Center IA
Henry Ford Elementary, Pharr TX
JFK Elementary, Sioux Falls SD
Manatee Cove Elementary, Orange City FL
Matthews Elementary School, Matthews NC
Menchaca Elementary, Austin TX
Nicolet Elementary School, Green Bay WI
Orchard School, South Burlington VT
PS 18 The John G. Whittier School, Staten Island NY
Russell Street School, Littleton MA
Seatack Elementary - An Achievable Dream Academy, Virginia Beach VA
St. Bernard School, Enfield CT
St. Paul School, Cana VA
Sturgeon R-V Elementary School, Sturgeon MO
Visitation BVM School, Norristown PA
Wilson School, Natick MA

They will each receive a set of these ten picture books. Congratulations to all, Happy Holidays and Happy Reading!

Let's Turn This Painting into Books!

I have so loved hearing about schools that run mock Caldecott Awards but I have also been hearing from librarians and teachers how they struggle to buy new books. How they often supplement the classroom library out of their own pockets.

Around this time last year I held a fundraiser to send sets of 10 new picture books to schools in need.
I thought maybe there was a way of turning a drawing into a pile of new picture books. Because while there’s nothing as comforting as curling up with an old favorite, there’s something thrilling about turning the first page of a brand new one.

I was hoping to be able to fund 60 books for six schools. Thanks to your generosity we raised around $3500, which enabled us to send 200 books to 20 schools.

So! It's that time again!

Here's how it works.

This painting is for sale on eBay. It was on the cover of the Horn Book Magazine Awards Edition in June, 2016. Eagle eyes will spot Last Stop on Market Street and The Lion and the Mouse, The Snowy Day and Winnie the Pooh.

The listing is live and runs until December 3rd.
I have partnered with the wonderful bookstore, The Curious Reader, who have helped me select 10 beautiful, funny, rich, thoughtful picture books to tempt young readers.

The Airport Book - Lisa Brown
The Case for Loving - Selina Alko and Sean Qualls
Du Iz Tak? - Carson Ellis
Finding Winnie - Lindsay Mattick and Sophie Blackall
Freedom in Congo Square - Carole Boston Weatherford and R. Gregory Christie
The Journey - Francesca Sanna
Penguin Problems - Jory John and Lane Smith
Real Cowboys - Kate Hoefler and Jonathan Bean

This is Not a Picture Book - Sergio Ruzzier

Thunder Boy Jr. - Sherman Alexie

So now I just need
a) People to bid on the drawing. Click here!
b) Librarians and teachers to enter the draw. (Which you can do by leaving your name and the name and location of your school in the comments below. Only US schools, I’m afraid.)
c)  You to help spread the word! (Please share far and wide!)

Thank you, all!

ps. If you'd like to make a separate donation, you can do so here and receive a signed print from Finding Winnie!

The Making of Finding Winnie - Part 4

 

The story of Finding Winnie takes place in the context of WW1. Winnie, named for Winnipeg, became the mascot of the Second Canadian Infantry Brigade, and by all accounts she provided entertainment, distraction, comfort and solace to the troops, many of whom were very young and far from home. This illustration of Winnie posing with the soldiers was inspired by a photograph from the author, Lindsay Mattick's family archives. Harry is in the second row, second from left, seated.

Growing up in Australia, we learned about the Great War from an Australian perspective. Egypt and Gallipoli and ANZAC biscuits. (My own great uncle, Lancelot Blackall, below, served with the Light Horse Brigade.)

So it was interesting to delve into Canadian history. I read about soldiers' kits, Ross Rifles, MacAdam Shield-Shovels, and their doomed boots. Ross Rifles were long and heavy, performed poorly in damp conditions and would often jam after first firing, making it impossible to reload. As the name suggests, the MacAdam Shield-Shovel was designed to be a multi-purpose shield and shovel. Unfortunately it weighed over five pounds which made it difficult to carry, the shovel’s blade was incapable of stopping the penetration of gunfire even from the smallest of enemy calibre arms, and the fact that it contained a large sight-hole made it almost useless for shoveling. As for the boots, they were made with pressed cardboard soles, which rapidly disintegrated in the mud.

 

This image of Harry's regiment marching in the incessant rain on the Salisbury Plain mirrors the composition of his departure earlier in the book. The First World War was all about hordes of young men, embarking on journeys with uncertain destinations.

 We don't see anything of the actual War in Finding Winnie, but in the illustrations I wanted to allude to the devastation it caused. We all know the iconic photographs of soldiers leaving for war, hanging from train carriages, waving hats, reaching out for a last grasp of a wife's hand.

 I set up this scene with Harry's departure from Winnipeg...

 

...and echoed it with his return. The families are the same ones, four years later. We see the survivors and the gaps where men – or limbs – were lost.

The Making of Finding Winnie - Part 3

 

 When my not-yet editor Susan Rich first sent me Lindsay Mattick's manuscript for Finding Winnie, she described it as "full of wonderful things to bring to life; a sea of white tents at the army barracks, a parade of ships crossing the ocean in 1914, The London Zoo..."

From the very beginning I was excited to paint the parade of ships. 

"Nobody had ever tried to float so many people and animals across the Atlantic Ocean before. 

Thirty ships sailed together, carrying about 36,000 men, and about 7,500 horses... 

and about one bear named Winnie."

I sketched the image above, which was how I imagined the parade. I read that Harry and Winnie had been on board the S.S. Manitou, one of the many merchant ships escorted by warships in formation across the Atlantic Ocean. 

It was pretty easy to find an image of the S.S. Manitou.

  

I could have just made up the other ships, but I thought, there are people who are serious about ships, and they will know I just made them up. So I went looking for  reference photographs of the convoy. This was the only one I could find. It was war, after all, and the Canadian army didn't want the enemy to know they were coming, so people probably weren't encouraged to take snapshots.

 

 And it's a pretty striking photograph, but it didn't tell me much about what the individual ships looked like. Then I found this painting by Lieutenant Commander Norman Wilkinson,
called Canada's Answer, which gave me a few more clues.

Then I found a very helpful website with an archive of primary documents from the Great War (gwpda.org) and found a list of all the ships and the order in which they sailed. I drew lines radiating from the S.S. Manitou and did image searches for those ships in lines, trying to get one whole set. It was a bit like bingo.

They sailed at sunset, so a red sky made sense, but it was also meant to suggest the war they were sailing towards. From the painting above I saw some ships were flying signal flags. I read (more than I ever imagined I might) about signal flags from my studio mate Brian Floca's extensive library, and just so you know, I tucked a secret message into that string of flags.

Do you notice anything else in this picture? The Canadian flag? The book had gone off to the printer and at the very last moment somebody noticed that the flag was the maple leaf. Which was designed in 1965. This convoy took place in 1914. Oops. Thank goodness we were able to fix it in the nick of time.

The Making of Finding Winnie - Part 2

 Illustrating Finding Winnie took over a year. The very last thing I did was the cover. Sometimes covers come easily, sometimes it's a torturous process. This one, while not exactly torturous, was a little elusive.

 This was my first sketch, but I wasn't really thinking where the title would go.

Followed by about 87 color sketches, until I hit on Winnie holding onto Harry's boot. But the background didn't feel quite right. Nor did the type. We were down to the wire, the book had to go to print. We sent out the f&gs (folded and gathered proofs) with a placeholder cover, the one on the lower right.

We took a collective deep breath, and went back to the drawing board. And then Saho Fuji, the art director, came up with the yellow diamonds in a flash of inspiration.

Partly inspired by Cole's bedspread...

Partly by this old edition of Winnie the Pooh...

And possibly, from deep in our collective memory, this WW1 poster I found in the very early research stages.

We always knew we wanted to show Harry and Winnie on the front and Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh on the back.

One of my favorite parts of the book is the case cover, the surprise under the jacket.
When I saw this photo of WW1 soldiers...

It rang a bell!

And so, my tribute to E.H. Shepard.