Nancy Dahlstrom's!

Every summer, our faculty have a tradition of visiting the founder of the Hollins Visual Arts Center, Nancy Dahlstrom. She has a lovely home in Fincastle—an historic little town near Hollins. The garden is beautiful! I especially love her grove of Japanese Maples.

See the cat?

Her herbs attract all manner of birds and the most striking gold finches.
Nancy is technically retired, but stays busy in her gorgeous print studio. She loves showing us around.

Nancy is one of the most talented engravers and monoprinters I know, and a darend fine painter too. I've been in love with her iris painting for years. And look at that rose! Her patience is impressive, as is her process. Nancy is a true master at her craft!
     Dinner was delicious.And Rob Costello generously gave our annual group shot. From left to right back to front, here are Ellen, MJ, Ashley, Delia, Mitali, Me, Nancy, and Ruth. So fun!

Miscellaneous Moments of Joy

As I walk around campus I come across wonderful little moments of joy that make me so happy when I spot them. So, here are some miscellaneous moments. Maybe they'll make you smile too! For instance, I came across one of our students and one of our staff trying to sort out a sewing machine. For the closing of the Symposium and the Alumni Retreat we held a pot-luck party where we caught this fun photo of Mary Jane Begin, Me, Ruth Sanderson, and Ashley Wolff. Our summer semesters are so intense that we hold classes on July 4th. We held another pot-luck party that evening, or at least, that was the plan. Several students took the weekend to travel and visit family, so only about half the students were left. An enormous storm came through right before the party, so by the time the remaining students gathered, we only had popsicles, beer, and a bag of cookies for everyone to eat. Obviously, that wasn't going to be enough for dinner, but no restaurants were open. So, we headed down to the dining hall. A few folks brought more food and wine and it ended up being quite a good time after all, even if it wasn't what we expected at the outset! After following her career for so many years, I had such a lovely time getting to know Mitali Perkins better. We took a fun walk along the Greenway (a path that runs along the Roanoke River downtown). Mitali was enamoured by one of the sculptures in the sculpture garden and tried to strike the same pose. I'm sure I'll catch more of these wonderful moments and I look forward to sharing!

Lectures and Talks

Speaking engagements may not make the best photo ops, but they are exciting in person! And we've had some amazing speaking engagements already and we're not even to the half-way point of the semester yet!
     Author Ellen Kushner gave a kick-off keynote for the summer filled with song and folklore. It set a magical setting for our summer to begin with. Julie Benbassat gave a great talk introducing her gallery show opening in our auditorium in the Visual Arts Center.
The Museum and our program catered the event and everyone hung out to celebrate. Here are Ashley Wolff (with Rufus), Mary Jane Begin, Julie Benbassat, and Lisa Fraustino. Mitali Perkins gave a fabulous talk on "JUST MAKING: Tips for Compassionate Creatives?" to celebrate her forthcoming book. It was followed by a very popular book signing that sold out! Ruth Sanderson, former Co-Director of our program, gave a talk on Character Creation in celebration of her newest books. Stephanie R. Toliver gave a talk on “Afrofuturism’s Answer to Armageddon: Black Author's Speculating in the Afterlife of Slavery.” And Rob Costello gave a great talk on Horror in Queer Children's Lit. And that's not all! More to come!

Summer Semester Begins! The placing of the characters!

After ten months of preparing, it was so exciting to finally have everyone arrive on campus for our very busy summer semester! We begin our summers with a meet and greet pizza picnic party. Everyone was so thrilled to be back on our gorgeous Hollins campus, and to reconnect.
     One of our favorite traditions during our kick off party is the placing of the characters. These are our collection of about 60 children's book characters created by our own Ashley Wolff. Everyone picks their favorite to go place on campus... somewhere. Here's Lisa and Liz with Max and Madeline...
and Teresa with the very hungry caterpillar. We spend the rest of the summer discovering where they're all hiding—it's one of the things that makes our summer semesters so magical. (Here's everyone right before they went to put the characters around campus.)
Click the image to see it larger in a new window. And I was thrilled that this year, Ashley made one of my main character from Merbaby's Lullaby. Aren't they wonderful!? I'm tickled silly. So, the characters are scattered all over campus, the students are settled in, classes are running strong, and everyone is having a great time! Here we go!!!

e-bike adventures!

I recently shared that I got an e-bike. I wanted it to be able to pop downtown and to our various farmers markets without having to deal with the hassle (and expense!) of parking when everything is so close to where I live (alhtough just a tad too far to walk). I wasn't really sure if I'd use it all that much, so it's been wonderful to discover that I use my e-bike all the time and I love it so much!!! As such, I will have to share a new series based on my e-bike adventures, the friends I go on rides with, and the cool things we see!!! So, here we go!
     Here is a photo of "Marvin" on one of my first outings to a coffee shop in Wasena. Isn't Marvin pretty!?This was right before they began construction for a new bridge, which is pretty amazing to see.Parts of the Greenway are blocked off because of the construction, but a new route loops you through local neighborhoods for that stretch. Meanwhile, the Greenway still has it's magic, like this bona-fide fairy circle!One Saturday, I headed to the Grandin Farmers Market...
and saw nice things...

and bought some lunch...
On another outing, I spotted two Yellow-Crowned Night Herons. They put on quite the show for me!On anohter ride, I met up with friends at Black Dog Salvage.We went all the way to the eastern end of the Greenway - what a treasure this path is - it runs the length of the Roanoke River as it meanders through downtown Roanoke. SO PRETTY!!! (Here's Meighan pointing out where we are and trying to figure out where we're going.)Oh! And I also took Marvin to a festival downtown, where I listened to free music and had an empanada from a food truck. SEE!? See how much fun I'm having with my e-bike!? In fact, I have to stop typing because I'm going riding with some friends today. Need to get ready... :)

Our New Margaret Wise Brown Reading Room

As you can imagine, we have a massive collection of some of the best picture books for our Graduate Programs in Children's Literature and Illustration here at Hollins University. We used to keep them all in file boxes and pull them out for students to use during summer semesters, then pack them back up again and put them in storage.Well, now that we're expanding our programming to have a year-round option, students will need access to the books all year round; and since we've been receiving so many books as a result of our Margaret Wise Brown Prize (a Hollins alum), the collection has grown immensely and will keep doing so. So, we sought a more permanent space (at least for the time being). This is the space we decided to move into. It is a study space (and will still be), but only had one set of shelves and a bunch of old books noone was using anymore.
This was actually years in the making, and shelves had to be procured from one of our offices. Here are two of our facilities heroes, Andrew and Ryan, making sure the shelves are in place and configured as needed. Student worker, Elizabeth helped place all the books on the shelves once they were up. Sorting the books and labeling them was going to be the work of my Picture Book Trends workshop. As it turned out, Karen Coats, head of the Children's Lit program at the University of Cambridge wanted to come help. We ended up coming up with a brand new categorization system (I'll write a summary article about all this soon) that will make more sense in the long run and help the collection to grow. I had book dividers printed as our old dividers were looking quite tired.We categorize our books via theme because our students oftentimes don't know who created a book, or even a title, they'll just know, for example: I want to write a story on "Friendship." What other books are there on friendship?" Hence, the theme-based categorization method.Arranging the categories on the shelves was no small task. To be most strategic, we kept having to move them around. But we ended up quite happy with our results. And, of course, we featured Margaret Wise Brown's books and our prize winners. We also created a display area for this year's MWB Prize winners.And I added touches to mimic the Great Green Room from one of her most famous books, Goodnight Moon, by adding a red balloon and red carpets...And Green beanbag chairs meant to represent the bed.There's even a yellow rocking chair - I'll have to share a photo of that later. And Ashley Wolff, one of our summer professors, is going to create the windows from The Great Green Room this summer. So, there will be more to share soon!
     In the mean time, I'm thrilled to have our books in this space where more people can enjoy them and students can use them year-round!!!

My New Office

Here at Hollins U, I have inherited the Children's Lit office - the office of my predecessors since 1992! It's in a lovely corner of the refurbished (but OLD) Swannanoa Building, overlooking the Visual Arts Center, Moody Dining Hall, and the hub of campus life. Amanda Cockrell, who occupied this space for decades, comes by for lunch often and she loves what I've done with the place! My immediate predecessor, Lisa Fraustino, arrives today along with our summer students. I hope she likes it too. I'm trying to make it mine, while making sure it screams how much we love Children's Literature and Illustration!


What do you think?