dulemba

Coloring Page Tuesday - Shuttle Bus

We will have a shuttle bus running from campus to downtown this summer, so, of course, I had to draw one for the sign!!
CLICK HERE for more coloring pages
Remember, I create my coloring pages to draw your attention to my books! Especially... Merbaby's Love! Click the cover to learn about this sweet lullaby board book written by New York Times Best-selling author, Jane Yolen! Makes a GREAT baby shower gift!

If my news and images add value to your life, won't you please

Just love this one image? Consider a one-time donation...

I create my coloring pages for teachers, librarians, booksellers, and parents to enjoy for free with their children, but you can also purchase rights to an image for commercial use, please contact me. If you have questions about usage, please visit my Angel Policy page.

Graduations at Hollins!

I love graduation ceremonies. Everyone dresses up in their academic robes, important music is played or sung, and one of life's biggest milestones is celebrated - the completion of a degree that, oftentimes, has taken four years (or more) to achieve. They are a very big deal.
Our first ceremony was the Honors Commencement Ceremony in the chapel on campus. All the faculty lined up to walk in as usual.

Our fabulous chorus and the beautiful space made it all feel incredibly momentous.

Afterwards, faculty and students gathered in the Quad for a drum circle... as you do! (I'm constantly reminded what a special place Hollins is.)

The next graduation ceremony was the official commencement for all the undergraduate and graduate students. A threatening storm sent us to the colliseum downtown instead of on the gorgeous Quad in the center of campus. (I hope we can be there next year!)

We got ready for the procession in a room downstairs. Here I am with our Museum Director, Jenine Culligan, and our Library Director, Luke Vilelle.

Happily, one of our grad students was able to make it for graduation ceremonies! Here I am with Mollie Hillman.

President Hinton gave a rousing speech, as always.

And the commencement speech was delivered by Hollins grad and Opera Star Helena Brown. You can read more about her here.

I got to cheer on Mollie as she walked across the stage. Here she is on the BIG SCREEN!

And also Raine Matos who just finished their BFA in Fine Arts and will be joining us for graduate studies this summer!

Genevieve, Amy, and I had fun cheering on all the graduates as they walked through our congratulations line.

There's Mollie again!

It's impossible to leave a commencement ceremony without a BIG SMILE on your face! CONGRATULATIONS EVERYONE!!!

Claudia Mills' THE LAST APPLE TREE

One of my brilliant friends, Claudia Mills, has another wonderful book coming out on June 18th that deserves some love! I asked her to drop by to talk about it. Take it away, Claudia!

     A lot of newsletters come my way, and I mean to read them but somehow never get around to it, and months later they end up in the recycling bin. But a few years ago, I browsed through a newsletter from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where I taught in the philosophy department for twenty years, and one article caught my eye. Ecology professor Katharine Suding had created the Boulder Apple Tree Project, to preserve the county’s aging heirloom apple trees as well as memories of those who loved them.
      Hmm.
      I clipped the article and taped it in a notebook where I mean to keep ideas for possible books but somehow never get around to it, and if I do save them, never remember to do anything with them.
      But this article, clipped by happenstance, years later became the seed of The Last Apple Tree. The book stars an heirloom apple tree, lone survivor of a vanished orchard, and two seventh graders, a boy and a girl, who uncover its secrets while interviewing her grandfather for a school oral history project.
      Of course, in the process of groping toward the actual story, I had to come up with secrets for the tree, and tensions between the boy and the girl, and between the boy and his environmental activist father. I had to come up with a character arc for the girl, who wants to protect her widowed grandfather from losing himself in the griefs no one in her family is willing to talk about.
      There would be poems, I decided, from the point of view of the apple tree, scattered throughout the book. My previous book for young readers, The Lost Language, was my first novel in verse, and I found I adored that literary form. But I didn’t want to write two verse novels in a row. No, this book would have standard prose book chapters, alternating between the viewpoints of the boy and the girl. But poems from the tree would give me a chance to indulge my love of writing poetry and contribute a third viewpoint, the most important of all.

Maybe I should read these newsletters more faithfully! Or at least occasionally. For who knows what tiny tidbit of an idea may emerge, that planted, and watered, and fertilized, and given slow time to grow, may find itself someday bearing the fruit of a published book.

Here's a photo of Claudia and her favorite writing spot, where she writes for at least an hour a day!

Bologna - Pretty Pictures!

As I mentioned, all the children's book fairs like this one are held in destination cities - places where people love to visit. That's part of how they bring in all the big name players! So, of course, I have to share some of the awesomeness that is Bologna on my last day...forget the order, these are going to come in all higgeldy piggeldy...
Bologna is beautiful and ancient.

The main plaza or piazza in Bologna is the Piazza Maggiore, home to the Neptune Fountain. It's being restored right now, so is roped off, but Hannah Sanguinetti (Scottish illustrator friend), Pilar García de Leániz (we did our MFA together), Amy Dover (new Graduate Program Director of Illustration at the University of Edinburgh) and I had to have a photo anyhow...

The Piazza is the heart of the city. It hosted a bus strike on Thursday morning.

Only to be followed by lovely music and happy crowds later in the day.

Off of Piazza Maggiore are a gazillion little alleyways that host little shops and restaurants.

There was also a fishmonger selling fish to locals (we were totally in the way).

But how in the world would you even try to eat something like this eel - it was about the size of a tire!

I did a whole post years ago about the covered walkways of Bologna, which are a UNESCO historical site. Along all those walkways are stores galore! I was so bummed this shop wasn't open when I went by it, I so would have bought this shirt!

But I treat myself to some nice leather gloves. (I bought some red leather gloves in Florence when I was a teenager on a student trip and I still have them!) While this bike wasn't new, it was new to me. I saw several parents with their kids in the back on bikes like these.

As chance would have it, I ran into Pilar again and we had lunch. (Bologna is a surprisingly small town.) (We split a pasta ragu of course, hand-made pasta made by the woman in the window!)

Amy caught up with us again and the three of us nailed THE table overlooking the Piazza. Amy pulled out her drawing pencils that she always has with her...

and well, it was a table of illustrators. What do you think happened? We drew all over the menus of course!

After a day of shopping and eating pasta, gelato, etc., I met up with another friend who I was so happy to run into from Scotland, Miriam Johnson and her friend Polly Silk. Miriam and I met up with Blythe Robertson earlier during the fair (you may remember their names from several posts when Stan and I lived in Scotland) - another wonderful surprise! We wandered from pub to pub because restaurants in Bologna don't even open until 8:00pm. But we finally had an amazing dinner, although I was ready to POP by then!

This was Polly's dish.

Happily, all I had left to do was to roll into bed and get up at an ungodly hour to get to the airport and begin the long, several-legged flight home.
Home. Ahhhhh. It's good to be back, but WOW, what an adventure I had!

Bologna Children's Book Fair:
01: To Bologna!
02: More Bologna!
03: Bologna - pretty pictures!

More Bologna!

Here I am with my obligatory photo with the main event sign.

In my last post, I shared the beginning of my Bologna trip - as in Monday! Heck, I wasn't able to even finish Monday - there was more!
Remember the Anglia Ruskin booth I talked about? Well, it's also where PictureHooks hosted a party on Tuesday evening. PictureHooks was the Scottish organization that made me decide to go to the University of Edinburgh for my MFA and it was co-founded by my dear friend and author Vivian French, who was there! We had a lovely lunch together and caught up on all our news on Monday, so Tuesday was just more hugs and love. The party was a blast too. I ran into so many friends from Edinburgh! Like Katie Chappell and Hannah Sanguinetti. Petros Panaou also joined us - he put on the Georgia Conference on Children's Literature where I gave a keynote and a workshop at the beginning of April at the University of Georgia. (I'm behind on my blog posts, but I hope to add it soon!). Petros and I ended up making each other our "plus one" at several parties, so we opened doors for each other. What a small world our children's book world is! We end up having friends all over the world!
Monday also saw IBBY's (International Board on Books for Young People) announcement of the Hans Christian Andersen Award. What a thrill to be there in person for that!

Even better, the head of the Children's Lit program, Evelyn Arizpe, at the University of Glasgow, where I did my PhD, was one of the judges! She was following online from Mexico.

The after-party was fun too and I met lovely people.

And I honestly have lost track of which day the Astrid Lindgren Award was announced, but I was there for that too!

So was Dav Pilkey's Dog Man.

Days 2 and 3 gave me the chance to walk around and enjoy some of the presentations. For instance, Mac Barnett was there announcing his new book for adults about why children's books are so important. It was a really good talk! (If you don't know who Mac Barnett is, click on his name, you're sure to know his books!)

I attended two talks by the illustrious Leonard Marcus. How we met is actually a funny story from 2012. You might know him from the museum show on children's books that was at the New York Public Library several years ago, or the one that is on now at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC. Or maybe you know him from his books. This is his latest. We spoke and he might even come down to the Smithsonian to meet my students if I can arrange a field trip!

I also enjoyed at talk at the PublisHER booth about AI. Sarah Baker, Executive Director of SCBWI was on the panel. She and I are hoping to do some big things in the near future, so stay tuned for that!

Of course, one of the main reasons I went to this year's fair is because I met the creators of the Illustrators' Survival Corner, Giacomo Benelli and Ivan Canu in Shanghai, and they invited me to give portfolio reviews at Bologna! Sadly, I didn't get any photos, but I had a blast talking to such dedicated creators! Being invited to give portfolio reviews there is quite the honor, so I was thrilled to be able to take them up on it... because of the other main reason I was at the fair... At Hollins University, we are expanding our MFA in Children's Book Writing and Illustrating program to now also have a year-round option (along with our summers-only option). This opens the door for international students to attain visas to come study with us. Hence, the posters and the brochures and bookmarks I was sharing everywhere, and also the conversations I had with people. Days 2 and 3, I spoke with publishers in several international booths including the United Arab Emirates, Rwanda, Nigeria, Bangkok, Taipei, Mongolia, Taiwan, Belgium, and Canada. Many have developing children's book markets and want help taking their books to the next level - this is where we come in!
A fellow portfolio reviewer turned out to be Eric Telfort, program director at RISD - we met at ICON two years ago. If was fun seeing him in his element talking about character design.

I even got to see a live demo of an illustrator doing a lino-cut LIVE for onlookers.

Gads, I didn't even mention some of the gorgeous books I got to see! Out of the thousands, tens-of-thousands these were some of my faves.

As I left the fair, I had to take a photo of this wonderful quote set into the stepping stones, because wow is this true about my life right now. It says "every step I have taken in my life has led me here, now."

Tuesday evening I attended a private party hosted by SCBWI at the adorable bookstore, Libreria Trame. I was having so much fun, I forgot to take pictures and especially wish I'd gotten the photo of Barbara McClintock, Martha Rago, and me - we had a wonderful and long overdue sit-down. (Martha will be speaking at Hollins this summer.)
Okay, okay, I know you really just want to see more Bologna, so that will be in my next post!

Bologna Children's Book Fair:
01: To Bologna!
02: More Bologna!
03: Bologna - pretty pictures!