Marjorie Watkins and I did our first school visits with her books, Rotaida and the Runestone, and Royal Spy (I illlustrated Royal Spy). That's me on the right saying, "RoTAI DA, RO TAI DA!" We look a little bind because we took our glasses off for the camera. 

The clothes we are wearing are from the era, Charlemagne's time in 800 A.D. We dyed them with onion skin and tumeric to imitate as closely as we could the dyes that would have been available at that time.

The kids seemed to enjoy our readings and our attempts to take them back before cell phones and Ipods, and their teachers smiled the whole time, so I think we were successful. The kids asked great questions and had interesting comments. One girl thought she couldn't live back then with out her cell phone, but her classmates reminded her that she wouldn't even know about cell phones, so she would be fine. We had discussions about herbal medicines, how our ideas of trolls might have come from people with birth defects being cast out from the community, about travel being easier on water than on land.

It was great fun, and we plan to do it again. And again.

school starts

School started last week for all my young friends--but not for me! I'm taking a 

sabatical this year to focus on my long time love for writing and illustrating children's books. I did some illustrations for Royal Spy, a middle grade novel by Marjorie Watkins, and we are working together on a web site for this book and for Rotaida and the Runestone, which was Marorie's first Rotaida book.  The site is in process, and you can see where we are at with it so far by visiting marjwatkins.com.  I did the colorful map, the illustrations for Royal Spy on the web, and this illustration for Rotaida and the Runestone.

I plan to continue adding anecdotes about kids from time to time, as I remember them, and to keep  you updated on my adventures in the publishing world. Meanwhile, the sun is shining through the yellow petals of the sunflowers in my sunflower forest, and I'm in seventh heaven painting them! 

The sunflower forest happened quite by accident. We had sunflowers 2 feet across last fall! There was also a variety of smaller sunflowers with black seeds popular with the birds. I think somehow the flowers got their pollen mixed up, because this year I have sunflowers from barely 2 inches across to almost a foot, and from 18 inches high to 8-10 feet high! The kids planted the seeds well, though quite by accident. We buried apple mash from our apple pressing in the garden area, and all winter long the children dug and stomped and got their boots stuck in the mud where the seeds fell. In the spring, something sprouted all over the garden. I thought maybe it was baby apple trees, but no, it was hundreds of sunflower plants! I gave away at least 40 plants, and still have a forest of sunflowers, as well as sunflowers over by Thomas the Train and the swing set, and among the potatoes (which are also volunteers).