My Teacher Is a Dinosaur free coloring page

Yesterday I received copies of my fall picture book and they look great. The full title is My Teacher Is a Dinosaur and Other Prehistoric Poems, Jokes, Riddles, & Amazing Facts. It takes readers on a whirlwind tour of the history of life on Earth starting 4 1/2 billion years ago... not bad for only 48 pages, right? For more info including reviews, please check out this page.


These previous blog posts tell a little about the behind-the-scenes activity. I also wrote about doing the research for this book on I.N.K. (Interesting Nonfiction for Kids) here and here. Last but not least, here is my I.N.K. post about how to write jokes and riddles.


I haven’t forgotten about the coloring page... here it is!

Click on the image to enlarge it then print it out with a horizontal orientation and get out your crayons. (Did you know there is a Crayola set with 96 colors!?!) Or drag it off the web page to your desktop. Feel free to send it to any kids you know that love dinosaurs. If anyone sends me a photo of a colored-in page, I’ll post it here. Or, post it on my author page on Facebook!


Thanks, y’all!

Reading Rockets 2010 Big Summer Read

How nice to find out that The Shocking Truth about Energy is on the list for 6-9 year olds recommended by Reading Rockets. The entire list of about 20 titles is here online and there’s a PDF if you’d like to print out the list to take to the bookstore. 

Other titles on the list include: 

Face to Face with Manatees by Brian Skerry
She Sang Promise: The Story of Betty Mae Jumper, Seminole Tribal Leader, by J. G. Annino
Mirror, Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse by Marilyn Singer


The Reading Rockets web site is full of excellent resources to help encourage kids to read.


I created an e-card for them a few years ago, which can be found on this page along with several more by various illustrators such as Robert Sabuda, Marc Brown, and Betsy Lewin. The idea is to send them to your favorite little reader to give them a little extra motivation throughout the year.


So, here’s to happy reading, all summer long!

My spring book: The Shocking Truth about Energy

With a bolt of lightning named Erg and a gaggle of appliances, toys, and gadgets, get ready to find out about energy! Explore how electricity is generated plus sources of power from fossil fuels, nuclear, wind, water, solar, geothermal, and biofuels. For a longer post about it, please check out this post on the I.N.K. blog. And here is the book’s page on my web site.

Some good reviews have come in already, which is always a plus!
Kirkus:

Erg, a cartoon energy-bolt, narrates this electrifying introduction to the basics of energy. A spread is devoted to each of the many types of energy, how they are harnessed, their uses and their pros and cons: Fossil fuels, nuclear, solar, wind, water, geothermal and plant-based energy are all discussed. Leedy presents difficult concepts in a way that even younger readers can understand, encapsulating the key essentials and leaving the complex details for older readers’ texts. Additional pages explain the generation of electricity, address the problem of global warming and educate readers about how they can help save energy. Throughout, the watercolor-and-digital artwork cleverly illustrates the concepts presented in the text with cartoons, diagrams and sketches. The author’s whimsical anthropomorphized electrical outlets and devices keep readers’ attention and provide further information. Backmatter includes more energy facts and ways to save energy as well as additional cons against fossil-fuel usage. What Anne Rockwell and Paul Meisel’s What’s So Bad About Gasoline? (2009) did for fossil fuels, this book does for energy as a whole. (Informational picture book. 5-8)

Booklist:

An imaginary bolt of pure energy appropriately named Erg introduces energy basics: its varied forms, the principle that it can be changed but not destroyed, how we get and use the power of fossil fuels, good and bad news about old and new power sources, and the importance of conserving energy to save the earth. The author begins with the role of food in human bodies, a sure way to draw young readers in. The exercise of imagining human muscles pushing a car easily explains our use of other power sources. Leedy’s experience selecting facts that are most relevant and engaging for young readers is evident, and the information is eminently digestible. The design moves from energetic to near-frenetic. Her brightly colored mixed-media illustrations are filled with animated appliances, bursts of information, and decorated fonts. Three final pages of sensible suggestions for energy saving are followed by three more pages of helpful supplemental information and suggested Web sites, including a source for science fair projects.

— Kathleen Isaacs

Scanning turtles

In the early ‘90s I wrote and illustrated a book about sea turtles, entitled Tracks in the Sand. It was named an Outstanding Science Trade Book by the National Science Teachers Association and many people have told me they really loved the artwork. It’s been out of print for awhile, but with the ebook technologies now coming online, I’ve been thinking it might be a candidate for reissue in digital form.

With that in mind, and because three framed pieces are due to go into an exhibition, I’ve been disassembling the frames and scanning the spreads. The page just fits into my scanner... since it’s for a digital version, there is no need for bleed, I’m assuming. 


This little guy is under the sand in the nesting chamber breaking out of his shell... he looks a tad grumpy at the moment.


The artwork was rendered using Caran d'Ache Neocolor ll aquarelle crayons and is scanning nicely. I am having to piece the pages together in Photoshop, which isn’t too difficult, fortunately. Not sure at this point if the artwork will need to be in single page or spread form, but I’ll figure that out later.


One issue is that the paper is somewhat wrinkled towards the edges in places, so that is going to have to be dealt with a Screen or Hard Light layer to counter the shading.

Measuring Penny in top 100 nonfiction books

What a nice surprise... my Measuring Penny was named one of the 100 Best Nonfiction Books for Pre-K–Grade 8 by Judy Freeman on the Reading is Fundamental site. The whole list is here. There’s no date on the page so it’s hard to say how long the list has been up, but I just found out.


[A few minutes go by] 


Hmmm... just checked on the publication dates, and the most recent is in the early 2000s. So, it’s old news, I guess! I signed up for Google Alerts to try and keep up with things a little better. Gotta love the ‘net!

Seen a Giganotosaurus lately?

There’s going to be one on the cover of the book I just finished. Yes, I made the deadline (barely), working until 10 o'clock at night without a day off since about the middle of December. 

Haven’t worked that hard since illustrating my first book in 1984 which was pen and ink with pre-separated color. That meant that I had to color in with pencil 4 black and white “plates” for each spread of artwork, one for each process color of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black. No wonder A Number of Dragons took 6 months to illustrate. 

Who knew then that a bunch of people out there would invent the computers, software, and electronic pens and tablets to allow artists to draw and paint digitally? One thing is for sure, the artwork shown above would not exist with those tools. When My Teacher is a Dinosaur is released next fall (hopefully), my buddy Giganotosaurus (Giggy for short) will be staring out from the cover. 

And now, on to reclaiming my normal life again... yay!

Lost in time...

In case anybody is wondering what has happened to me, this is what I’m working on. Above is the eye of a Parasaurolophus, one of the hadrosaurs. The deadline for this prehistoric book is early February and it’s going to be a squeaker. The only way it has chance of being finished is if I don’t leave the house and chain myself to Photoshop.

It’s freezing here in Central Florida, the dinos wouldn’t last long down here. Hope your new year is off to a good start!

Recoloring a stegosaur

Here are three more versions of the Kentrosaurus from yesterday’s post. I got some very helpful feedback from my colleagues at PBAA (Picture Book Artists Association), so here goes. First I did a little tail surgery, then altered his body color only, below.

Below, his outline is a dark purple color. For some reason the background colors are brighter, too. Or are they just duller above... who’s in charge here, anyway?!?

Below the line work is a brown. It doesn’t look that different from the purple, really.

The brown/purple lines seem more integrated into the overall image, the black line stands out more... not sure which version I like, actually.

Prehistoric illustration style... opinions needed!

I’ve been working for eons on a children’s book about prehistoric life. Okay, for months and months. The dummy is finally more or less finished after some major revisions, so great... we’ll show it to a paleontologist to avoid any boneheaded errors, then on to the art. Speaking of errors, it’s difficult when the reference books don’t agree on basic terminology. Eohippus? Hyracotherium? Protorohippus? C‘mon guys, the little horses are important, let’s stick to one name already. This is as bad as the whole Pluto-isn’t-a-planet thing. (Just kidding, I’m aware that naming organisms can get complicated.)

Anyway, the first art sample is below, a Tiktaalik trying to decide whether it’s worth the struggle to flop around on land to go after some creepy-crawlies. Or maybe he’s just gazing wistfully and resolving to sign up for some legs.

(Hmmm... a mysterious line has appeared on the two images below... just ignore it, please. I would redo the images, but have managed to lose one version due to one of those “Save As“ snafus.)

I’ve been thinking that the above style is okay but not that dynamic. So below is a stegosaur (Kentrosaurus) rendered with a bolder black line. Better? Worse? Either is okay?

Of course, the fabulous thing about Photoshop is the ability to play with different color schemes, thus using up the time saved (if any) by using digital media. Either color version looks pretty good to me. I'm going to try having more black laced through the entire image to see how that looks. This is just a part of a page, maybe a third of it.

All of the line art and the plant shapes were done in Illustrator with the blob brush. This previous post goes into detail about the blob brush. Then the paths were pasted into Photoshop, filled, colored, and textured. BTW, the texture in the grass is from a photo of reindeer moss. Wonder if reindeer moss had evolved by the Jurassic Period? Or grass for that matter? I do know the reindeer hadn’t!

Announcing the I.N.K. Think Tank!

If you’re a teacher, librarian, parent, or anyone that is interested in nonfiction books for kids, here is a brand new free resource that you’ll love. The bloggers of I.N.K. (Interesting Nonfiction for Kids), including yours truly, have assigned national educational standards to their books and put them all into this database, the INK THINK TANK.

The participating authors are:

● Don Brown ● Vicki Cobb ● Sneed B. Collard III ● Marfé Ferguson Delano ● Susan E. Goodman ● Jan Greenberg ● Cheryl Harness ● Deborah Heiligman ● Steve Jenkins ● Barbara Kerley ● Susan Kuklin ● Loreen Leedy ● Sue Macy ● Dorothy Hinshaw Patent ● Susanna Reich ● April Pulley Sayre ● Rosalyn Schanzer ● David M. Schwartz ● Melissa Stewart ● Tanya Lee Stone ● Gretchen Woelfle ● Karen Romano Young

The titles range from picture books to YA books, all nonfiction. The awards this group of authors has received are many, including Caldecott Honors, Parents Choice Awards, Silbert Honors, Green Book Awards, ALA Notables, and many more.

Please help us spread the word!

Do you want greener books?

Have you ever wondered which is better for the environment: paper books or electronic books? I dug through some articles to see if there was an answer to that question and posted the results on I.N.K. (Interesting Nonfiction for Kids.) It’s amazing how many factors there are to consider, and I.N.K. readers have added a few more.

In other I.N.K. news, the 20+ author-bloggers been compiling a database of all our books in terms of how they meet national educational standards. For example, Crazy Like a Fox: A Simile Story helps students to meet several standards developed by the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) such as NL-ENG.K-12.4: Communication Skills. The database will be a free resource for librarians, teachers, and parents who prefer to use high quality trade books but also need to justify their educational value. It’s due for launch in October with its own web site so more details will be coming soon!

By the way, here’s what’s going on in the illustration above... Rufus the fox has just woken up and feels “as fresh as a daisy.” During the story, whenever a character is compared to something he or she turns into that thing. Since various characters “shake like a leaf,” become “as mad as a hornet,” and get “as cold as ice,” they look pretty silly throughout.

The Florida Book Awards

I’ve never won an actual medal before, though I did earn quite few Girl Scout badges some time ago. Last week my husband Andy and I attended the Florida Book Awards banquet and award ceremony because Missing Math: A Number Mystery won a bronze medal in the Children’s Literature division. There was a nice variety of books from fiction to poetry to mystery to nonfiction about Florida in the eight categories.

We met silver medal winner Donna Gephart, the author of As If Being 12 ¾ Isn’t Bad Enough, My Mother Is Running for President! This post on her blog Wild About Words has several photos taken at the event. It was great fun to hear the behind-the-scenes saga of how her book came to be published... as is often the case, it wasn’t easy. She mentioned that since the book’s publication she has heard from several luminaries in the political sphere, including Hillary Clinton.

It may not be obvious in the photo, but the bronze medal is actually copper-colored. And the gold medals were... bronze(!) The gold medals had been awarded previously in a ceremony with Governor Crist. John Tkac (Whispers from the Bay) had been asked by a child, “Why isn’t your gold medal gold?” So he went out and had it gold-plated! For a mere $50, apparently. It absolutely gleamed. So on the night of the banquet, the other gold medal winners were wondering what was wrong with their medals.

Another fun bit of news is that a set of the FBA books will be housed on a bookshelf in the Governor’s outer office, then next year will be moved to the mansion for permanent display.

The 2009 awards will be featured in Forum, a magazine produced by the Florida Humanities Council. If you’re a first time subscriber, a free one-year subscription is available here. Order by May 15th to get the issue with the FBA authors and books.

Garden books for artists + kids

Spring is the time to plant gardens or paint them (or both!) I came across this book that contains garden-inspired artwork from 100 different artists in a wide variety of styles using various media such as oils, acrylics, watercolors, and pastels. Under each image, the artist discusses the inspiration, design strategy, work process, and materials used.
The cover is shown on the left. It’s pretty dull, which may be why this is a bargain book on Amazon, marked down from $24.99 to around $6.50. A couple of other titles in the series are also marked way down. The full title is How Did You Paint That? 100 Ways to Paint Flowers & Gardens. Definitely inspirational! I have some notions about adding some fabric collage, stitching, and beadwork to the mix... stay tuned.

On the I.N.K. blog today, I posted 10 Reasons Why Kids Need a Garden, which includes a collection of several recent books about gardening for kids. To the left is one that didn’t get into that post, so here it is. Gardening with Kids is by Catherine Woram and Martyn Cox, with photographs by Polly Wreford. It has 35 projects plus garden-related crafts and games.

Happy creating, whether with art or dirt (or both)!

Another Collaboration

Good news! Last night, one of my editors left a message on our answering machine while we were eating a nice Italian dinner out... it seems my husband Andy and I will be doing another picture book together. The topic will have to be kept under wraps for now, but this little guy will be one of the main characters:
We have a long list of ideas for joint books, glad we’re finally getting another one on the schedule. The first one we coauthored was Messages From Mars, which came out in 2006. Although Andy is a research scientist working in advanced technical mode most of the time, he has a knack for thinking of fun plots and imagining vivid scenes which is great for picture books, of course. This time he’s going to be building cool 3D stuff to photograph, then I’ll draw in the characters in Photoshop. Or at least that’s the plan!

Missing Math Earns Bronze in Florida Book Awards

That headline makes me feel positively Olympian. (I’ve been trying to get more exercise lately, anyway.) The Florida Book Awards for 2008 have been announced, although their web site may not have been updated quite yet. Missing Math: A Number Mystery has won the third place medal in the Children’s Literature category. Who knew that an artistically-inclined person like me would ever have anything to do with numbers?

The 9th grade guidance counselor had that serious-grown-up look when informed of my reason for not taking any more advanced classes in the subject: I will never go into any field that requires math. As an art major in college, that logic continued and no math classes appeared on my schedule. When my children’s book editor in the early 1990s suggested doing a picture book with a math theme, it was startling, to say the least. And yet...

I began thinking about my everyday activities as an author-illustrator, from bookkeeping to measuring layouts to estimating how long it would take to do an illustration. Apparently math was integral to my daily existence! If you’re a traditional quilter reading this, your geometry muscles get a work out on a regular basis, right?

The other ironically nice thing about math from an artistic standpoint is its abstract nature. The possible imagery one can use with a concept is up to the imagination. If multiplication can be paired with Halloween characters, why not? I made a list of terms such as counting, adding, subtracting, and so on, and have been working my way through them ever since. All the titles (so far) are here. Kids seem to like my visual approach to math, and hopefully they’ll have a more positive attitude about it than I did.

The idea of “taking math away” took several years to crystallize into the story told in the book. To read more about that little adventure in writing, click here. It appears that keeping an open mind and doing a few sit-ups now and then can really pay off!

Best of the Best Goes Missing

I was delighted to find out that Missing Math has been named a Chicago Public Library Best of the Best book for 2008 in the nonfiction division. You can download a PDF of the entire list on this page, just scroll down a tad. There are many good books on the list, including The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary by Candace Fleming; Abe’s Honest Words by Doreen Rappaport, illustrated by Kadir Nelson; and Madam President by Lane Smith. Well it is Presidents’ Day today, remember?

The premise of Missing Math is that numbers mysteriously vanish one day. No one can count, add, or subtract, there are no phone numbers, fractions, sports scores... it just gets worse and worse! To see a fun video book preview, click here. The little cowduck seen above couldn’t pick the right size hat or boots, poor guy. Incidentally, the way I draw and paint these days is using Adobe Photoshop. Here is a brief explanation of how I create digital illustrations. Have a great day!

Think of a Good Title

Good advice, isn’t it? Whether it’s a book, a work of art, or a blog, if it’s worth creating it’s worth putting some effort into the title. Since my children’s books usually have some nonfiction content, the key word is usually somewhere in the title. If possible, it’s the first word. Case in point, Measuring Penny, which is about... measuring. It’s a pity for a book to have a vague title like Jamie’s Exciting Day when it could’ve been Jamie Finds a Pterodactyl, you know?

Keep in mind how the title sounds out loud, as well as how it looks in writing. Some word combinations are tough to say, such as Rory’s Rural Romp. And in these digital days you may want to have a identical domain name, so that’s another consideration. A long title may not work well as a web site addy: www.purplilocksandthethreebumblebees.com is a tad long.

What about naming artwork? While some artists have taken the easy road by calling everything Untitled #X, an appropriate title can add something special to the viewer’s appreciation of a work. If all else fails, try opening up a dictionary or thesaurus with your eyes closed, or try this fun random word generator.

For a book it’s important to avoid a title that’s the same or too similar to an existing one. A few years ago there were three books with the title Amazing Grace, which led to a lot of confusion. Once I have some title ideas, off to Amazon I go to see if it’s already been used. I’ve saved myself a lot of hassle by doing this.

In fact, yesterday provided an especially ridiculous example... early last week my husband Andy and I had dinner with one of my editors (in town for a sales meeting.) In the course of the evening she asked us if we had any ideas for a new children’s picture book, and one scenario cracked us all up. (Andy had just thought of it the day before.) By the end of the week, the publisher had offered us a contract. Wow! But when I looked up the title online, not only had it already been used for a recent kid’s movie, it had the SAME animal characters and the SAME plot! It wasn’t a big movie or we would have heard of it, but people would naturally think we copied it. Another disaster averted. I would be more specific about the name, but we’ve rethought the whole thing and hopefully the publisher will like our new concept. I’ll let you know!

Welcome to My Studio!

After debating which of my creative interests to focus on, I decided to publish a blog that could contain them all. Just to give you an idea of what topics may appear, here’s a partial list:

• writing and illustrating children’s picture books (over 35 at last count)
• insider info about CB publishing (CB = children’s book)
• painting/beading/stitching fabric collages, otherwise known as art quilts
• experiments with various materials, such as drawing on foil
• plein air painting, which I haven't done much of but will attend a workshop in April
• science-related topics (my husband Andy is a scientist*)

* Happy Valentine’s Day, Sweetie!

Here’s a bigger chunk of the art quilt used as the blog header. Click on it for a larger image. Note that the whiskers are REAL cat whiskers, shed by our cat Knickers. It was very tricky to sew them on, because whiskers are so springy and they kept popping out. Ended up using monofilament thread and lots of teensy stitches. As you can see, the cat is not looking at the cardinal. Wonder what she’s looking at?

Though this is the first post on my personal blog, for about a year I’ve been a once-a-month blogger on I.N.K. which stands for Interesting Nonfiction for Kids. It’s a group effort by several authors from picture book age on up. My most recent post, Being Smart is Cool! refers to some recent research about the best way to encourage children to learn, and gives recommendations for great books kids can read to ratchet up their brain power.

I can’t pretend to be a big expert on the whole blogging thang, so if you have any suggestions please put them in the Comments. And by all means add this blog to your reader... if you don’t have one already, give Google Reader a try. Readers allow you to create your own custom “newspaper” on whatever topic you choose. Mine is full of art and book blogs, naturally. Will post some favorites on here, eventually. Thanks for stopping by!