After three months of drawing and a round of revisions, I was ready to paint Turkey’s Sandtastic Beach Day by Wendi Silvano!
I ordered 20 sheets of Arches 140lb hot-press bright-white watercolor paper and cut it to the sizes I would need for 7 two-page-spreads and 26 single pages.
After talking things over with art-director Michael Jantze, I made some decisions about the color scheme. It would be a perfect, blue-sky day throughout the entirety of the book, I decided. I’ve never done this before, but for this book I mixed a books-worth of ‘perfect blue sky’ in advance. (Winsor Blue, Green Shade)
I wanted Turkey’s Sandtastic Beach Day to be extra light and sunny with lots of perfectly white highlights throughout. Masking fluid would help me achieve that effect.
I stocked-up on paint and pulled out my color swatches. Having color swatches helps immensely with watercolor. I always want the first color I apply to be what I want— exactly. It’s one of the things I love about watercolor. You make a decision, then live with it. No endless fussing.
I use a blotting paper to moderate the load of watercolor in my brush and to test the color before putting it down.
My most frequently used brands of watercolor paint are Holbein, Winsor & Newton, and Daniel Smith.
I usually order a few new paint brushes each time I begin a new book. I sort of have a system for organizing them.
My most frequently used brush is the Da Vinci Cosmotop Spin Quill size 0. (I made a decision when I first began my painting career that I was never going to waste a minute of my life using a paint brush smaller than size 0.) I also really like the Winsor & Newton Series 7 Kolinsky Sables and the Silver Black Velvet brushes.
Next I filled up my color-wheel ceramic palette with the watercolors I intended to use. With the exception of one convenience green, all the colors on my palette are single-pigment paints. With watercolor in particular, the fewer pigments you mix together, the fresher your colors will look.
I did a few frisket tests.
I gathered my photo-reference material.
I decorated my studio with seashells and taped paintings of seagulls to the ceiling.
I printed out the drawing for the copyright/dedication/title page at 10% larger than actual size, and lightly traced it onto the watercolor paper.
After tracing, I soaked the paper with water…
…and taped the soaked watercolor paper to a piece of Gator Board.
Then I dove into the painting. I listened to ocean sounds while I painted.
I think this painting took me 2 1/2 days to paint, around my average.
After the painting was done, I cut it off the Gator Board and scanned it so I could see how it would look with the text.
When all the paintings in the book were complete, I wrapped them in clear sleeves and drove them to Two Lions for a proper scanning.
The designer at Two Lions, Tanya Ross-Hughes, then did her thing.
Screenshot
Basically, what she does is take a pile of paintings and turn them into a beautiful book. I love all the details she adds to the jacket, spine, and flaps.
After the paintings are in the hands of my publisher, there’s nothing left for me to do but to go out into the world and meet my readers at book-signings, school visits, conferences, and such. My favorite event to occur around the release date of Turkey’s Sandtastic Beach Day was Frostburg State University’s ‘Pirates Ahoy’, an amazing event that brings the entire town together to inspire children’s literacy.
When I illustrate a picture book, I always have my audience in mind. All the interaction with my audience I get to experience after my books are released into the world is one of the major reasons I love expressing my artistry in the medium of picture books.
Creating a picture book is a complicated puzzle.When I’m in the drawing stage, I spend much more time thinking about how to solve the puzzle than actually drawing. I visualize solutions to the puzzle while I’m taking a walk, when I’m feeding the animals, when I’m on hold with Verizon, at night while I’m sleeping…
I like to imagine I am a humming bird, flying around the scene, seeing it from every angle. Typically, I begin putting pencil to sketchbook at around sunrise before I forget the fleeting images my subconscious mind churned-out the night before.
The windows with the lights on…that’s my studio. When this picture was taken I was just in there drawing. Now I’m walking the sheep out to pasture. I brought along the manuscript, a pencil, an apple, and a pen-knife. The apple and pen-knife are so I can give the sheep, chickens, and crows a little treat on my way through. Beyond the pasture there’s a gate that leads to a walking trail at Pine Run Reservoir. It’s my go-to place for a walk when I need to refresh after drawing for a few hours in the morning. As I walk the trail, I stop periodically to make a note or doodle on the manuscript.
Wendi Silvano’s written story for Turkey’s Sandtastic Beach Day begins on page seven:
The Summer Children’s Festival was in full swing. Farmer Jake made a special trip with his farm animals. Turkey and his pals loved kids, and they were happy to be there…mostly.
My visual story begins on pages two and three with the endpapers. (Page one if you count the cover)
On my first day of walking with the manuscript for Turkey’s Sandtastic Beach Day I drew this doodle of Farmer Jake holding a shepherd’s crook. My idea was that Farmer Jake would lead Turkey and all the other animals onto a wagon, and at the same time lead the reader into the story.
After I run out of room to doodle directly on the manuscript, I turn to drawing in sketchbooks. I fill up three or four sketchbooks with every picture book I illustrate. My pencils of choice are Derwent water soluble sketching pencils in light, medium, and dark wash. Don’t want a detail pencil at this point.
Here are some of the other drawings that went into creating the front endpaper scene.
When I was ready to incorporate these sketches into the dummy, I scanned them, opened the scanned images in Photoshop, lassoed them out, and pasted them into a new blank page sized at 11″ X 22″. This is my one concession to digitalization. Inserting my drawings into Photoshop helps me with the page design and makes revisions easier. Each element of the drawing is a separate layer and can be moved around and re-sized however I like. I could avoid the extra step of scanning my pencil drawings by drawing directly on a digital drawing tablet, but I love drawing with a pencil on paper way too much to do it any other way. Here is what it looked like when I was putting all these drawings together in Photoshop.
(I like how some of the manuscript still shows through on Farmer Jake.)
Here is what the watercolor looked like while it was being painted.
After having shown the reader Farmer Jake leading the gang onto the wagon on the front endpapers, I thought a good way to keep the forward momentum going would be to next see Farmer Jake’s fully loaded jalopy hurdling over the bridge towards the ocean, Turkey waving from the passenger seat, and the gang in tow. I wanted the reader to feel the excitement of almost being there… to smell the salt air…to hear the seagulls…
I found a photo-reference for Farmer Jake’s jalopy on the internet.
This scene also had to function as the copyright/dedication/title spread. Here is what I submitted to my art director and editor at Two Lions in the first draft of the dummy.
After reviewing the dummy, the team suggested that it should be more obvious that the animals are in a wagon. This is why it’s good to have editors and art directors look at your work. To me, it was obvious that the animals are in a wagon because my head was immersed in their world. To someone looking at it fresh, it’s wasn’t as clear.
This is the revised version of the copyright/dedication/title spread. Much better thanks to ‘Team Turkey’.
This is how the final turned out.
The settings are another example of the many things I work out in my sketchbooks. Here is a boardwalk study.
This is the picture that inspired KLUCK BROS.
Turkey’s Sandastic Beach Day also required me to draw many people. It wouldn’t be the beach without lots of people. So I drew lots of people… and lots of other beachy things.
One of my favorite scenes in Turkey’s Sandtastic Beach Day is the one where Turkey is riding a wave. Coincidentally, I’d spent a few weeks the previous summer in Maine painting waves and studying how other artists paint them.
This is the photo reference and sketch of Turkey riding the wave.
This is the sketch of the wave.
Here are the sketches assembled in Photoshop.
(I like when Wendi Silvano writes but then. That’s my cue to draw something crazy on the next page.)
Here’s how this page looked in watercolor while I was painting it. (In the final I added a little yellow to the sun.)
As you can see, drawing a picture book is a lot of hard work, and also a lot of fun. Sometimes I laugh out loud at my own silly drawings while I’m working. That’s when I know it’s a good drawing. But you know what the coolest part of my job is?
The coolest part of my job is when I walk into a school like The Upper Township Primary School and see that my work has inspired a whole new generation of budding artists.
Thank you Upper Township Primary School. And thanks to everyone else who is reading my blog. In part three of Illustrating Turkey’s Sandtastic Beach Day I’ll show you how I did all the paintings.
I wanted to dive right into my sketchbook the minute I received the manuscript and deal summary for Turkey’s Sandtastic Beach Day. But first I had to put on my agent-hat and iron-out all the details with my editor, Kelsey Skea at Two Lions. The deal summary is basically a simplified contract that summarizes the advance on royalties I’ll receive, percentages, and the schedule for the delivery of sketches and finals. Once all the ‘i’s are dotted on the final contract, Kelsey and I switch back from business-mode to creative-mode. It feels a little bit schizophrenic jumping from businesspeople talking about numbers and due dates, to creative people discussing the latest shenanigans of Turkey and his barnyard pals, but we’re accustomed to it. We’ve now worked together on six of the eight Turkey Trouble books…and everybody in this business wears a lot of hats.
I love illustrating the Turkey Trouble books. I don’t know how the author Wendi Silvano does it, but she always comes up with great new adventures for Turkey that keep it interesting and fun. In Turkey’s Sandtastic Beach Day, Turkey and pals visit the ocean for the very first time. The story includes lots of action, silliness, and word-play. And the fact that the story was set by the ocean made it extra fun to illustrate. I have many fond memories of vacations ‘down the shore’… and I LOVE to paint the ocean!
Like a caveman, I still create all my pictures by smearing pigments around on a surface.
So, before I begin drawing, I take inventory of my art supplies and make a list of everything I’ll need to paint a forty-page picture book. During this preparation time I spread all my tubes of paint out on my taboret and make a color chart with the main palette I intend to use. For each book my palette is a little different depending on the season, setting, and colors I want to emphasize. For the ocean scenes I mostly used a mix of PB27 and PO62. I find it helpful to think of the pigment names and not the marketing names of the colors I use.
I also usually purchase a few new brushes when I begin a new book. With all the painting I do, my brushes tend to lose their sharp tip. And you can never have too many brushes.
Unlike a caveman, I order most of my supplies from Blick.com.
My Blick.com order for Turkey’s Sandtastic Beach Day might havelooked something like this:
5 Derwent Water Soluble Sketching Pencil – 8B (Dark Wash)
4 Derwent Water Soluble Sketching Pencil – 4B (Medium Wash)
3 Derwent Water Soluble Sketching Pencil – HB (Light Wash)
3 Blick Wirebound Sketchbook – 12″ X 9″, 80 sheets
1 Faber-Castell Dust-Free Vinyl Eraser
20 Arches Watercolor Paper – 22″ X 30″ sheet, 140lb Bright White 140 lb. Hot Press
1 Winsor Newton Professional Watercolor – Winsor Blue (Green Shade) 14ml tube
1 M. Graham Artist’s Watercolor – Azo Orange, 15ml tube
1 Daniel Smith Extra Fine Watercolor – Prussian Blue, 15ml tube
1 Holbein Artist’s Watercolor – Cadmium Red Deep, 15ml tube
1 Turner Water Colour Masking Fluid, 40ml jar
2 Da Vinci Cosmotop Spin Brush – Quill, Short Handle, Size 0
1 Winsor Newton Series 7 Kolinsky Sable Brush – Pointed Round, Size 6
During this preparation time I also make myself a precise work schedule to help me keep on track during the long process, which from start to finish usually takes about nine months. This amount of time includes three months for drawing, six months for painting, any vacation I might have planned, photo reference collecting, school visits, book signings, and a little padding for unanticipated delays and miscellany. I greatly appreciate that I have a publisher that accommodates and values the care I put into all my illustrations, and from all my experiences visiting schools, I can tell you with certainty that the kids appreciate it, too. They see EVERYTHING!
Finally, before I begin drawing, I mark up the manuscript with notes about pagination, font size, font style, trim-size, and big-picture ideas I want to remember. For example, on the manuscript for Turkey’s Sandtastic Beach Day I wrote:
This is fun, real fun! KEEP IT LIGHT! (It’s the beach.)
And with that thought in mind, I conducted one last frisket test and dove in!
(In part two I’ll talk about the drawing process.)
Her beautiful golden feathers stood out dramatically against the muted greys of the November landscape — even in death. Another dead chicken lay at the base of the fence, presumably dropped there by her killer while making a hasty escape. There was no sign of the other four chickens Krista and I left to spend the night in the horse shelter in the pasture the night before.
We had not even moved into our small farm yet, and already we were learning tough lessons. Sure, when Krista and I first decided to take this big lifestyle leap we took some farming classes at Delaware Valley University, but now our real education was beginning.
Our first six chickens came with the farm. They were living in one of the horse stalls in the barn with a simple perch made from a branch, a couple of cardboard nesting boxes, and an ultraviolet light hanging from the ceiling to stimulate egg-laying. When Krista and I noticed the chickens didn’t look super healthy we began letting them out of the barn in the evenings after work so they could get a little fresh air and sunlight.
Neither of us had ever picked up a chicken before and we didn’t have a clue how to get them back into the stall when night fell. We were just winging it. They ran every which way when we tried to grab them. Fishing nets didn’t work well. Their feather got all tangled in it. On several occasions we’d find a chicken on the wrong side of the fence in our new neighbor’s back yard and I would have to climb over it. We must have made a hilarious first impression. We had yet to discover the luring power of a handful of dried worms.
On the night before that first stark lesson in the realities of farm life, we let it get too dark before attempting the round-up.
“They’ll probably be OK left outside for one night,” we told ourselves.
In December we officially moved into our new farm, and soon afterward decided to give chickens another go. We mail-ordered six new chicks of various breeds — which I never would have guessed was a thing you could do. My favorite was Artois, a Sicilian Buttercup. We kept them at just the right temperature in a re-purposed recycling box while their down filled in. Stella stood over the chick’s temporary nursery and stared at them for hours, drooling.
At first we were concerned she might want to eat them, but we soon came to believe she thought she was their mother.
While the chicks were incubating, I got to work on a coop.
My design began with our German shepherd Stella’s old doghouse as the top-floor roosting area. To this I added a nesting box on each side.
A ramp led from the penthouse on the top floor to a lounge area on the second floor to provide a dry place on days when we might not be around to let them out to free-range in the morning. We definitely wanted our chickens to be free range.
Another ramp led to a 4′ X 8′ chicken run with mesh wire fencing extending 12″ below the surface to prevent fox from digging under.
The site for the coop was in the pasture behind the barn, where from my studio window I could keep an eye on the flock during the day when the chickens free ranged.
Stella would provide back-up security— a job she took very seriously. Nary a day went by when I wasn’t alerted to one sort of threat or another. When Stella barked, I put down my paint brush and ran down the steps with a slingshot in one hand and a few steelies in the other. I very rarely arrived on the scene in time to see the perpetrators. I usually encountered only a bunch of frightened chickens and a few crows hanging around. I’d sling a few steelies in the direction of the crows and return to my painting.
Then one Spring weekend—at around sunset during a family get-together— while we were all in the house playing board games — Stella heard some crows cawing and began whining at the door. I’d forgotten all about putting the chickens to bed, the kind of opportunity the sly fox waits for.
As soon as I opened the front door of our house, Stella sprinted full speed toward the pasture, barking like crazy. I ran behind her. Stella gave chase to a red fox while I assessed the damage. It was an eerily familiar scene: scattered feathers and dead chickens.
“Damned fox!” I shouted.
The fox leapt onto the top of a fence post just beyond the invisible fence line she knew Stella couldn’t cross, sat there for a few seconds as if to mock us, then disappeared into the nature preserve beyond our property.
I searched the pasture for survivors but found none. I didn’t find any survivors in the horse shelter either. As I stood there silently mourning the loss of yet more chickens, I heard a faint trilling in the rafters above my head. It was Einstein and Artois, the only two chickens to survive the second great chicken massacre.
The next Spring we ordered more chickens.
“Maybe we get a donkey?” I asked Krista. “I’ve heard donkeys protect sheep, so maybe they would also protect chickens.”
And that’s how we ended up at Pleasant Farms looking at donkeys. We were considering adopting two because apparently, they get really sad if they don’t have a buddy, which when you think about it was probably Eyore’s problem. Ultimately, we decided not to add donkeys to the mix. Too much added work and expense. We were reaching for a solution.
I had a friend with a flock of sheep that she kept protected with a Great Pyrenees. This sounded to me like it might be a great solution to our chicken attrition problem. If a Great Pyrenees can protect sheep, I thought, it would probably protect chickens, too.
Enter Maggie, a three-month-old Great Pyrenees and the newest member of our elite chicken security force. Maggie, we decided, would live in the barn. Being nocturnal, she would act as a round-the-clock bodyguard for our chickens.
And let me tell you…she did guard those chickens fiercely. If you tried to take one of her chickens away from her there’s no telling the harm that might befall you. She loved her chickens and if anybody was going to eat one of her chickens it was going to be her.
We lost half of this third batch of chickens to friendly fire.
To make matters worse, Maggie and Stella fought tooth and nail. Stella didn’t think it was right that Maggie ate her beloved chicks. Maggie didn’t think it was right that Stella got to live in the human-house. It was a very unpleasant situation. Sadly, after a couple of years of trying to make things work with Maggie, Stella, and the chickens, we found Maggie a new home. She’s now chief of security at a horse farm in South Carolina.
Again, we ordered more chickens to bolster our flock, ever optimistic that this time we’d get it right.
The accidental rooster that came with this group was the low point. The Colonel, as we called him, was a regal creature…and admittedly, he did keep predators away…but he also did things to the hens that I don’t care to talk about.
I wasn’t terribly sad when Maggie got a hold of The Colonel.
While all this chicken trial-and-error business was going on, our farm was metamorphosing in unexpected ways. We began planting a variety of grasses, wild-flowers, and trees. Krista’s garden expanded. We began raising pigs and added a couple of sheep to the flock.
Every new life we added led to other new life. The wildflowers begot bees, the pig feed begot a pumpkin patch, the chickens begot crows, and on and on…
Things were coming together nicely at our little farm…except for the chicken situation. The cycle of acquiring chickens and loosing chickens continued for three years.
But then it stopped unexpectedly. Three more years passed without loosing a single chicken to a predator and we didn’t know why. We had a few theories, but none of them quite added up.
Then one unseasonably warm day in March while out in the pasture hammering shingles onto the roof of a new chicken coop I was building, a commotion in the trees overhead caught my eye… a rustling of branches below a single black crow at the tip-top of our tallest maple tree.
“Uh oh! Uh oh!”, it cawed.
The chickens in the pasture instantly went into defense mode. A few just froze where they were standing. The more vulnerable scrambled for cover. Then I witnessed a full-grown hawk swoop down and attempt to intercept one of the chickens while she was run/flying toward the safety of the horse shelter. The hawk was simultaneously attacked by two crows, one on either side. The crows continued to pester the hawk until it gave up and flew away.
“Could it be that the crows are the reason we haven’t been losing chickens?” I wondered.
I began reading about the subject and learned that crows are very territorial and will defend their territory from any predator — including fox and hawks.
I began observing the crows more closely. The more I observed, the more it became clear that the crows were in fact protecting our chickens. It’s also interesting to note that it’s always three crows: one lookout to sound the alarm and two to go on the attack. I also learned they recognize faces, develop opinions about people, and hold grudges.
This surprising turn of events was one of the most gratifying lessons we’ve learned in our great farming adventure.
Now Krista and I leave offerings of shiny objects and special treats for the crows so they know they’re welcome.
I talk to the crows, mostly apologizing for slinging steelies at them. I sense it might take them a little while to completely forgive me. We’re working things out as we go.
Einstein the Hen is a good hen, but it’s a lot of responsibility being the hen at the top of the pecking order. It can make a hen grumpy.
That’s the only way I can explain why she did what she did.
I was nearly finished an illustration for the next book in the Turkey Trouble series when, just as I was about to paint the pupil in Turkey’s eye I heard a loud, blood curdling Squaaaaawk!
Einstein the Hen was on top of Littlest Chicken with her talons digging into Littlest Chicken’s back. She pecked ferociously as Littlest Chicken objected vociferously.
I ran down the steps from my studio and out into the pasture.
I shooed away Einstein and picked up Littlest Chicken to comfort her. I didn’t see any outward signs of injury and she seemed OK. After a while of comforting her I held her low to the ground so she could jump from my hands into the grass below and rejoin the flock. But she didn’t jump. She just sort of toppled out of my hands, flipping momentarily upside down. When Littlest Chicken righted herself and tried to walk, she fell over.
That’s not good, I thought.
I picked up Littlest Chicken and brought her to a stall in the barn so she could recuperate in safety. I put a little food and water next to her and went back to work.
When I returned after an hour or so to check on her, she hadn’t moved from the spot where I placed her. When I came back at the end of the day, she still hadn’t moved or touched her food or water.
This went on for the next two days. She just sat there, eyes slowly opening and closing.
There comes a time in every farmer’s life when he or she must make the tough decision to put down an animal. I thought this might be that time for me. I Googled how to humanely kill a chicken.
I went into Littlest Chicken’s stall to check on her one last time. I held her withering body in my hands and pleaded with her.
“Littlest Chicken, just let go,” I repeated softly.
As her eyes slowly opened and closed, I hoped she might die peacefully in my hands.
I didn’t want to do it.
I talked the situation over with Farmer Krista, and since Littlest Chicken didn’t seem to be in pain, we decided to give her one more day.
Certain Littlest Chicken was on her way to chicken heaven, I made her a nest on the widow sill of her stall so she might at least enjoy one last earthly sunset before she passed on to the next world.
On Monday morning I found Littlest Chicken right where I left her, still clinging to life. I offered her a little water, and she drank. I offered her some food, but she still wasn’t eating. She wasn’t walking either, but the drinking was an improvement. I noticed that there was some yucky stuff forming around her vent, so I gave her a warm bath in soapy water. She passed a partially formed egg. I dried her up and set her on the warm stones of our ‘sunset deck’. Afterwards I decided to make her a nest in my studio so I could hand-feed her throughout the day. She continued to drink, but still didn’t eat or move. She was one sick chicken.
On Tuesday I brought her into my studio again. I was beginning to like having a studio mate, even if it WAS just a half-dead chicken.
I played her some of my favorite Mozart piano concertos. I talked to her in the few chicken words I know.
“Buc buc. Buc buc buc boc. Buc buc bwak buc.”
By the end of the day, she began eating some of the worms I hand-fed her. Then, with newly found strength, she stood up. She did a half circle in her nest, then sat back down, exhausted by her effort.
That evening, I wrapped-up Littlest Chicken in a blanket and she joined Krista and I for our rite of Cocktails with Chickens. We set her down on the ‘Sunset Rocks’. Littlest Chicken was very wobbly on her legs but seemed to gain strength from the sight of her flock. Determined to re-join them on the other side of the fence, she walked a few wobbly feet to the edge of the rock deck and tumbled into the grass. She then hobbled another foot or two and squawked in the direction of her flock mates. It was obvious Littlest Chicken wasn’t yet recovered, but really wanted to be with her friends.
But for her safety, we thought it best for her to spend another night on her own in a stall.
The next day Littlest Chicken only spent the morning with me in my studio. Because she was now eating, she was also now pooping. No longer a good studio mate, I let her spend the afternoon in the pasture inside a little fenced-in area that protects a newly planted Rosebud tree. That way she could be near her flock, get a little rehab exercise, but would also be protected.
She still wasn’t her old self, but she really perked-up when it was the flock’s feeding time. And for good reason. Feeding time is the most exciting time of day for a chicken. That’s when the fresh food and water is delivered, and everybody has a lot to say about it.
Excited by all the commotion, Little Chicken jumped up onto a branch of the Rosebud tree to escape her confines and join the others. She temporarily made it to a lower branch, then wobbled and fell off.
At sunset Krista and I decided to put her up on a perch next to her sister in a coop that didn’t include Einstein the Hen. We thought there was a good probability she’d fall off the perch and we’d find her on the floor the next morning, but decided it was worth the risk. The companionship of her sister would be good for her spirits.
I leaned over the fence to pick up Littlest Chicken but couldn’t reach her. I called to her, using the same words and soft tones I used to talk to her while we were studio-mates.
In the past, she was one of the chicken’s that never let me pick her up. Maybe because she was the littlest chicken, she was always extra wary. But this time — to my delight — she came to me and jumped into my hands. I’m a little embarrassed to admit it, but I got a little choked up.
Littlest Chicken was going to be OK, and she and I now had a special connection.
On Thursday we let Littlest Chicken and her sister Second Littlest Chicken free- range together in another separate fenced in area.
By Friday we reintegrated Littlest Chicken with the flock. She spent the first couple days in the coop, but by Sunday she was almost completely recovered.
On Sunday night we left it up to the chickens to sort themselves out and decide which coop they’d sleep in. The three Henriettas, Littlest Chicken, and Einstein the Hen ended up coop mates. The three Henriettas slept on a perch in the run. Einstein and Littlest Chicken both slept on a perch inside the coop. Littlest Chicken gave Einstein a wide berth.
All were fine in the morning, so I guess they worked things out.
At the time of this writing, everything’s back to normal in Chickensville and Littlest Chicken is as good as new.
Maybe I could have handled the return of a sweater to Eastern Mountain Sports a little better yesterday. The following is an approximate recreation of the experience:
Krista and my 25th wedding anniversary was five days away and we still hadn’t decided where to celebrate. We were leaning toward doing something easy like the Jersey shore. But when the weather forecast predicted temperatures in the 100’s here in South Eastern PA, it became clear we needed to head north.
I first met P.J. (Pam) Lazos way back in the 20th century before the days of blogs and cell phones. She and my wife Krista (who wasn’t yet my wife) had just graduated from Temple Law School and decided to celebrate with a group adventure to Europe. As Krista now says, I tagged along like gum on their shoe.
I knew the SCBW&I (Society of Children’s Book Author’s and Illustrators) event was going to be a great way to celebrate the release of my new book Ready or Not, Woolbur Goes to School, but I was worried the advertising may have exaggerated the farmyness of my farm:
For as long as I can remember my wife Krista and I have dreamt of owning a farm, but we always thought it would be sometime in the distant future. After our two boys were out of college. When we were nearer retirement. When we had more time. When we had more money. That all changed in early July when we decided to look at a property for sale a mile-and-a-half from our home. We both knew instantly this farm was the one. We settled by the end of August.
