Our resident book critic...

...gives 2 thumbs up to Stuck by Oliver Jeffers!

A Trip to France

We've been in France for the past couple of weeks now, and we're loving every minute. I've even had a chance to get a little sketching time in!

These were done in Pornic in Brittany.

The images might not be the best quality. i took them on the beach with my iphone. I was holding open the page with the book I'm reading right now (The Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin. Glenn's reading The Difficulty of Being Good, by Gurcharan Das. It's a little more dense. Gretchen's book reminded me i should be keeping my blog up to date!)

Welcome Magical Monty!!

I'm thrilled to announce Magical Monty comes out in stores today!!

It's the 4th and final book of the Monty series written by Johanna Hurwitz, published by Candlewick Press and illustrated by me.

I've known Monty for quite a while now and I'm a little sad he's graduating from first grade.

When we first met my oldest little boy was just starting first grade (just like Monty in Mighty Monty book 1), and now my middle girl is just finishing 1st grade (just like Monty in Magical Monty book 4). 

We've been through some milestones together with my kids crazy about reading and losing teeth and having pet parakeets and baby sisters! Just like Monty.

It's been designated A Junior Library Guild Selection for Spring 2012.

Three Questions

These are the three questions my 7 year old asked in the last 20 minutes of our 4 hour Memorial Day weekend road trip...

1. How do we know there really is heaven and hell?

2. Where did people get language?

3. What really is space and where did it come from?

Banding Bluebirds

Noel and I went this weekend with the Bronx River Sound Shore Audubon Youth club to help Sandy Morrissey band bluebirds. 

Sandy opened the bluebird boxes and collected the babies. We found 3 in one box and four in another. The kids helped decide how old the babies were by looking at a nestling chart that Sandy had. We looked mostly at the feathers growing in on the wings to figure it out. The kids recorded the information, along with each baby's new band number, into Sandy's notebook.

Sandy used a special tool to place a band on each baby's right leg. The she measured the tarsus (the lower leg) of each bird with a different tool.

The bird was placed in a special little bag to hang from a little portable scale to see how much each baby weighed. And then the kids helped carry the babies back to their nest boxes.

While we were there, Sandy was able to trap an adult male bluebird. She places a flap over the hole of the nest box, so the adult can fly in but not out. Trapping and checking the band number of the adults is important because it helps people to learn about the habits of the birds year after year. By checking this male's band number, we were able to look back in Sandy's notebook and discover that this same bluebird nested last year in the next nest box over- showing that he came back to the same area to breed again.

After we checked all the bluebird nest boxes, Sandy showed us two bluebird nest boxes inhabited by non-bluebirds. The image on the left is the nest of a tree swallow. Tree swallows like to use feathers when they build their nests and have small white eggs. The image on the right is a house sparrow nest. They tend to build messy nests and like to use bits of human trash. House sparrows are an invasive species from Europe that cause problems for bluebirds by using up the places where bluebirds like to nest.

At the end we were able to take a very quick but close up look at a killdeer mama and her nest. If you look carefully at the closeup photo you can see her eggs just behind her- very nicely camouflaged.

Sandy's work is helping to bring bluebirds back to our area. Since she's been putting up nest boxes and monitoring them the population of bluebirds has increased dramatically. 

Thanks Sandy for letting us in on this amazing work!

The May Fair Revisited

Here we go again! This time Carys was big enough to join in. 

And she loved every minute.

Le Prince Tigre

Solenn brought home a book from her school's library the other day that was wonderful and magical. I wanted to share it, but discovered on my amazon/library book search there don't seem to be english language versions available. It's a beautiful book. I suggest you find a non-english version and check it out even if you can't read the words.

It seems to be available in French and Spanish and Chinese. And if you happen to be an editor or a publisher, I think you should aquire the rights and have it printed here in English! I think that would be a good idea.

It's about a village being terrorized by a tiger and about the prince who is sent off to live with the tigre so she won't be so crabby any more. It is lovely. The illustrations and the story.

It's written and illustrated by Jiang Hong Chen. I was familiar with many of his books, but not this one. So if you can't find le prince tigre. Get one of his other ones instead.

Here's a you tube video I found of him painting:

My Painting Class

So I've been taking a portrait painting class now at the Rye Arts Center for a bit more than a year now. It has been amazing and refreshing and exciting and frustrating and challenging to go back to oil painting (I like to call it "real painting") after 10 years or more of being away. This is my latest painting, and I can't believe it, but I'm proud of it!

My teacher is Ismael Checo an amazing teacher and a fabulous painter.

He painted this portrait of my daughter last year when she was on vacation from school one day and came with me to class. And gave the finished work to her as a gift. It makes me happy every day! And she will never forget the day she sat for us.

painting by Ismael Checo

A Day at the Zoo

The kids were on break from school last week.

So we took a day off from lazing around doing nothing to go in to the zoo.

We all brought our sketchbooks.

Our favorite this time around was Jungle World in Asia.

The girls worked away drawing Langurs.

And I liked the tree kangaroo.

Can't resist.

A few more from my new lens:

an early morning New Years Day walk with my baby.

note: she's still in her pj's.

Happy New Years Everyone!

What we heard tonight...

at the end of our driveway in the dark...

Click to hear.

And make sure your speakers are on!

We all know what he is. Do you?

We could tell exactly where he was sitting, but we couldn't see him. It was too dark.

My hubby's Christmas present!

The lens, that is. Not the tiger.

Thank you, Santa!

Deadline...

... I think I can... I think I can...