Written by Dave.

We just heard some good news for Pennies for Elephants! It’s one of the winners of the 2009 New Hampshire Literary Awards. Here is the complete list of the award winners:

• Outstanding Work of Children’s Literature: Lita Judge, Pennies for Elephants and Joseph Monninger, Hippie Chick
• Outstanding Book of Fiction: James Patrick Kelly, The Wreck of the Godspeed
• Outstanding Book of Nonfiction: Mimi Schwartz, Good Neighbors, Bad Times
• The Jane Kenyon Award for Outstanding Book of Poetry: Mimi White, The Last Island
• Donald M. Murray Outstanding Journalism Award: John Walters, Collection of articles from Kearsarge Magazine and Upper Valley Life
• Lifetime Achievement Award: David Carroll

Originally published at Adventures at Wilder Farm. You can comment here or there.

Written by Dave.
Back in the 1960s and 70s Lita’s grandmother, Fran Hamerstrom, led a long term project on the captive breeding of golden eagles. The work produced the birth of Ithaca, the world’s first living eagle resulting from artificial insemination. Sadly, we just heard that Ithaca died several days ago at the age of 37. Here are a few pictures and a note from Jim Grier, the biologist who successfully hatched and raised Ithaca. Ithaca’s parents were Fran’s eagles, Chrys and Grendel.

Fran holding Ithaca, Jim Grier holding Ithaca’s parents — Chrys is on his right hand, Grendel is on the left hand (photo from Jim Grier).

Jim Grier flying Ithaca (photo from Jim Grier).

Fran with Chrys. The chick here is a surrogate redtail hawk (Hamerstrom photo).

Fran feeding a Golden Eagle (Hamerstrom photo).

ITHACA the Golden Eagle (1972-2009) (by Jim Grier)

Ithaca was hatched 13 May 1972 at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. He was named after the town of Ithaca, a Greek name which, according to a local librarian who I consulted at the time,  means “a rugged place suitable only for pasturing goats.” He had to be euthanized 29 September 2009 because of complications resulting from West Nile Virus.

It is sad that he encountered and suffered from the virus, that we lost him, and that he died so young (only 37 years old — he otherwise probably would have lived many more years and I expected that he would outlive me). As a biologist, however, I’m familiar with life (and death) and understand that it’s all in the nature of biology.

Ithaca resulted from an extracurricular project I conducted on captive breeding of eagles. (My primary, dissertation research at Cornell was on avian thermal regulation and physiology.) He was the second of three chicks that hatched in the project. The other two died prematurely. Ithaca [also almost died at the same time], but I discovered the problem in time while he was still alive and managed to rehabilitate him as a young chick. Cornell University produced a news release (click here) and the story was widely reported in the news at the time. National Wildlife magazine published an article on the work in the 1972 Oct-Nov issue, pages 44-45. The story was included in the latest editions of a book by Fran Hamerstrom, “An Eagle to the Sky” (Iowa State Univ Press, out of print). (Fran owned the two adult golden eagles that were Ithaca’s parents, see photo.)

Here is part of Lita’s reply to Jim: “It feels a little strange, kind of like losing a relative you haven’t seen for a long time, but who at one time was a big presence of your life. Ithaca was born not long after me, and growing up, I knew his birth was far more important to my grandmother than her first grandchild was — something I always accepted since Fran and you had worked so hard. I really appreciate you letting me know.”

Originally published at Adventures at Wilder Farm. You can comment here or there.

Written by Dave

Tomorrow, nominations for the 2009 Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards open up and will remain open until October 15th.

Be sure to stop by the Cybils site and nominate your favorite books published between last year’s contest and this year’s in the following genres:

• Fiction Picture Books
• Middle Grade Fiction
• Young Adult Fiction
• Nonfiction Picture Books
• Middle Grade/Young Adult Nonfiction
• Science Fiction and Fantasy
• Poetry
• Graphic Novels
• Easy Readers and Short Chapter Books

Last year I was on the Nonfiction picture book panel, and this year I’m a round 2 judge in the Middle Grade/Young Adult Nonfiction category.

Here are the panelists and judges in that category:
Panel Organizer: Susan Thomsen, Chicken Spaghetti

Panelists (Round I Judges):
Alicia Blowers, The LibrariYAn
Sarah Rettger, Archimedes Forgets
Jennie Rothschild, Biblio File
Jill Tullo, The Well-Read Child
Erin Walker, Erin Explores YA

Round II Judges:
Wendy Burton, Six Boxes of Books
Jennifer Donovan, 5 Minutes for Books
Dave Judge, Adventures at Wilder Farm
Colleen Mondor, Chasing Ray
Lisa L. Owens, L.L. Owens-Children’s Writing Blog

Originally published at Adventures at Wilder Farm. You can comment here or there.

We just heard that Lita’s next release, Born to Be Giants: How Baby Dinosaurs Grew to Rule the World, is a 2010 Junior Library Guild selection! The book is on the Roaring Brook/Flash Point spring 2010 list.

Yellowstone Moran is the current (October) Junior Library Guild selection in the Elementary Biography category.

One Thousand Tracings has been selected by Jessica Doyle, the first lady of Wisconsin, (and an advisory committee) as a December 2009 primary pick for Read On Wisconsin! The other picks for December include: Preschool: Old Bear by Kevin Henkes, Intermediate: The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron, Middle School: How To Steal a Dog By Barbara O’Connor, High School: Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

And the board of the Keene Children’s Literature Festival has picked an image from Pennies for Elephants to be on the 2010 Festival Poster!

Lita is speaking at the 2009 festival (October 31st) along with Beth Krommes, Lois Lowry, Katherine Paterson and Jane Yolen.

Originally published at Adventures at Wilder Farm. You can comment here or there.

The long awaited release date of Yellowstone Moran is almost here! So just in time for the book’s release (this Thursday, September 3rd) we just put the finishing touches on our mini website for Yellowstone Moran.

We’re especially excited to feature (Lita’s parents) Dale and Elva Paulson’s beautiful wildlife photography. They’re frequent visitors to Yellowstone and over the years they’ve taken some fantastic photographs. The pictures are special because of the animal behavior they capture — a bear stretching after a long winter hibernation, or cubs playing in a tree. These photographs include pictures of  wolves, bison, elk, fox, bears, raven, cranes, and more.

We also have pictures of some of the items that were on the 1871 Hayden expedition. These are on display at the Albright Visitor Center at Mammoth Hot Springs which we visited last summer.

And we’ve also got some great photographs that Lita took of the geysers and hot springs at Yellowstone.

There’s a timeline that has details of the three important expeditions into the Yellowstone Region between 1869 and 1871. And for students who want to get started with a nature journal, Lita put together a fantastic guide that can be downloaded from the activities section of the website.

If you get a chance, please take a look.

Originally published at Adventures at Wilder Farm. You can comment here or there.

Originally published at Adventures at Wilder Farm. You can comment here or there.

Last week we traveled down to the Boston area so Lita could tape an interview on The Secret Life of Animals with Vicki Croke. The show will be airing on Sunday August 2nd on NECN (New England Cable News) at 11:30am and 6:30pm. Vicki has a couple of Irish Wolfhounds that roam the set, and last week a 3rd Wolfhound joined, along with a Dachshund and one other dog. What fun!

They talked about Pennies for Elephants and introduced Yellowstone Moran. It was chaos when the taping was over — they cut it close — 2 minutes before the live news at noon was to start, in the same studio we were in! The news anchor lady and a bunch of the crew came storming in and we all grabbed dogs and dog treats and kids and food bowls and whatever we could carry and quickly got out of the studio as the anchor lady sat down in her pink pants suit. And the crew were screaming about chroma screens, and the TV cameras on robotic stands were whizzing around with minds of their own. When we got out in the hallway there was a big TV set up and suddenly the anchor lady was on and she was cool as could be. And we thought we could see some dog hair floating in the background, behind her.

Vicki is the author of several books including The Lady and the Panda (I think this is an older cover):

Also (in other news), there was a nice feature about Lita, Pennies for Elephants and Yellowstone Moran on the Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast blog this Sunday. And last week we saw a wonderful Pennies for Elephants review from Pam Coughlan (aka Mother Reader) on PBS Booklights.

Originally published at Adventures at Wilder Farm. You can comment here or there.

Lita is off to Chicago tomorrow for an event filled Sunday at the ALA annual summer conference. First, she’s thrilled that Disney-Hyperion invited her, Kadir Nelson and E. Lockhart to the Caldecott/Newbery Banquet on Sunday night! It’ll be Lita’s first time at ALA and first time at the banquet. Very exciting!

But before that, she’s got a full Sunday of events. Here’s her schedule — in the morning she’s participating in the following program with authors Anne Sibley O’Brien, and Phillip Hoose, librarian, Kelley McDaniel and children’s book advocate, Kirsten Cappy (click on the picture for a pdf of the handout):

Inspiring Young Citizens:
The Library as a Forum for Engagement

Sunday, 7/12/09
10:30 am - 12:00 pm
ALA Annual Conference
McCormick Place West, W-190B
Chicago, IL

How do we excite young readers with possibilities for remaking their world without burdening them with responsibility beyond their years? Authors Lita Judge, Anne Sibley O’Brien, and Phillip Hoose, librarian, Kelley McDaniel and children’s book advocate, Kirsten Cappy will share books, strategies, and book-specific educational curriculum for engaging young people in age-appropriate social issues and actions. Applications will focus on historical figures and movements that inspire contemporary youth.

Then Book signings in the afternoon:

Lita Judge Signing,
Pennies for Elephants and One Thousand Tracings
Sunday, 7/12 from 2:30 - 3:30 PM
Disney-Hyperion, Booth #2247

Yellowstone Moran: Painting the American West
Sunday, 7/12 from 1:30 – 2:00 PM
Penguin, Booth #2120/2122

So if you’re at ALA I hope you get a chance to connect!

Originally published at Adventures at Wilder Farm. You can comment here or there.

We’re lucky, here in Peterborough, to have the thriving Macdowell Colony. Writers, artists, composers, photographers, filmmakers and sculptors come to Peterborough to live in one of the 32 studios at the retreat. Once accepted, an artist can stay for as little as a couple of weeks, or as long as a couple of months. When they arrive, they find a kind of isolation — there’s no phone, no internet, no fax, and no family. It’s just a cabin in the woods.

(Alexander Studio at Macdowell Colony. Photo credit: Victoria Sambunaris)

And there’s a famous tradition: every day your picnic basket lunch is silently delivered to the doorstep of your cabin.

( Photo credit: Victoria Sambunaris)

In the history of the colony there have been over 6000 supported artists in residence, and in 2007, the colony celebrated its centennial with a yearlong celebration.

About once a month the Macdowell Colony sponsors a current resident at a downtown event. And this month it was Brian Selznick! Brian gave a very visual and entertaining talk and covered some of our favorite books, including The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins, Walt Whitman and, of course, The Invention of Hugo Cabret.

It was great to see a huge turnout and variety of age groups — very young, medium young, young and old. As a finale he showed the movie A Trip to the Moon, by Georges Méliès, and he provided the words while a cellist from the colony (I missed her name)  performed accompanying music. It was quite funny, and fantastic!

He also talked about what he’s working on while he’s at the Colony (I’ll repeat here what was in the announcement for the talk):

Familiar now with the rewards of risk-taking on the heels of Hugo’s success, Selznick remains interested in seeing what else he can do with books. “I like taking what I’ve learned and doing something new with it.” His current novel-in-progress, Wonderstruck, is a fitting example: Though it will feature visuals in a prominent and inventive way (much like Hugo), it will also weave together two separate stories that take place in two different time frames. “One story, which takes place in the 1920s, will be told entirely in pictures,” reveals Selznick, who is hesitant to give away too much about the book’s plot. “The other, from the 1970s, will be told with words.” Wonderstruck is scheduled to be released in 2011.

Originally published at Adventures at Wilder Farm. You can comment here or there.

Lita and I just returned from England and jumped back into the world with last week’s release of Pennies for Elephants!

We’ve seen a few nice reviews so far in the local paper, at The Miss Rumphius Effect, and in the Concord Monitor.

But let’s go back to England for a moment. We pulled the plan together quickly after Lita got the green light on a new book. The book is about Walter Rothschild, a member of the famous banking family, who as a 7 year old announced to his parents that he was going to build a museum. He was born a few years after Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and, like Darwin, he collected bugs, butterflies, birds, fish, reptiles, plants, live animals and animal specimens. He eventually did work for the family bank, but he also followed his dream of opening his museum, and with the help of two curators and many explorers, Walter created the largest natural history collection ever gathered by one person. It became one of the most important collections for proving many of Darwin’s theories, and is still used extensively today for DNA studies.

The trip was part research, part vacation. We started our England trip at Kew Gardens to get some visual reference of strange plants and Victorian greenhouses.

Then we spent a few days at the Walter Rothschild’s Tring Museum, which is now part of the British Natural History Museum.

And finally we spent seven beautiful days up in the Lake district where we hiked about 7-10 miles every day, enjoyed afternoon teas, and visited Beatrix Potter’s Hill Top Farm, and the Beatrix Potter gallery in Hawkshead. The picture below is from a glorious hike above the Borrowdale Valley. I’m not sure there’s ever been such perfect weather in northwest England!

Lita has a busy summer schedule. In July we’re hoping to get down to Manhattan, then she’ll be at ALA in Chicago, then an SCBWI conference near Baltimore. And we’ve got a bunch of other events in the works for the summer! We’re ready for another vacation…

Originally published at Adventures at Wilder Farm. You can comment here or there.

Lita just finished her last couple of classroom visits for this school year and we’re heading to England tomorrow! I was unloading pictures off the digital camera and found these images from our November 2003 trip to England.

That trip was to the Cotswolds and then up to North Yorkshire. We had a lot of rain but also some beautiful, moody weather. We were also in England about 18 months ago. I remember lots of miles of hiking (I think we did 100 miles in 10 days) and also lots of scones and clotted cream on that trip! This time we’ll be near London for a few days of research for a book, and then we head up to the Lake District.

When we get back, Pennies for Elephants will be released! Lita’s doing a talk and book signing event at our local Peterborough Toadstool Bookshop on June 13th at 2pm, so if you’re in the area, please come — we’ll bring some pictures of England too!

Originally published at Adventures at Wilder Farm. You can comment here or there.

We just put the finishing touches on a mini website for Pennies for Elephants.

One of the main characters in the story is a little newsboy so we’ve put together some great Lewis Hine photographs of newsboys (and newsgirls). Luckily these images are all in the public domain and available through Flickr — really amazing photographs.

The research section includes several pages of headlines and pictures from the Boston Post Newspaper. Pennies for Elephants is based on true events that occurred in 1914. The Boston Post covered the story from March to June, with several articles and pictures every day. We captured these images (back in 2007 when Lita was researching the story) by taking digital pictures of the screen of the microfilm reader — they look better than I expected!

And we’ve included some fun old pictures of Fenway Park and the Boston Red Sox in 1912. The guy on the top-left is Smoky Joe Wood who won 34 games for Boston in 1912, and had 3 wins in the World Series (which Boston won against the old New York Giants).

We’re expecting the first shipment of Pennies for Elephants to arrive this week at the New Hampshire Educational Media Association Conference (NHEMA) where Lita is giving the luncheon keynote on Friday.

Originally published at Adventures at Wilder Farm. You can comment here or there.

One Thousand Tracings has been added to several 2009-2010 State Reading Award lists including the Prairie Pasque Award in South Dakota, the William Allen White Children’s Book Award in Kansas, and the Misouri Show Me Readers Award. It was also on the list for the 2008-2009 North Carolina Children’s Book Award (NCCBA).

Most of these are lists of about 10-12 books—I believe all of these are voted on by school kids from 1st to 5th grades (varies by award). It’s great that so many kids will be reading Tracings! I added some links to the award logos above for more information on each of these. It’s really an amazing honor for Lita and Tracings to be included on such fantastic lists of books! Thanks Missouri, North Carolina, South Dakota and Kansas!

Originally published at Adventures at Wilder Farm. You can comment here or there.

Lita just returned from a fantastic two day school visit in Danville, NH where she received a nice write-up in the local paper. Just last week we finished her new 2009-2010 School Visit Packet. It has all the information for planning the perfect school visit!

Lita has added three new talks to her school visit program:

• Pennies for Elephants—Connecting students to local news by becoming a part of it
• Digging Deep to Find Interesting Sources for Historical Stories
• Yellowstone Moran—Journaling and Sketching

And she will continue to offer these three talks:

• Path to becoming an author and illustrator
• The Story Behind One Thousand Tracings
• Daydreams, Digs and Dinosaurs!

For all of the new information, including descriptions of all the presentations and how to tailor them to meet the needs of diverse groups, download and print the school visit packet here or check out the School Visits section at LitaJudge.com.

Danville: Danville Elementary School third-grader Jacob Post, 9, listens as author/illustrator Lita Judge shows how rough sketches become finished artwork in a presentation Monday at the school.
Jan Seeger /Eagle Tribune Staff Photographer

Originally published at Adventures at Wilder Farm. You can comment here or there.

Our 175 year old Peterborough Town Library had a fun event a few days ago to celebrate Beth Krommes, the 2009 Randolph Caldecott Medal winner. Beth is a good friend of ours and lives in Peterborough, just down the road from us. She and Lita usually drive together to our two annual southern NH children’s book events: The Keene Children Literature Festival and the SCBWI Nashua Conference. (This year they’re both featured speakers at the Keene Festival.)

The House in the Night is such a beautiful book—here’s our new copy with the Caldecott sticker:

I spent most of the night talking with Beth’s husband, Dave, about software and websites and blogs. Dave designed Beth’s new site last summer.

We’re looking forward to Beth’s ALA speech—I’ve heard it may have some reference to the ice storm and 10 day power outage we experienced in Peterborough in December. Lita will be at the ALA conference this summer …

but we’re not sure if she’ll be able to attend the awards ceremony.

Originally published at Adventures at Wilder Farm. You can comment here or there.

We recently heard that an organization called Wisconsin Braille has transcribed One Thousand Tracings and made it available for free to Wisconsin School Libraries. This sounds like a fantastic program and we’re honored that Tracings was included.

Here’s some information from their website:

Once again, Wisconsin Braille, Inc. is pleased to offer a selection of braille books for your school library because of grant money awarded us. As in the past, the committee has chosen books that are not already brailled. We searched the on-line catalog in our local library, as well as other sources, to locate recognized books of excellence.

Wisconsin Braille Inc.’s Special Book Project was started in 1998 with the production of one braille book offered at no cost to school libraries in Wisconsin. In co-ordination with teachers of the visually impaired and school librarians across the state, the Special Book Committee solicits possible titles for transcription. The books selected for transcription represent a wide range of reading levels, fiction and non-fiction material, and poetry.

Every effort is made to select books that are not already available in braille. In collaboration with the Oshkosh State Correctional Institution (OSCI), book selections are transcribed by transcribers certified by the Library of Congress/National Library Service (NLS) under the direction of the coordinator of the OSCI Braille Program. The books are available in hard-copy or on disc.

Originally published at Adventures at Wilder Farm. You can comment here or there.

We’ve been working on this Pennies for Elephants video trailer over the past few days — I think it’s ready to premiere.

We included some of the original newspaper pictures from the Boston Post in 1914 so you can see that the characters in the story are visually based on real people. Lita is giving a presentation this Friday at the Wisconsin State Reading Association (WSRA) Conference in Milwaukee and will be discussing the visual research she does to create characters for her stories. She gave a similar talk last April at the Nashua SCBWI conference but this new talk is really expanded based on all the work she’s done recently for Pennies for Elephants and Yellowstone Moran.

Anyway, let us know what you think of the video!

Originally published at Adventures at Wilder Farm. You can comment here or there.

To get ready for Lita’s new book, Pennies for Elephants (out in a June’09), we just put the finishing touches on our new website design and uploaded it last night. We hope you’ll take a look.

There are lot’s of new images of illustrations and sketches, information about books, school visits, and upcoming appearances. Lita and I had lots of fun designing new banners for all the pages. (I think they look fantastic!)

We’re already planning lots of new things to put on the site including activities for Pennies for Elephants, video trailers for Pennies and for Yellowstone Moran (out in September’09), and some images from the current work in progress. Anyway, please check out the site!

Originally published at Adventures at Wilder Farm. You can comment here or there.

The kids at the Darien Library in Connecticut just finished a quilt making project after reading One Thousand Tracings.

Back in the summer, our Bookmania kids listened to the reading of ONE THOUSAND TRACINGS by Lita Judge, the story of an American family during World War II who helped supply German families with shoes. In keeping with the theme of the book of helping people in need, the kids decorated fabric squares to be made into quilts for needy children through Project Linus. The squares have been assembled into two quilts, which are being delivered to Yale-New Haven Hospital for sick children to cuddle up.

For more info on Project Linus, look here:   http://www.projectlinus.org/

Originally published at Adventures at Wilder Farm. You can comment here or there.

Lita and I just set up a new website for our friend Kim Cunningham at KimWebsterCunningham.com.

It was a fun process because Kim completely designed the site with paper and pencil and scissors, and Lita scanned, cropped and adjusted all the images and did all the fancy Photoshop work on the banner. And I did the rest — it’s all been done just in the nick of time because Kim’s new book, Absolutely Wild, published by David R. Godine, has just been released, and she’s doing a signing at our local Peterborough NH book store, The Toadstool Bookshop, on December 13th.

The book is gorgeous, so check it out, and check out the website too!

Originally published at Adventures at Wilder Farm. You can comment here or there.