Postscript

June 12, 2013 @ 8:18 pm | Filed under: Photos, Rilla

It seems all that wisdom is exhausting.

Cantering Horse, by Rilla

April 29, 2013 @ 5:18 pm | Filed under: Art, Photos, Rilla

Companion to last month’s Galloping Horse. She’s still working hard on getting those legs just so, as you see. I’m loving this chance to watch a young artist hone her skills. She’s made big strides (so to speak) already.

I believe next up is Trotting Horse. All three are from the horse page in the Usborne Book of Drawing.

blink

April 14, 2013 @ 7:03 pm | Filed under: Rilla

Remember yesterday when this happened?

Seven, you guys. She’s SEVEN.

My six-year-old’s library search queue

April 8, 2013 @ 4:13 pm | Filed under: Books, Family, Rilla, These People Crack Me Up

Rilla discovered the search and request features at our library website. Here are the topics she looked up:

BIG BAD WOLF

X-RAY

LION

FIELD TRIP TO THE ZOO

FLEA ON MY BACK

FIFTY HUNDRED FLEAS

FIFTY HUNDRED BALLS

FIFTY HUNDRED

KIT

Books she put on hold as a result of these searches:

The Big Bad Wolf and Me by Delphine Perret

My Mom Has X-ray Vision by Angela McAllister, illustrated by Alex T. Smith

Chloe and the Lion by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Adam Rex

Stay in Line by Teddy Slater, illustrated by Gioia Fiammenghi (turned up by the zoo query)

There Was a Coyote Who Swallowed a Flea by Jennifer Ward,  illustrated by Steve Gray

(Publishers, clearly you are missing the boat in the FIFTY HUNDRED market.)

Rebranded

April 8, 2013 @ 2:46 pm | Filed under: Family, Rilla, These People Crack Me Up

I guess this frees up Art Sardine for my new band name.

Well, it’s certainly creative…

April 7, 2013 @ 7:34 pm | Filed under: Family, Rilla, These People Crack Me Up

Rilla: I’ve been thinking. We should have an art club for kids who want to be artists when they grow up.

Me: I love that idea!

Rilla: I wonder what we should call it.

Me, having a Jane Andrews moment: Um, the Art Club?

(Somewhere, Anne Shirley shakes her head in disgust.)

Rilla: No…I know! How about the Art Bassoon?

Me: *blinks*

Rilla: What is a bassoon, anyway?

 Me: It’s a musical instrument—here, I’ll show you. *reaches for Google*

Google, beaming: You’re going to love this.

YouTube, modestly: This old thing? Why it’s just a little something I threw together.

We watch in delight as a bassoon quartet plays a Super Mario Galaxy medley. Rilla’s excitement cannot be described. She marvels over the size of the bassoons, their rollicking sound as they play the familiar melodies.

Rilla: Bassoons are awesome.

A pause.

Rilla: But on second thought, I don’t think Art Bassoon is the right name for our club.

She thinks.

Rilla: I’ve got it! Art Sardine.

A Fan Letter to Amy Ludwig VanDerwater

March 26, 2013 @ 6:34 pm | Filed under: Books, Nature Study, Picture Book Spotlight, Poetry, Rilla, Wonderboy

Forest Has a Song by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater, illustrated by Robbin Gourley.

Dear Amy,

My name is Rilla. I am 6. Mommy read Forest Has a Song to me. I think that It Is really pretty poetry and i also think that deer are pretty too. I really love nature. And deer are one of my favorite animals and it said a lot about deer. In the picture of the fiddlehead ferns, I really like the pattern of the colors. And the fossil looks so realistic. When I grow up i want to be an illustrator like Robbin Gourley. And also, i love the Spider poem and the Dusk poem. I love the never-tangling dangling spinner part. And I love baby animals. They’re so cute and fluffy when they’re birds at least.

One of my favorites is “Farewell.” How it says “I am Forest.”

Love,
Rilla

(Doggone spellcheck. She made me correct all her invented spellings—the red dots under her words tipped her off. Then again, “rhille priddy powatre” might have been hard for you to parse. Also, of course, recognizing that a word just looks wrong is a big step toward learning to spell and I can’t very well stand in the way of that progress just because the invented stuff is adorable.)

As for the book, I wholeheartedly agree with Rilla’s review. What a gorgeous, gorgeous volume. The poems sometimes wistful, sometimes whimsical, always lyrical. Beautiful for reading aloud, full of delicious internal rhyme and alliteration. And infectious: I predict a lot of original nature poetry in our future. This collection begs you to take a fresh look at the world around you and see the magic of the curled fern frond, the mushroom spore. Of course I’ve been a fan of Amy Ludwig VanDerwater’s work for years.

I can’t imagine a more perfect pairing for Amy’s poems than Robbin Gourley’s art. Lush watercolors, rich and soft. I kept coming across pages I’d like prints of. Actually, this is exactly the kind of book where you want a second copy for cutting up and framing. (If you can bear to. I always think I’d like to do that, but the one time I actually bought a spare copy for this purpose—Miss Rumphius—I couldn’t, in the end, bring myself to dismantle it.)

Beanie’s favorite poem was “Forest News”—

I stop to read
the Forest News
in mud or fallen snow.
Articles are printed
by critters on the go…

—which she loved for its intriguing animal-tracks descriptions, its sense of fun, and its kinship with her favorite Robert Frost poem, “A Patch of Old Snow.” (“It is speckled with grime as if / Small print overspread it, / The news of a day I’ve forgotten — / If I ever read it,” writes Frost, perusing a somewhat more somber edition of the woodsy chronicle.)

Wonderboy’s favorite was the puffball poem, and he later wrote (in his customary stream-of-consciousness style) this string of impressions the book made on him: “dead branch  warning and woodpecker too  dusk  burrow in a burrow chickadee sit on my hand  and come fly here”…

Truly beautiful work, Amy and Robbin.

Related post: The Poem House

She’s drawing right now.

January 17, 2013 @ 9:31 pm | Filed under: Art, Photos, Rilla

Year after year, kid after kid, those Draw Write Now books continue to inspire.

Owl by Rilla

December 4, 2012 @ 3:04 pm | Filed under: Art, Rilla

Rilla made a book of drawings this morning, several pages stapled together. “Chibi and Non-Chibi Drawings,” she wrote on the front, explaining that the chibi ones were traced from her favorite drawing book, and the non-chibi ones, like the little fellow above, were not traced, “just drawn regular.”

The little ruffly breast-feathers just melt me.