Read Every Day Lead a Better Life

My entry is one of the ten finalists! Go here to vote!
http://opinio.scholastic.com/opinio/s?s=5869

Thank you!

Aspiring artists were invited to interpret Scholastic’s global literacy campaign, Read Every Day. Lead a Better Life.

To enter the contest, participants were asked to illustrate their own vision of the message Read Every Day. Lead a Better Life., emphasizing the importance of reading in the lives of young people.

Scholastic will judge and post the top 10 submissions to the corporate blog, On Our Minds @Scholastic for public voting on Wednesday, June 8. Public voting will be open until 9am ET on Monday, June 13, 2011. The Read Every Day. Lead a Better Life. Illustrators Contest winner will have his or her artwork featured on www.scholastic.com/readeveryday and win a deluxe set of signed posters created exclusively for Scholastic by the twelve children’s book authors and illustrators participating in the auction:

This is my entry… fingers crossed!

New Book Cover

Do you ever wonder how animals sleep?
Coming in June 2011

Lepre-con man

Happy St. Paddy’s to yis all!

Princess and the Pea

Still kind of a work in progress, but wanted to get in on the “Tell a Fairy Tale Day” fun!

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

The Princess and the Pea

by Hans Christian Andersen

Once there was a Prince who wanted to marry a Princess. Only a real one would do. So he traveled through all the world to find her, and everywhere things went wrong. There were Princesses aplenty, but how was he to know whether they were real Princesses? There was something not quite right about them all. So he came home again and was unhappy, because he did so want to have a real Princess.

One evening a terrible storm blew up. There was thunder and lightening, and the rain poured down in torrents. It was really frightful! In the midst of it all came a knocking at the town gate. The old King went to open it.

Who should be standing outside but a Princess, and what a sight she was in all that rain and wind. Water streamed from her hair down her clothes into her shoes, and ran out at the heels. Yet she claimed to be a real Princess.

“We’ll soon find that out,” the old Queen thought to herself. Without saying a word about it she went to the bedchamber, stripped back the bedclothes, and put just one pea in the bottom of the bed. Then she took twenty mattresses and piled them on the pea. Then she took twenty eiderdown feather beds and piled them on the mattresses. Up on top of all these the Princess was to spend the night.

In the morning they asked her, “Did you sleep well?”

“Oh!” said the Princess. “No. I scarcely slept at all. Heaven knows what’s in that bed. I lay on something so hard that I’m black and blue all over. It was simply terrible.”

They could see she was a real Princess and no question about it, now that she had felt one pea all the way through twenty mattresses and twenty more feather beds. Nobody but a Princess could be so delicate. So the Prince made haste to marry her, because he knew he had found a real Princess.

As for the pea, they put it in the museum. There it’s still to be seen, unless somebody has taken it.

There, that’s a true story.

Jack and the Beanstalk

I’ve been a bit swamped and haven’t been able to fit in a new fairy tale image.  But this illustration is from “The Truth About Ogres” that I illustrated for Picture Window Books.  Jack and the Beanstalk!!  Happy Fairy Tales to you!!

It’s Tell a Fairy Tale Day!

The sun was shining brightly, but it was not too warm under the shade of the old trees, and Little Red Riding-Hood went on her way singing and gathering great bunches of wild flowers to give to her grandmother. She sang so sweetly that a cushat dove flew down from a tree and followed her.

Now, it happened that a wolf, a very cruel, greedy creature, also heard her as she passed, and longed to eat her for his breakfast, but he knew Hugh, the woodman, was at work very near with his great dog, and he was afraid they might hear Little Red Riding-Hood cry out if he frightened her, and then they would kill him. So, after following her a little way, he came up to her very gently and said, “Good day, Little Red Riding-Hood, where are you going?”

This is a day that Fairy Tales are made of … It’s Tell a Fairy Tale Day.

To qualify as a fairy tale, a story does not have to begin with “Once upon a time…..”. But, they usually do, and there’s nothing better than a good story that ends with “and they all lived happily ever after”. Read one today!

Love is in the air

Happy Valentines Day from the Doodle Diner!

The Love of Reading

A clever book to read together by Michael Hall.  Each animal is illustrated using hearts in various sizes and colors.

A child explains the different kinds of kisses to her wondering teddy bear. Henry is crazy for Chloe. So much so, that he is willing to give up his prized blueberry muffin given to him by his mom! A  story about infatuation and friendship!

For more about these and other books of interest, Visit the Reading Rockets website. There you’ll find a lot of great information on  things like, crafts, reading guides, teaching aides for teachers and parents, all kinds of valuable tools to make reading fun.

Happy Groundhog Day

Hopefully the trusty weather reading rodent in your area has not seen his shadow, and we will all be treated to an early spring. This little guy’s shadow is quick, and is doing it’s best to keep out of sight.

Today’s Groundhog links

Canada’s furry finest Wiarton Willie – williecam

The pride of Punxsutawney – Groundhog.org

Update: Both Willie and Phil say “we’re going to have an early spring!”

The New York SCBWI Conference

The New York SCBWI Conference 2011 starts today!  You can keep track of all the goings on through Twitter or here, The Official SCBWI Conference Blog, that is… unless you’re already there. What fun!