I made this video for elementary school students, but it’s all stuff I think, so it might work for older students, people, too. Music is from bensound.com, a song called “small guitar.” (I am supposed to post a code that let me download the music, but I copied it, and even photographed it, but now I can’t find either. Bensound, feel free to contact me.)
A wonderful family literacy organization called Read To Them is planning to announce Violet and Jobie as a suggested feature title in January of 2024. They recommend it as “ideal for all elementary school audiences.” For more information about their organization and programs, visit them at readtothem.org.
To watch the little video I made for them, just look below:
A month or two ago, I had a conversation with Bruce Coffey and Sara Hudson of readtothem.org . We talked about Nuts to You, and Criss Cross, and connection, and the environment — lots of stuff! I really enjoyed it. Here it is, if you’d like to listen:
Tagged: lynne rae perkins interview, Nuts to You
From one of the images in the picture book, The Museum of Everything.
In my picture book, The Museum of Everything, a museum is a place where we can look at little pieces of the world, one at a time. And sometimes together, with other little pieces of the world. A little piece of the world can be anything. Maybe something made of colored glass, with sunlight coming through:
Or maybe rocks and shells and sticks and other interesting little bits of nature:
Windowsills make good museums, I think, all by themselves. But sometimes it’s fun to make special ways to display our collections. You could make a tiny pedestal out of a thread spool. Maybe even glue it between a couple of blocks of wood and paint it, to look like an ancient column:
If you (very carefully!) cut v-shapes into the sides of a box, it makes a nice holder for a skinny jar that can hold sand and seashells, or other treasures:
Sometimes jewelry comes in fancy hinged boxes with satin inside:
Museums often display objects on simple rectangular pedestals, often painted white. You can just use a small box:
The object on this pedestal is a cloud globe, like the one on the very last page of The Museum of Everything. It’s pretty easy to make. Find a small glass globe or jar — there are some very nice ones that hold mustard, for example. Paint the outside of half of it sky blue. You can make the edges sharp by putting masking tape on first. You can put moss in the bottom for grass. Then find a little bit of quilt batting — I tried cotton balls, but this worked better. Hang it with a needle and thread from a toothpick suspended over the opening at the top. It’s amazing to me how something so simple can be so magical.
(Kind of like the one in my picture book, The Museum of Everything.)
What you will need:
A box, paint/paintbrushes/water/a rag, black paper, scissors, a needle and thread, and some tape.
Optional: fake grass, rocks, or anything else you decide to put in your box.
3. While the paint is drying, cut out some tiny birds. Fold a piece of paper in half. Look at the photo on top to guess about how big they should be. Mine are cut out of black paper: blackbirds! But you can make them any color or kind of birds. Here’s how:
4. Thread a needle. It works best if your thread is the same color as your sky. The thread should be long enough so that it has a nice droop when you hold the needle end and the knotted end at the top of your box.(Again: see top photo.)Then thread your birds. Put the needle into the inside of the fold from above, and come back up through from below. Be careful! Needles are sharp! In this video, you can not only see me thread my birds, you can hear me say “ouch” and watch my thread get tangled.
5. Tape the ends of the thread to the top of your box. Cut the thread from the needle. Ta-da!
The above picture shows the tape. The one below is a better view:
Bonus: If you know someone who makes model railroad stuff, maybe they will let you cut a piece of fake grass to put in the bottom of your diorama. (Also available at craft stores.) You can put some small rocks in the bottom, and they will look like boulders. Who knows what else you could put in there?!
Now you have a happy little place that you can visit in your mind.
Tagged: the museum of everything
It has dioramas:
Many dioramas. And pictures. And also some words.
I had a lot of fun making it. I hope you’ll have a lot of fun reading it.
I am still studying Spanish, and I am still sometimes making flashcards. Sometimes to help me remember something, but also sometimes just because I get excited about understanding a connection. For example: the Spanish word for turkey is “pavo.” And the Spanish word for peacock is “pavo real,” or, “royal turkey.” How perfect is that?
Decades ago, while hiking in Austria, Bill and I came upon those little wayside shrines, nailed to a tree or sitting on top of a post. I remember one dedicated to St. Wendolin, who I had never heard of.
I’ve been making some 3-dimensional work this year (including dioramas! picture book coming in May of 2021), and I decided to make a little wayside shrine for our Christmas card. An InstaShrine, if you will. It’s not really suitable for outdoor placement. Aside from the cottony “snow” which would become InstaSoggy, the little light is a battery-operated votive, which would soon be InstaBurnedout.
I had seen the words here and there, and they spoke to me. While working on the piece I thought, I should find out what they’re from. I was a little dismayed to find that they aren’t the words from Ghandi or Nelson Mandela or one of the other oft-attributed internet icons, but a line from a movie called The Bunny House, about a Playboy bunny who gets kicked out of the mansion because she’s too old, and finds a home in a sorority of misfits, where she teaches them how to be attractive to men. Jeez. The actual line is, “Kindness is just love with work boots on.”
I still like it, though. Here’s to that screenwriter. Let’s all pop on our boots.
Tagged: christmas diorama
It’s October, 2020. What a year! In the first half of this year, including during the lockdown months, I was working on two projects at once — something I usually don’t do. One project was the illustrations for a novel, Little Bird, by Newbery medalist Cynthia Voigt. The other project was a picture book of my own, which is scheduled to be out in the summer of 2021. I’m not free to reveal anything about that one yet, but I’m pretty happy about it. It was so much fun to work on.
Anyhow, this summer, like every summer, I had a birthday. Birthdays always put me in two moods: celebratory and thoughtful. Kind of like New Year’s. I have long wanted to learn, really learn, another language. While in school, I studied Spanish and German. I loved studying them, but it’s been awhile. In a now-or-never mood, I signed up for an online Spanish program with Rocket Languages, as a birthday present to myself. My plan is to work my way through the program and then seek out an immersive scenario somewhere. I’ve been at it for about 8 weeks. now. Wish me luck. Wish me persistence. Wish me continued possession of my faculties.
A few weeks ago, while doing a “weather” session, I was having trouble keeping some phrases straight. “Hay niebla” and “Hay neblina,” to be specific. (The first one is, it’s foggy. The second is, it’s misty.) I thought to myself, I bet if I spent time making little pictures of them, with the words in my head, I would remember which was which. So I did.
It worked! And one thing leads to another. I thought it would be funny to illustrate “Hace viento.” (It’s windy)
And some of the phrases, designed to teach things like “possessive pronouns,” just made me laugh a little bit. Maybe I was hearing some attitude that the writer of the program never intended. “La torta mia es mejor.” (My cake is better.) Kind of snooty. I haven’t drawn that one. Yet.
I did draw this exchange:
And now, I’m working on a “birthday” series. So far I’ve got:
Part of the deal is that I am working on a novel, but I still want to draw, and I still like to post things to social media. I am trying not to get hung up on perfectionism with these, though in some cases I do some clean up after posting. I think to myself, you really should have waited.
So, will I keep doing them? We’ll see. It’s fun to make a relatively quick little drawing while working on a more long-term project. And I can tell you that it really does help with remembering. Give it a try!
And if you want to see mine, follow me on Instagram at @lynneraeperkins.
Hasta la proxima! (Next on my list: looking up how to get a typeface with accents, upside-down question marks, etc)
Tagged: drawing prompt, mnemonic devices, spanish flashcards
Lynne Rae Perkins 