I’ve put together a little rocket activity page based on the auction illustration that I did for the theme of the month. I thought it might be fun to see what the astronaut discovers on the surface of the moon, and to hear what he has to say about it.
(If you’d like a pdf, you can download it HERE).
Alright folks – I just got this drawing in my inbox from Iris, and it was so perfect for last month’s Under the Sea theme that I felt I just had to post it.
Have you ever wondered how to draw a dolphin? I have. In fact, I was going to draw a dolphin earlier in the month and I just couldn’t figure it out. If only Iris had sent this sooner! Here is her step-by-step guide on how to draw a dolphin:
Iris did want me to share that her teacher Ms. Stuckey helped her out with the instructions. And I must say, I think the instructions really help! What a great dolphin it is!!
We have definitely been experiencing April showers around here. It’s been exciting seeing all of the plants start popping up, finally believing that SPRING IS HERE!
I mostly think of rainy days as being rather dreary (though I enjoy the dreariness very much, especially when I’m inside and can hear the raindrops falling on the tin roof of our barn). But I remember one time in Alaska (it was mid-summer) I had the amazing experience of standing on the beach up to my elbows in fish slime (as one does when one is a commercial salmon fisherman in Alaska) being in a sunshower. A sunshower is when it is raining but the sun is also shining brightly at the same time. It was amazing – each raindrop was lit up by the sun and it looked like diamonds were falling from the sky.
I searched high and low for a video that might capture it, but the closest I came was this one:
It’s much cooler when you can stand in it and look up at the drops falling down on you (a friend who has experimented with trippy things said that if you take a shower with a strobe light on it has a similar effect, but that’s definitely something to set up with adult supervision).
I learned that across the globe, there is a lot of folklore related to sunshowers. In many countries, it has something to do with weddings:
In other countries, it has to do with witches:
And so I wonder who was getting married, making butter, or brushing their hair in Alaska on that day when I was in a sunshower. I hope it was a monkey getting married to a donkey, because, well, wouldn’t their babies be adorable?
Every time we send out a book to our Bobbledy club members, we also send a letter full of newsy bits. And we also send a drawing sheet—some sort of activity involving drawing implements and creativity. A recent sheet featured cutouts of Robbi’s and my heads and the opportunity to draw bodies for us. Little did we anticipate that readers would take the opportunity to stage morality plays with Robbi and me as the leading players.
For example, one young woman named Mo drew the following:
In case you can’t make out what’s happening above (I struggled to find altruism where there, apparently, was none), Mo’s mom Barb offers the following explanatory notes:
I’m so sorry, Matthew . . . you’re being attacked by hedgehogs. While Robbi has lovely long legs and a new bonnet. It’s like Mo knows you.
Indeed, Mo’s knowledge of our inner workings is astonishing (and alarming). I spend most nights in restless nightmares of being chased by hedgehogs, and Robbi spends most days dropping unsubtle hints that she would love me more if only I’d buy her a bonnet. She also pines for long legs but knows that even the most generous husband can’t help her on that front.
As discouraging as it was to see Mo’s drawing, her work was not done. Not nearly. As she continued, Mo drew snakes. And were the snakes, nice, small, sit-in-your-hand-nicely-while-you-try-to-get-over-your-fear-of-snakes sorts of snakes? No indeed. They were mean snakes. And their sole objective in life was going after me.
Quoth Barb:
Mo is still drawing, and now there are some snakes going after Matthew, too. Oh, the humanity!
How can I interpret the above profusion of red as anything but great heaps of blood? Or maybe it is the embodiment of agony? I cannot say. And it does not seem to matter. In spite of all the effort I put into making books for her to read, Mo seems to have it in for me. I guess I have to accept it.
The one small shred of comfort I can take is seeing that, in the course of all the me-centric carnage, Robbi seems to have lost her bonnet.
Hi Everyone –
I had been hoping that my study of snakes this month would help me overcome my ophidiophobia. Alas, it has not. It has, in fact, made me realize JUST HOW CREEPY SNAKES REALLY ARE.
For example, snakes are carnivores. Carnivores are animals who eat meat. Now, I don’t have a problem with that—some people (myself included) eat meat. No no, that’s not the problem. The problem is that snakes eat meat by unhinging their jaw and swallowing their meat whole. It is the grossest.
If you find this sort of thing fascinating, please feel free to click play on the video below. If this is the stuff of nightmares (which it is for me) then I will give you a play-by-play description below. Hold onto your lunch:
AUUGHGGHGGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGGHGHGHHHHHHH!!!! If I were allowed to use swear words on this blog, you can be sure that this is where I would use them. For those of you who didn’t watch the video, basically it shows an African Egg Eating Snake taking an egg that is WAY bigger than its head, opening up its mouth, bigger, and BIGGER and BIGGER until that egg is unbelievably completely swallowed. After it closes its mouth, it’s basically got a giant egg-shaped lump in its throat.
Then (apparently) it takes these bony little bits that are attached to its spine (INSIDE HIS BODY) to crack the egg. Then it kind of hurks and squeezes all the insides of the egg out into its belly and SPITS THE EGGSHELL BACK OUT in a neat little squooshed barf.
AUGGGHGHGHGGHGGHGHGHGGHGHGGHGGHGHHH!!! So, so gross. I really, really admire those of you who can watch that and not have your skin just go all goosebumps and creepy crawly.
Now, for the record, it turns out that African Egg Eating Snakes are actually quite shy and nervous. They don’t eat anything other than eggs and are totally non-threatening to people. Only threatening to eggs. And yet – and YET! I’m pretty sure if I ever saw one out and about on my next trip to Africa, I would surely scream like a baby.
I like my snakes to eat their eggs neatly, in an egg cup, with a wooden spoon please.
Since this month’s theme is “Deserts,” I thought I’d share a book that we love that takes place in the desert.
It’s called “Art & Max” and is not only about creatures in the desert, it’s also about ART and making art and being creative and not always painting inside the lines – the best!
Art (Arthur) is a horned lizard, and Max is a collared lizard. They live in the desert. The desert makes a great backdrop, because there isn’t much happening besides distant mountains and the occasional cactus to distract you from the story.
But even though the desert is just “the setting,” it’s also a very important player in the book. At one point, Art gets covered with paint and it dries up and gets all cracked, just like mud will do in the heat of the desert.
It’s kind of a climactic moment (which basically means it’s one of the most important things that happens in the book, so pay attention!). A moment that couldn’t have happened, say, in a humid rainforest or a dank swamp. And so the desert is actually a crucial part of this story.
Have a look for yourself. The illustrations are wonderfully detailed and there’s lots of fun to be had. My favorite moment is this one, where a lizard looker-on gets tangled up in some linework:
The book is Art & Max, by David Wiesner (whom I met at an illustrator’s event once and got very excited over but then whiffed my introduction because I couldn’t in the moment remember if it was WEE-sner or WHY-sner. He was very gracious and kind and I got it wrong but I still don’t remember which one it is).
And here’s a question for you: