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| Christina and Carole at the Toledo Lucas Children's Library taken by Mary Kay Carson |
The photo above are Carole Gerber and I at the Toledo Children's Library by the framed
Little Red Bat painting hanging there! We had the unveiling
last year.
The Claire's Day festivities were once again a wonderful experience this year. I met a lot of great authors, illustrators, and participants at the various events this year and last year. (Thanks to
Mary Kay Carson who drove up with me-having someone to talk to on road trips keeps me awake!)
On Friday, I had a wonderful school visit at
Fairfield Elementary School. I hope the kids enjoyed it as much as I did. I expanded my slide show and did some drawing for them on a big pad of paper. Sharpies are unforgiving so I hope they liked the art anyway... Sometimes your brain says" What does a panda look like anyway?!" even when you have opainted and drawn many of them.
Here are the pieces unveiled at Claire's Night this year. Sorry it is not a better image of all of them.
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This year's new illustrations being added to the collection.
Art by fom left to right: Wendy Popko, Ralph Masiello, Karen and Darrin Brege (speaking), Leslie Helakoski, and Claire Ewart |
The biggest part of the Claire's Day itself of course are the CARE awards.
From the site:
"A highlight of the day is the C.A.R.E. (Claire’s Awards for Reading Excellence) Awards which are given to children nominated by their principals and teachers as being the most improved readers at their grade level. The C.A.R.E. Awards program has grown from recognizing 27 children for their efforts the first year, to giving out over 300 awards this past year"
It is a great program and I am glad to be a part of the festivities. I wish I had photos from the day of the event, but I am a poor archivist and did not take any. Maybe I can find some since there were photographers there. Here is an article about the event:
There was also a tribute to
Wil Clay, an amazing illustrator/author who passed away from cancer in January. I really enjoyed being introduced to his work last year at my first Claire's day and was sad to hear of his passing. I had bought a couple of his books with hopes that I could get him to sign them this year. His paintings in the children's library are incredible!
It was a treat to meet his daughter who came up with her husband in rememberance to celebrate her father's life and his contribution to Claire's Day. Check out some of his work on his site:
http://wilclay.com/fine_arts_paintings.htm
Definitely ordering a couple of these! 
CW: Since this is your first children’s book, what was the road to publication like? CKK: I think many side roads of experience intersected for me to be able to create Habitat Spy. But the actual path between my first rough poem and the final published book was fairly straightforward, though lengthy, involving two submissions of two quite different versions to Sylvan Dell. I think it was important to believe in my idea and persist with the submission process.
