Sunday, November 23, 2014

My new book about Godfrey the kitten

I am excited about the release of my second children's picture book called Godfrey Finds a Home. It is the first in a series I plan about Godfrey the cat who is discovered up a tree on a farm in Massachusetts.
He is rescued and has adventures on the farm. He learns about CSA-community supported agriculture which is a subscription sold to the consumer by the farmer who depends on it for his winter livelihood. In the North there is no produce farming done as the fields are locked up tight by Jack Frost. This is a great idea as it enables the farmer to pay his mortgage and all that housekeeping entails. Seeds and other amenities can be purchased for the following Spring. On the other side of the deal, the consumer gets a weekly box of fresh picked vegetables beginning in June and going to or through October. The Stillman's CSA boxes are varied as Glenn grows a HUGE variety of vegetables and fruits mainly for the Boston market where there are numerous ethnic tastes. CSA boxes do not reflect all those tastes however, as a lot of households don't know what to do with really 'different' vegetables-these are my words, my opinion. If there is a 'different' vegetable Genevieve tells what it is and what to do with it in her weekly newsletter. You are welcome to subscribe to her online letter which she has designed and built it and it is very pretty, as well as, informative. www. Stillmansfarm.com.

But, getting back to my book,
The book includes Genevieve, Glenn, Faith, Reid, me and Larry as well as the men who work here on the farm. They are from Jamaica and come in the Spring and leave in the Fall. They work hard and are dedicated and do their jobs well. There are others who live locally who work here too.
The book is 32 pages and half of them are illustrations done by me in watercolor, colored pencil or oil. The men carrying baskets 
and Larry
Larry
is done in oil on canvas. I am learning as I go about how to illustrate for 'modern' methods of publishing as the illustrations are either photographed using my Samsung phone camera app which is incredible or they are scanned into my computer. They are then emailed over to the publisher as is, of course, the copy. I have read a half dozen books on illustrating for children's books and none of them told me how to do this. 

The story was written before Larry passed away so this is a memorial to him as well as clue-ing kids into how vegetables are grown and prepared for market. Corn does not appear from a can, box or bag.  Ears of corn are, in fact, ripped of a tall stalk at the peak of ripeness. Picture a raised bed of strawberries, sweetly fragrant, ripening in the June sun. The romance of the farm is in this book. It's all true and the only down side is the winter.
From the shameless commerce division (quoting from The Tappit Bros.)...
You can order the book,$11.50 from me, signed if you wish.
 I offer free shipping on orders of 4 or more books or you can get it from Amazon or order it from B&N. ISBN # 978-1-4575-3120-0
Thanks for your support for CSA,also.

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