PreSThese toddler-sized board books feature watercolor paintings of multicultural children splashing in puddles, building snowmen, flying kites, and engaging in other weather-appropriate activities. The text is kept to a bare minimum, using a one-, two-, or three-word sentence per double-page spread to describe things to do in each milieu. Matching the simplicity of the narratives, the paintings show a child or two, a cat or a dog, and a touch of background scenery. The rhythm of the sentencesHear it patter; Watch it fallwill appeal to young listeners. Both words and pictures allow them to experience the world through all of the senses, e.g., by tasting rain, watching clouds, feeling sand between the toes, and listening to the wind sing. Perfect introductions to the joys of reading.Dawn Amsberry, formerly at Oakland Public Library, CA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Anna Grossnickle Hines's studio window looks out on her wild woodland garden. This lovely, familiar view inspired her to write
Miss Emma's Wild Garden. She lives in Milford, Pennsylvania. In Her Own Words...
"As a child I was very shy, but I enjoyed the attention I got from having my first-grade teacher put my drawings up on the wall. I remember sitting in my father's chair at the age of seven, looking at a Little Golden Book version of Heidi and telling my mother, "When I grow up, I want to make books for boys and girls." She said simply, "If that's what you want to do, that's what you should do."
"All the time I was growing up, first in rural Ohio, then, after my eleventh birthday, in Los Angeles, California, I read and drew. Sometimes I wrote, but I was shyer about that and usually tore it up. My parents and teachers encouraged me, but none of them could tell me much about how to go about "making books."
"In college my teachers told me that I had too much talent to waste on children's books, that "only Picasso gets away with drawing children," that I should "go have a baby and get it out of [my] system" and come back when I was ready to do " real art. " So at the end of my third year, having taken all the basic art courses, a class in children's literature, and another in child care and management, I left school to study on my own.
"I checked out stacks of books from the library and read them to the preschoolers in the daycare center where I worked. I read books about writing and illustrating books for children, and experimented with printing techniques. I also started writing: poetry at first, then a few picturebook stories, timidly sharing them with friends. Although they encouraged me, I still didn't know how to go about submitting my work to a publishing company.
"I was twenty-eight years old before I got that information from a Society of Children's Book Writers' conference. By that time, having been married and divorced, I had two young daughters to support, and had earned my degree and teaching credentials from Pacific Oaks College in Pasadena, California.
"During the next eight years I taught third grade, married a songwriting forest ranger named Gary Hines, had a third daughter, continued my writing and drawing, and collected over one hundred encouraging rejection letters from various publishing companies, eighteen of them from Susan Hirschman at Greenwillow Books.
"Then on Friday, November 13th, 1981, instead of sending me a nice rejection letter, Susan called to say, "We'd like to publish Taste the Raindrops." Since then my life has been full indeed, with a wonderful family and work I love.
"I am fascinated by children, by how they think, what they do each day, how they learn about the world around them, their relationships with others. I enjoy sorting it all out and making sense of it, especially as what is commonplace to us is new and engaging to them.
"Every once in a while I have the additional reward of hearing from a child, or parent of a child, for whom one of my books has meant something special. Then I'm really glad I didn't listen to my college teachers."
