HAPPY THANKSGIVING

HAPPY THANKSGIVING! Hope you will have a fun and yummy Turkey Day!
The illustration is from one of my first cut-paper art books Who Has More? Who Has Fewer? On one side of this folding book for tots, children count the eggs of seven kinds of birds. On the reverse side, the chicks have hatched!

ANIMAL PRINTS AND CARDS--Perfect for Holiday Giving

My prints and cards are still available from my Etsy site (www.etsy.com/shop/CarolineArnoldArt) and make an ideal gift for the holiday season. Each image is a high-quality giclee print of one of the cut-paper art illustrations from my Day and Night books or my Animal World series.
Take a look and check it out!

AAAS/SUBARU Children's Science Picture Book Award--Short List

I am happy to learn that BUTTERFLIES IN ROOM 6 is on the short list for the AAAS/Subaru Children's Science Picture Book Award short list.

AAAS and Subaru are proud to announce the finalists for the 2020 AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books in the Children’s Science Picture Book category. The Prize celebrates outstanding science writing and illustration for children and young adults and is meant to encourage the writing and publishing of high-quality science books for all ages. Longlists for all four categories were announced in October.

The 2020 winner will be selected from among the following finalists.

• Butterflies in Room 6: See How They Grow, by Caroline Arnold. Charlesbridge, 2019.
  Follow a classroom of real kindergartners as they participate in a popular activity: raising butterflies. Astonishing photographs show the life cycle of the painted lady butterfly, from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to adult. Engaging text captures the children’s wonder and explains the science behind metamorphosis.
• Follow That Bee! A First Book of Bees in the City, by Scot Ritchie. Kids Can Press, 2019.
  This playful book mixes narration, facts and appealing illustrations to introduce young children to why the world needs bees, and how people can help them thrive. The book encourages children to look closer at the natural world around them, including in cities, and raises their awareness about how each person can do something to help the environment.
• Moth: An Evolution Story, by Isabel Thomas. Illustrated by Daniel Egnéus. Bloomsbury Children's Books, 2019.
  A clever picture book text about the extraordinary way in which animals have evolved, intertwined with the complication of human intervention. This remarkable retelling of the story of the peppered moth is the perfect introduction to natural selection and evolution for children.
• When Sue Found Sue: Sue Hendrickson Discovers Her T. Rex, by Toni Buzzeo. Illustrated by Diana Sudyka. Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2019.
  From a very young age, Sue Hendrickson was meant to find things: lost coins, perfume bottles, even hidden treasure. Her endless curiosity eventually led to her career in diving and paleontology, where she would continue to find things big and small. In 1990, at a dig in South Dakota, Sue made her biggest discovery to date: Sue the T. rex, the largest and most complete T. rex skeleton ever unearthed.

AAAS will provide resources based the 2020 finalists, and once again the books will be offered to schools across the country as part of the Subaru Loves Learning initiative. Through this partnership between AAAS and Subaru, more than 91,000 books were donated in 2019.

Winners will be announced in January and awarded at the 2020 AAAS Annual Meeting in Seattle, W.A., February 13-16, 2020.

WRITING and ART PROJECTS REINFORCE READING: Preparing for an Author Visit

Cut-paper sloths and penguins circled the space for my slide presentation.

I am always impressed by the wonderful activities teachers and librarians do with their students as they prepare for an author visit. By the time the children come to my presentation they are excited to meet me and love hearing me talk about books they have already become familiar with.

Children listed their favorite penguin facts from my book A Penguin's World. Cotton balls decorate their cut out penguins.

On my recent trip to northern California for the Humboldt County Children’s Author Festival, I visited Arcata Christian School (K-8.) Every wall in the room where I presented was covered with projects the children had done after reading my books. From poems and reports to drawings and cut-paper art, the children’s creativity was evident everywhere.

Teacher Vicki Childress and her butterfly cake. Colored festival posters decorate the walls.

I thank all their teachers, especially Vicki Childress, for doing such a great job preparing the students. Vicki coordinated my visit and made a special cake decorated with a beautiful image of a painted lady butterfly. She told me that she looked at the photographs in my book, Butterflies in Room 6, to make sure every part of the butterfly was accurate. After lunch, I cut the first slice and the cake was just as delicious as it looked. Later in the day, the students all received a piece as well. I know that the children will have fond memories of “Author Day” not only because of the cake, but because of all the projects they did in connection with my books. Here are a few samples:

First and Second graders read Wiggle and Waggle and wrote about their favorite part.

The children read and illustrated all four of my Habitat books, using my cut-paper technique. These are some of their pictures inspired by A Day and Night in the Forest.

Mountain lion. Older students made drawings of their favorite animals and wrote pyramid poems (directions are on my website.)

Jaguar. Younger students wrote haikus about their favorite animal.

Transparent butterflies decorated the sliding door.

A coloring page with theme art from the festival helped to build excitement for the bi-annual event.