SUN FUN: GET READY FOR THE ECLIPSE Coming On APRIL 8, 2024! 10 Projects for Kids

On Monday, April 8, 2024, a solar eclipse will be seen over North America. The path of the full eclipse will pass over 13 states and a partial eclipse will be seen in many more.

It is never safe to look at the sun directly. Here's how you can experience an eclipse safely. This project is in my book Sun Fun, originally published in 1981 by Franklin Watts, and now available as an e-book on Amazon or downloadable on Epic at your school or library.

Sun Fun includes 10  projects for primary school age children to learn about the sun-- a paper plate clock to tell time by the sun, how to make shadow puppets and solar art, creating a pin-hole card for watching an eclipse, and much more. You can preview the book in this video on YouTube about how to make a sun clock. (The illustrations in the book are my own, created in the days of pre-separated art. I had to make a separate drawing for each printed color!)

Enjoy learning about the sun and  watching the eclipse safely!

SUN FUN: WATCHING A SOLAR ECLIPSE (safely)

Image of Eclipse through a pinhole. Illustration by Caroline Arnold in Sun Fun.

No "ring of fire" but lots of crescent shaped suns as the partial eclipse passed over Los Angeles yesterday! Any tiny opening (between leaves on the trees or poked in a piece of paper) became a pinhole camera projecting the sun's image.)

Shadows of leaves on a sidewalk create images of partially obscured sun. 

On Saturday morning, October 14, 2023, I and millions of other people experienced an annular eclipse when the moon passes in front of the sun, leaving a thin edge of the sun peeking out behind it. A full annular eclipse looks like a ring of fire. In Los Angeles, where I live, we did not see the full eclipse, but we did see a partial eclipse.

It is never safe to look at the sun directly. Here's how you can experience an eclipse safely. This project is in my book Sun Fun, originally published in 1981 by Franklin Watts, and now available as an e-book on Amazon.

PRE-SEPARATED ART: Illustrating My Book THE BIGGEST LIVING THING

 

Black plate illustration for pages 6-7 The Biggest Living Thing (Carolrhoda, 1983) Pencil drawing by Caroline Arnold

Today's children’s books are printed with beautiful full color illustrations created with a vast array of artistic techniques—painting, drawing, collage, photography, mixed-media--basically anything that can be digitally color scanned. Those scans are then used to make the printing plates for the book. Typically there are four plates: black, cyan, magenta, yellow. (These are the same colors in the ink cartridges of your home printer.) On the printed page the colors merge to create a full range of hues.

Pages 20-21 of my book Five Nests (E.P. Dutton, 1980). Illustration by Ruth Sanderson.

But in 1980, when I first started publishing books for children, many were illustrated with black-and-white art, especially if they were nonfiction books, like mine. Digital scanning had not yet been invented and the cost of separating colors photographically to make each of the colored printing plates was so high that only the most established artists worked in full color. Many books were printed with black plus in some cases one or two colors. Five Nests, illustrated by Ruth Sanderson, was my first published book.The art was black, plus one color--green.

For most children’s books in those days, the artist was required to make a separate drawing for each printed color. Thus the art was “pre-separated” not needing expensive photographic separation. It was a technical process, converting the intensity of each color to shades of grey and then calculating how the colors would appear when overlapped on the printed page.

Cover of Sun Fun, an activity book.

My first opportunity to illustrate one of my books was Sun Fun (Franklin Watts, 1982) a book of simple projects about the sun and solar energy. It was a two color book. Obviously, I chose yellow for one of the colors. The other color I chose was red. As they overlapped in the printing I could achieve a range of colors from pink and orange to brown and grey.

Proof sheet for page 39. Squirrels help spread Sequoia seeds.

The second book I illustrated was my book about giant sequoia trees, The Biggest Living Thing (Carolrhoda, 1983.) This also was a two color book. I chose brown and green.

Black pencil drawing for pages 23-24. Space at top is left open for text. This Sequoia stump was so big it could be used as a dance floor.

The primary illustrations for the book were done in black pencil. Then working on a light table I created the pages for the two colors being careful to line up the registration marks to make sure that they would be in the correct places when the pages were printed.

Page 22. Two color art. Black plus green and brown.

The Biggest Living Thing was a 48 page book. I began by doing the black-and-white drawings—24 double-page spreads. With the additional drawings for the two colors I did a total of 72 drawings plus a full color painting for the jacket. It was a lot of work--for not a lot of money. After finishing the project I decided to focus my energy on writing books rather than illustrating them.

Jacket of The Biggest Living Thing. Watercolor painting.

Twenty years later the world had changed. Digital separation made it possible to illustrate without pre-separating. I began to illustrate again, this time using a cut-paper collage technique. But that is another story.

Note: The original art for The Biggest Living Thing is archived in the Kerlan Collection at the University of Minnesota.

WATCHING A SOLAR ECLIPSE, from SUN FUN by Caroline Arnold

Pinhole eclipse viewer, from Sun Fun, text and illustrations by Caroline Arnold

On Monday, April 8, 2024, a solar eclipse will be seen over North America. The path of the full eclipse will pass over 14 states and a partial eclipse will be seen in many more.

It is never safe to look at the sun directly. Here's how you can experience an eclipse safely. This project is in my book Sun Fun, originally published in 1981 by Franklin Watts, and now available as an e-book on Amazon or downloadable on Epic at your school or library.

My book SUN FUN, originally published in 1981 and now available as an ebook on Amazon, includes eleven projects for primary school age children to learn about the sun. With the solar eclipse coming on August 21st, making a pin hole viewer is the perfect activity to safely observe the eclipse. (The illustrations in the book are my own, created in the days of pre-separated art. I had to make a separate drawing for each printed color.)
Enjoy watching the eclipse safely!

Summer is SUN FUN time! Easy-Read Activities on Kindle

SUN FUN: An Easy Read Activity Book by Caroline Arnold.  Here is the perfect book to inspire activities to do with your kids, grandkids, or students, on a hot summer day! 
     Did you know that you can tell time by the sun, cook with the sun, and make pictures with the sun? This book for children ages 5 to 9 has ten fun activities that use energy from the sun, including making a sun clock, shadow puppets, and sun reflectors. From an ice cube race to learning how to watch a solar eclipse, this book uses easily found materials and simple directions to learn about the sun and solar energy.
     I wrote and illustrated this book in 1981.  Many of the projects were ones that I did with my own children and their friends (who became models for my drawings for the book.)  The book has long been out of print but is now available in digital format as a Kindle book on Amazon and at StarWalk Kids.  Have fun and stay cool!
You can preview the book in this video on YouTube about how to make a sun clock. 
     Illustration note:  This book was illustrated back in the days of preseparated art.  I had only three colors to work with--black, red, and yellow--and had to create a separate drawing for each color.  I worked on a light table to make sure that the images for each color would line up (or register) when the pages were printed. In the printing process, the colors combined to make the final image.
Note:  This is an updated reposting of an early blog.

Sun Fun Activity Book on Kindle

SUN FUN: An Easy Read Activity Book by Caroline Arnold.  Here is the perfect book to inspire activities to do with your kids, grandkids, or students, on a hot summer day! 
     Did you know that you can tell time by the sun, cook with the sun, and make pictures with the sun? This book for children ages 5 to 9 has ten fun activities that use energy from the sun, including making a sun clock, shadow puppets, and sun reflectors. From an ice cube race to learning how to watch a solar eclipse, this book uses easily found materials and simple directions to learn about the sun and solar energy.
     I wrote and illustrated this book in 1981.  Many of the projects were ones that I did with my own children and their friends (who became models for my drawings for the book.)  The book has long been out of print but is now available in digital format as a Kindle book on Amazon.  Although images on Kindle are only black and white, if you download the book to your phone or computer, the pictures will be in color.  Have fun and stay cool!
You can preview the book in this video on YouTube about how to make a sun clock. 
     Illustration note:  This book was illustrated back in the days of preseparated art.  I had only three colors to work with--black, red, and yellow--and had to create a separate drawing for each color.  I worked on a light table to make sure that the images for each color would line up (or register) when the pages were printed. In the printing process, the colors combined to make the final image.