FernFolio » artists

Hands by Lois Ehlert

fernfolio — Sun, 10 May 2009 16:50:29 +0000

In Hands, author and illustrator Lois Ehlert tells the story of growing up to be an artist. In simple words and richly evocative images that capture the experiences through a young child’s eyes, Ehlert documents the work her father and mother did with their hands, her father’s woodworking, her mother’s sewing, and their gardening. She details how she learned to saw and hammer and cut and sew and plant and weed by watching and doing, and how these experiences led to her decision to become an artist, and join hands with her mother and father.
Hands celebrates the creative process, and reminds us of the importance of passing on what we learn from our parents to our children.
FernFolio Editor

Arctic Memories by Normee Ekoomiak

fernfolio — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 22:39:39 +0000

Born in 1948, Normee Ekoomiak lived in a snow house in the winter and in a tent made of animal skins during the summer months. With his family, he followed the animals, moving to the sea ice in the winter to hunt seal, to the river in the spring to fish for Arctic char, and inland in pursuit of the caribou during the warmer months.
In Arctic Memories, he shares his childhood experiences of traditional Inuit life, and gives insight into the spiritual beliefs of his people through his art. Accompanied by his reflections in Inuktitut and English, are drawings, paintings and embroidered pieces that celebrate the daily lives of the Inuit, both children and adults. Ekoomiak’s work details life in the snow house, games to provide entertainment and build strong and healthy bodies, and the circle of nature among Arctic creatures.
It also explains the traditional Inuit spiritual beliefs through pictures of Sedna, goddess of the sea, and Okpik, who protects all living things in the North. Ekoomiak’s scenes of the nativity point to his Christian faith, one that exists side by side with his traditional Inuit beliefs.
Particularly interesting are Ekoomiak’s pictures, The Body Needs to Travel, in which he explains how the Inuit spread around the Arctic Circle, and Ancestral Hunters, where he depicts hunters killing a wooly mammoth in a painting completed a year before the remains of a wooly mammoth were discovered in the Arctic!
is a wonderful celebration of Inuit culture and history. Both the art and accompanying text provide a window into the lives and beliefs of the Inuit people.
FernFolio Editor

Saffy’s Angel by Hilary McKay

fernfolio — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 14:30:10 +0000

At eight years old, after she stood on a kitchen chair to read the names of paint colours off a chart posted on the wall, Saffron Casson discovered that she was adopted. She learned that her sisters, Caddy and Rose, and her brother, Indigo, were, in fact, her cousins, and that, following her mother’s death in a car accident in Italy, she was brought home to England by her grandfather, and had come to live with her aunt, Eve, her uncle, Bill, and their children. This revelation changed something inside of Saffy; somewhere deep inside her, she began to doubt her place in the world.
When her grandfather dies, after ten long years in a nursing home unable to communicate following a massive stroke, he leaves to Saffy, in his will, an angel. Though she has few memories of her life in Siena, Italy, now thirteen year-old Saffy dreams of a sunlit garden and, with the help of her new friend, Sarah, realizes that in that garden stood a stone angel, which her three year-old self adored. Sarah, whose unco-operative back and legs land her in a wheelchair, most of the time, possesses great determination and, when she hears the story of the stone angel, decides that she and Saffy will travel to Siena and find it. Together they set out to locate the sunlit garden, and retrieve Saffy’s angel.
Interlaced with Saffy’s story, are the stories of Caddy, Indigo, Rose, and their parents. Cadmium, at eighteen, has managed to fail every school-leaving exam and is bracing to do so again, is approaching her hundredth driving lesson and has fallen in love with Michael, her driving instructor, who endlessly praises the abilities of his girlfriend, Diane. Indigo, eleven, struggles to overcome his fear of heights by hanging out his bedroom window so that he can realize his dream of becoming a polar explorer, when he’s not cooking for the family or quietly reassuring his mother and his sisters, whom he views as his pack. Five year-old Rose spends her time painting at the kitchen table, sometimes with paint and sometimes with the contents of the fridge, and arguing with her father. Their mother, Eve, teaches art to little old ladies and juvenile delinquents, but lives to escape to her shed at the bottom of the garden where she paints nice little pictures that are snapped up by people who see them in the building society window. Bill, their father, is a serious artist, and lives, during the week, in London where he paints free of the distractions of wife and children, travelling home, on weekends, to the chaos of pet guinea pigs, unwashed dishes and family.
Saffy’s Angel, the second of four books by Hilary McKay about the Casson family children, won the 2002 Whitbread Children’s Book Award. It is a sad and funny celebration of a young girl’s search for herself, and her family’s efforts to help her do so.
FernFolio Editor

Discovering Emily by Jacqueline Pearce

fernfolio — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 11:33:45 +0000

Living in Victoria, British Columbia in the 1880s, Emily Carr struggles to conform to her family’s, and society’s, expectations of her. Young girls should be obedient, quiet, neat and godly. They need to learn to be good wives and mothers. But Emily is neither obedient, nor quiet, nor neat. Though she tries hard to listen in church, she finds it difficult to remember what the sermon was about. Rather, she sees the evidence of God’s presence in the trees and plants and animals around her. And, if being a wife and mother means that she is going to have to act like a lady, then she’d just as soon not bother with a husband or children.
Surrounded by four older sisters, whose behaviour is unimpeachable, and parents who try hard to instil proper manners, Emily chafes at the restrictions placed upon her. Whenever possible, she slips the leash and explores the world around her, often coming home wet and bedraggled to another scolding.
However, when her father sees a charcoal sketch she has made of the family dog, he decides that Emily should have art lessons and, for the first time in her young life, Emily discovers that, just perhaps, there is something she can be really good at. Emily sets up an easel in her bedroom and works hard to improve her drawing abilities, saving up her pocket money to buy plaster casts of body parts to practice sketching. She is angered and confused by the first real artists she ever meets, because they assert that Canada is not fit landscape for drawing. Emily decides, for a time, that maybe she hasn’t got what is takes to be an artist, but eventually her passion for art will prevail!
Jacqueline Pearce has written a fictional account of the early years of one of Canada’s most beloved and celebrated painters, British Columbia’s Emily Carr. Her story of this great artist’s life continues in Emily’s Dream!
FernFolio Editor

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson

fernfolio — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 13:55:47 +0000

Eleven year-old Jess Aaron’s life is a hard one. The family farm can’t support them, so he and his four sisters and parents struggle to make ends meet on what his father can earn working in construction. They are a poor family in a community of poor families; money is tight and there is rarely any left over for anything beyond the bare necessities. Jess, an artist and a dreamer, is expected to help out at home with the milking and with chopping wood for the stove. His parents cannot understand his preoccupation with drawing and are irritated, at times, by the fact that he draws “the way some people drink whiskey”. Jess’ life at school is no better; he has few friends among his classmates, and cannot imagine how he is going to survive another eight years.
The arrival of Leslie Burke in Jess’ life changes everything. The daughter of well-educated, freethinking hippy writers, whom she calls Bill and Judy, Leslie dresses and talks and acts in ways that at first shock and then attract Jess. When he defends her against their schoolmates, Jess and Leslie begin to be friends, but their friendship really blossoms after they find Terabithia, a stretch of land in the woods that they reach by swinging across a creek on an old length of rope. Leslie decides that she and Jess will be king and queen of Terabithia. Drawing upon her favourite books and stories, she opens for him the world of the imagination. Through Leslie, Jess realises that he is not alone in his need to feed his heart and mind and spirit. In Leslie, Jess finds the other half of his soul.
When tragedy strikes, Jess must re-evaluate all that he is and all that his friendship with Leslie has taught him. He discovers within him the strength and courage and purpose to take her lessons and make them his own.
It has been many years since I last read Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia. I am struck, again, by the power and beauty of this story. It is one to be read and discussed and wept over.
FernFolio Editor