about the book
In the morning, Hank the pill bug crawls out from underneath the rock he calls home. He scuttles to the lawn to share his breakfast with other insects from the area. As he makes his way back to his home—Yikes! Play dead. Play dead. The grasshopper passes him by.
For exercise, he climbs to the top of his home on a stick. Whew! That was a workout.
In the afternoon, he travels to meet his friend Amelia. Whoooosh! He barely misses getting squashed by a skateboard when he crosses the sidewalk. That was too close! Amelia lets him ride on her hat as she pretends to pilot a plane like Amelia Earhart.
When it’s time to go home, Hank is tired. The journey to his bed seems like a long way away, so he’d better get started.
about the author
One of the best pieces of advice Evan Kuhlman has ever received was from a creative writing instructor. “Write like your hair is on fire.”
While he does try to follow this advice, Evan does not take the oft-given advice of “write what you know.” Evan says, “I already know what I know, so how is that going to be more interesting than what I can learn or what I can imagine?” As a result, Evan tends to lean more towards speculative fiction and graphic novels.
Evan graduated from the University of Notre Dame and worked as a restaurant manager and a reporter for such publications as Glimmer Train and the Notre Dame Review. He later studied creative writing at Miami University. Evan lives in Ohio.
Sources:
Author website
Author spotlight: Backstory
Author biography: Wikipedia
about the illustrator
In between the time he spends baking bread and taking walks in the woods in Columbia County, New York, Chuck Groenink draws pictures. Some make it into the picture books he’s working on and others he sells as individual prints on his website Society 6. You can even get one of his prints made into a shower curtain. Now that’s practical art!
His illustrations have been described as having “visual layers” and “depth” that are “tempered by a wry humour and expansive imagination”. For you and me, this means that when you take the time to look at his work you can see lots of tiny details that make you wonder what is going on, causing you to imagine the story behind the image. When you look at one of his prints you might ask, “Why is this guy sad?” or “Who is that person in the mist?” or “That kid looks really cold.”
Chuck grew up in the northern part of the Netherlands amidst moors and bogs. He received his art degree from the Artez Institute of Visual Arts in Kampen. He moved to Portand, Oregon, in 2010 and after deciding to simplify his life, he deleted his Twitter account and moved to Valatie, New York where he lives with his wife and two cats.
Sources:
Illustrator website
Illustrator spotlight: Creative Fluff
Illustrator spotlight: Pikaland
Also by Chuck Groenink:
The Friend Ship by Kat Yeh. Disney-Hyperion. 2016.
How to Be a Hero by Florence Parry Heide. Chronicle Books. 2016.
Rufus the Writer by Elizabeth Bram. Schwartz & Wade. 2015.
Under a Pig Tree : A History of the Noble Fruit by Margie Palatini. Abrams Books for Young Readers. 2015.
Santa Clauses : Short Poems from the North Pole by Bob Raczka. Carolrhoda. 2014.
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