Eric Carle Illustrators

After coming back from vacation, the Giraffes began learning about Author/Illustrator Eric Carle and we began to study his illustration techniques so we could create our own Carle-Inspired Stories about animals we know and love!

We learned that Eric Carle uses different kinds of painted tissue paper that he then cuts out into shapes to make his illustrations. 

Last Friday, we spent our entire morning painting lots and lots and LOTS of image-making paper using different textures, brushes, colors, and painting techniques that we are now sharing to make illustrations in our very own books. 

This week, we read lots more Eric Carle books and studied his illustrations, and we also started thinking about what kinds of facts we wanted to share about our animals. Then, we got to work making our first illustrations. 

We just got started with our illustrations on Friday, and we can't wait to get working on them again next week! 

Visit with Author Mary Preble

On Thursday, grades K-2 got to meet local author Mary Preble, who shared her stories with us as well as her writing, editing, and illustrating strategies! 

Mary is a local artist who began writing books about a year ago when she heard the happy news that she was about to become a grandmother. She decided she wanted to write a story for her grandchild about going to the zoo, and after lots and lots of hard work, she did! She has since published her story Let's Go To The Zoo so she could share it with everyone. 

After reading her story to us, Mary showed us how she uses a GELLI pad to create prints that she then transfers to paper, and she illustrates her books by cutting out shapes from this paper and turning them into a collage!

Once she shared her methods with us, we got to use some of the paper she used in her illustrations to make our own collages on bookmarks that we got to take home with us. 

It was so cool to be able to experience what it was like to make collage pictures. We can't wait to see what books Mary will write next!

Visit with Author JoAnn Adinolfi

On Friday, local Author and Illustrator JoAnn Adinolfi came to visit all the K-2 classes at SMS to share her journey as a writer and illustrator with us! We got to learn about her life, where she works, and how she finds the inspiration for her stories (as well as some German and Italian phrases!)

we learned that JoAnn finds a lot of inspiration for her stories from her family and her pets. She likes to paint, draw, and use paper collages to make her illustrations! 

We had a lot of fun acting out parts of JoAnn's latest book The Big Adventures of Mr. Small!

Afterwards, some audience volunteers got to pick out some story elements from JoAnn's books out of a box, and JoAnn combined all of the elements into great, big illustration!

We are so grateful to have had the opportunity to meet another great author, and we are excited to look to our own lives for inspiration for our own stories. Thank you, JoAnn!