Perfect Picture Book Friday: JOAN MITCHELL PAINTS A SYMPHONY: LA GRANDE VALLÉE SUITE Plus Giveaway

Posted on March 28, 2025 by viviankirkfield

Happy Perfect Picture Book Friday, dear friends! Today’s author is a wonderful kid lit friend of mine…and we are both part of the New England SCBWI chapter. I love her books…and she has graciously offered a choice to whoever wins the giveaway: either a copy of JOAN MITCHELL PAINTS A SYMPHONY or a Picture Book Critique (nonrhyming under 600 words). So, please make sure you leave a comment.

JOAN MITCHELL PAINTS A SYMPHONY: LA GRANDE VALLÉE SUITE

Written by Lisa Rogers

Illustrated by Stacy Innerst

Published by Calkins Creek/Astra (February 25, 2025)

Ages: 7-10

Themes: Creativity, expressing emotions, experimentation, mindfulness

Synopsis: Celebrate the creative process of pioneering American abstract painter Joan Mitchell in this beautifully illustrated STEAM picture book, perfect for all kinds of young creators.

It’s 1983, and American artist Joan Mitchell is in her studio outside Paris, transforming her emotions and memories into a symphony of colors and shapes. Inspired by her friend’s description of an idyllic hidden valley in France, Mitchell creates 21 massive paintings—her Grande Vallée series —bursting with vibrant, energizing hues. But she doesn’t paint the valley’s flowers and meadows. She paints a feeling about them—abundance, freedom, liveliness—creating a harmonious blend of drips, splashes, and brushstrokes in rainbow colors. When the paint dries, it’s time to share her valley with the world.

This inspiring, poetic picture book about an influential yet lesser-known American artist provides a snapshot of a creator who deserves as much acclaim as better-known Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock or Willem de Kooning. Author Lisa Rogers shares both the despair and delight Mitchell experienced throughout her career, while acclaimed illustrator Stacy Innerst’s bright artwork captures the movement and energy of Mitchell’s work, as her paintings develop from page to page.

Celebrate the creative process of pioneering American abstract painter Joan Mitchell in this beautifully illustrated STEAM picture book, perfect for all kinds of young creators.

From Astra: Celebrate the creative process of pioneering American abstract painter Joan Mitchell in this beautifully illustrated STEAM picture book, perfect for all kinds of young creator

Why I Love This Book
1. I love books that celebrate creativity!
2. I love books where the text and art work so perfectly together!
3. I love books filled with glorious illustrations – how wonderful for kids to see Joan Mitchell’s abstract paintings come to life in these pages!

I was chatting with Lisa and mentioned that we all love to hear about the path to publication for our Perfect Picture Book Friday books…and she graciously stopped by.
ME: Welcome, Lisa! Can you share a bit about why you wrote this story and how it came about?

LISA: Thank you so much for featuring JOAN MITCHELL PAINTS A SYMPHONY, Vivian. I’m thrilled to share about the spark for this book!

Since childhood, I’ve loved poring over paintings – from illustrations in my poetry and folktale books to the art in museums. I’m fascinated by how each individual brings something unique to their art, and how that act of personal creation can speak to others.

I didn’t know much about Joan Mitchell’s art when I was researching her life and work for my book DISCOVER HER ART: WOMEN ARTISTS AND THEIR MASTERPIECES. I read an essay about her inspiration for a series of 21 monumental paintings – a special valley in France that was a safe place for Mitchell’s dear friend and composer Gisèle Barreau. Mitchell became entranced with the idea of this valley. She began creating enormous abstract paintings using her own memories and emotions of places, people, poetry, and music that she loved—and even her dogs, who lounged in her studio while she painted!

I’ve long been interested in what sparks creativity, and in this book I focused on Mitchell’s process. I viewed a retrospective at the Baltimore Museum of Art that included some of her Grande Vallée paintings, and even after the manuscript was finished I went to New York to see another exhibition. Each time, I was struck by the beauty and power of her energetic brushwork and brilliant color palette.

Illustrator Stacy Innerst studied Joan Mitchell’s work while he was in art school, and he used acrylic paint to create the glorious illustrations in the book. You can almost feel the texture of the paint he used. The brilliant color jumps off the page. I love that he chose to end the book with an image of two children taking in a Mitchell painting. I hope that young readers take the time to not only study the illustrations but seek out Mitchell’s paintings in museums or online.

I have been awed by the power of abstract art—and I hope young readers will feel that power, too.

ME: WOW…thank you so much, Lisa. I loved hearing your path to publication for this book. And thank you for providing the painting activity! It’s a great way for readers to create their own abstract art!

RELATED ACTIVITY:

Paint like Joan Mitchell!

Inside spread from book: Text by Lisa Rogers and art by Stacy Innerst

Materials:
Paper bags, cut and unfolded to the largest possible size, or large pieces of watercolor or drawing paper.
Acrylic or watercolor paint or pastels, markers, crayons, paint pens –whatever is on hand.
Large brushes
List of emotions. Some examples: happiness, sadness, excitement, calmness, love. Add your own emotions to the list.

Steps:

Spread the paper out on a protected surface. Play some music that you like. Close your eyes and think of a place or person or animal that is important to you. How does that place or person or animal make you feel? Let your mind drift as you put yourself in that place or with that person or animal.

Open your eyes and choose a color that expresses how your place, person, or animal makes you feel. Make a few strokes that represent the feeling they give you.

Leaving some open spaces, try another color and make more strokes. You are expressing a feeling, so there is no wrong way to paint it. You might make different kinds of strokes for different emotions. You might use different colors for different emotions.

Try making drips, or layering one color partly over another. Remember to leave white space.

Keep painting until you feel like you are done. No one can decide that except for you!

Keep all of your work, even if you don’t like it at first. Try another painting. Maybe you will create a series, just like Joan Mitchell!

This is a great activity for kids…but also for adults. Next time you are feeling stuck with your writing, why not try painting?

Thank you all for stopping by and spending your precious time with us. Please make sure you leave a comment to be entered in the FABULOUS giveaway! And please remember that the best way to tell an author or illustrator that you love their work is to:
Busy their books
Review their books
Tell friends about their books (please share this post on your social media)
Ask local libraries to purchase copies of their books!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. I’ll be in Massachusetts at two school visits and then, on Saturday, at the Silver Unicorn Bookstore in Acton MA at 11am – if you are local to that area, please stop by for a fabulous story time! And then pop in to the blog on the last day of March for the #50PreciousWords Prize Winners and Honorable Mentions reveal!!!

Perfect Picture Book Friday: A FEATHER, A PEBBLE, A SHELL Plus Giveaway

Posted on May 10, 2024 by viviankirkfield

Happy Perfect Picture Book Friday, dear friends. Get ready for a FABULOUS post, thanks to the talented author/illustrator Miri Leshem-Pelly who stopped by to share some of the behind-the-pages process of her newest book, A FEATHER, A PEBBLE, A SHELL.

ME: Welcome, Miri! Thanks for visiting. And we are listening!

When reality mimics imagination

Look at this photo vs drawing, both of a girl on a tree. I bet you’re thinking I used this photo as a reference while drawing this sketch, right? Wrong!

What if I tell you that I drew this tree out of my imagination? And that I took this picture AFTER I drew this sketch?

Well – let me tell you the story behind the picture.

It all happened after I’ve finished working on the pencil sketches for my book. The sketches were approved by the publisher, and I was about to start the final color illustrations.

One of the scenes in the book happens in a place called Sataf, in the Jerusalem mountains. When I drew the pencil sketch of the girl sitting on an olive tree in Sataf, I looked at many olive tree photos but couldn’t find exactly the tree I needed, so I made one up from my imagination.

Around that time, we were invited to my nephew’s Bar Mitzvah. This boy loves hiking and decided to celebrate his Bar Mitzvah with a family hike to Sataf! I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to take pictures of some ancient olive trees that grow there. But I didn’t expect to find the tree from my sketch! When I saw this tree, I asked my niece to sit and hug it just like the girl from my sketch. My sweet niece is about the same age of the girl character in my book and she even had a similar hat!

And that’s how this funny story happened. I imagined an olive tree in Sataf, drew it, and then discovered that this tree actually exists right there, in Sataf. Sometimes reality mimics imagination, and I have the picture to prove it.

WOW! That’s amazing! Thank you so much, Miri. And friends, take a look at the awesome cover of our Perfect Picture Book Friday feature:

A FEATHER, A PEBBLE, A SHELL

Written and illustrated by Miri Leshem-Pelly

Published by Kar Ben (May 7, 2024)

Ages: 3-8

Themes: Nature/STEM, Girl explorer, Israel

Synopsis:
A FEATHER, A PEBBLE, A SHELL follows a girl’s hikes through the diverse nature sites of Israel. Whenever she runs in a field, climbs up a hill or swims in the sea, she looks for something small to hold in her hand. It’s a picture book about curiosity and connection to nature, and about little wonders of nature that children love to discover!

Why I Love This Book:
I love picture book stories that take me on a journey. Child readers will be swept away to a calm and peaceful place in their hearts as the main character visits river, beach, and field. The writing is captivating – the language is lyrical and visual – and the illustrations are stunning. The additional STEM sidebars add value for teachers who can use this book in the classroom. Highly recommend!!

RELATED ACTIVITIES:

Photo courtesy: https://temeculablogs.com/nature-crafts/

Check out a bunch of lovely Nature crafts for kids here: https://temeculablogs.com/nature-crafts/

And there’s more! Miri has activities on her website:
Get here free downloads for this book: https://mirileshembooks.com/free-downloads/

To find out more about Miri and her books:
Miri Leshem-Pelly is an author-illustrator of 17 picture books, many of them about nature and animals. Miri does more than 100 school visits per year. She is an SCBWI RAE (Regional Advisor Emerita) after serving more than ten years as a regional advisor of SCBWI in Israel.
Miri is represented by literary agent Anna Olswanger.
Connect with Miri:
Website: http://mirileshembooks.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/miri_leshem_pelly/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mirileshem

Dear friends…great books need our help. Books like A FEATHER, A PEBBLE, A SHELL need to be in library and school and home bookshelves all around the world. So, how can we help? We can:
Buy the book:
Lerner website: https://lernerbooks.com/shop/show/23133
Amazon
Review the book:
Amazon
Add it to your Goodreads Want to Read Shelf
Tell friends about the book (Please share this post on your social media – that really helps)
Ask your local library to purchase copies for their collection

A Feather, A Pebble, A Shell 979-8-7656-0774-9 (LB) 979-8-7656-1339-9 (EB epub) Whenever the author-illustrator runs in a field, climbs a hill, or swims in the sea in Israel, she looks for something small to hold in her hand. She finds a basalt pebble from the ice-cold Dan River, formed from lava over 100,000 years ago. Israel’s national bird, the hoopoe, leaves a feather in the grass at HaYarkon Park. Dead hood coral grows in the Red Sea, where fish play hide-and-seek. She holds small things in her hand and then leaves them in their habitats. . . for the reader to find.

Please leave a comment for a chance to win a copy of this glorious book and tell us how you will help spread the word. Maybe you can also tell us what object YOU would have kept if you had been on those hikes.

And please come back here on Sunday for our special Mother’s Day post containing the #50PreciousWordsforKids stories!

Happy Book Birthday: THE MUD ANGELS: How Students Saved the City of Florence

Posted on April 4, 2024 by viviankirkfield

A couple of years ago, author Karen Greenwald showed me the manuscript for THE MUD ANGELS: How Students Saved the City of Florence. I read it and I told her: THIS IS A BOOK!

And now it is!!! HAPPY BOOK BIRTHDAY TO THE MUD ANGELS!!!

The cover is everything we could hope – wonderful color palette…and beautiful art! And I love how the title is sitting in the muck and mud! Olga Lee did a fabulous job!

Here’s a little bit about the book from the Amazon sales page:
Based on real events, this story shows how a team of international volunteers worked together to save priceless artifacts after a flood.

When the Arno River floods the city of Florence, Italy in 1966, it leaves slimy, smelly mud everywhere. A young girl watches students from around the world, many from the US, help save the town’s rare treasures, earning themselves the nickname Gli Angeli del Fango, the Mud Angels.

According to the publisher, the book targets ages 4-8 – but honestly, this is a picture book that also belongs in the upper elementary and middle school classroom! What a fabulous story to encourage young readers to become activists – to get involved with what’s going on around them, in their school and in their community and beyond.
So please, dear friends, spread the word:
Share on your social media
Place it on your GOODREADS WANT TO READ SHELF
Review it on Amazon
Ask your local library to purchase copies for their collection
Buy the book

And now, because author Karen is such a sweetheart, she stopped by to share a bit of the story behind the story – what drew her to write MUD ANGELS.
ME: Welcome, dear Karen…thank you for coming to chat with us!

KAREN: Hi Vivian, it’s lovely to be here. Thank you so much for joining the celebration for THE MUD ANGELS.
When you first begin learning how to write picture books, you start hearing about all the rules. This can feel overwhelming at times. However, there is one that I find myself returning to again and again—the idea that you should write what you feel personally connected to or have experience with. This is advice not to ignore! The Mud Angels touches on many facets of my life, from the environmental aspects to my obvious and enormous love of libraries, from the fact that it was the first-time books were treated as art, to my interest in studying various cultures…and, ultimately, the community of global youth that joined harmoniously to do something important for the world. I have loved researching, interviewing, and learning about this dark (and yet, hopeful) period in history. Along the way, the process has yielded me new friendships, education, and food for thought. It even inspired me to take Italian!

I hope others in kid lit find stories to write that nurture their souls as much as this one does mine!

That’s fabulous advice, Karen. Because when we feel connected with the story we are researching, the writing shows that – and the reader connects, too.

To connect with Karen and find out more about her books: https://www.karengreenwald.com/

And here’s a totally cool trailer for MUD ANGELS from Italy:

Thank you for spending your precious time with us. Please come back tomorrow for Perfect Picture Book Friday when we welcome Lydia Lukidis and her new book, DANCING THROUGH SPACE!