Book release: "Where Does the Freshest Food Hide?"
The farm book comes out this week!
Hello! Thank you for reading my newsletter! I plan to share occasional information about upcoming projects and events I’m involved with, and some process photos and notes. Today I’ll be telling you about a book release.
I recently finished the illustrations for a book called “Where Does the Freshest Food Hide?” The first shipment of books is set to arrive this week, and will be sold at the Hilltop Hanover Farm farm stand. I’m excited for the book to be out in the world, and doubly excited because Hilltop is where my sister Lilly works as a field crew leader!
It has been special to me getting to work on a project that will be connected to her farming work, which she’s very passionate about and works very hard in! I’ve gotten to visit the farm twice now, and it was such a neat place. Lilly gave us tours of the seedlings in the greenhouses, and took us to meet the goats, Cheyenne and Glitter. When I visited last summer, I also got to pick flowers, and it was such a bountiful and joyful experience choosing which of the many kinds of blossoms to pick. (Dahlias, globe amaranth, celosia, and cosmos are some of the ones I think I remember.) We tried strawberries, tomatoes, and lettuce from the beds too. Looking around the farm stand and meeting Lilly’s coworkers was also great. When we went this last time, Lilly and her coworkers were bagging spinach to sell at the stand. The farm is also neat because it hosts educational programs and donates lots of fresh produce to local food banks. Anyway, one of Lilly’s coworkers last year, Marc, wanted to write a farming-inspired baby book for his son, and he learned from Lilly that I illustrate, so that was how the project took off!
The book is a board book for reading to babies and toddlers, and describes in rhyming form different features of plants that produce veggies and fruit. The pictures are done in ink, watercolor, and colored pencil. They each center around a different plant, and show animals, children, and adults examining, caring for, or harvesting them. So they were fun topics for me to draw and learn more about from the author.
Another interesting thing about the book is that the text is written in cursive. I have always loved looking at handwritten letters and journals, especially ones in cursive, so that was another thing that was special to me about this project - getting to put a little more cursive out into the world when it’s not around as much these days. I have really fond memories of handwriting class in elementary school. I loved copying out the strokes and shapes on the lined paper. (It was like getting to draw outside of art class!) And for some reason it made me think of a magical language, or of being magically connected back to other time periods. I remember my teachers having such beautiful cursive handwriting on the chalkboard, especially my third grade teacher - it was just breathtaking to look at, and so fluid the way she would draw it. I tried to make my writing for this book look like that elegant cursive of Mrs. Howell - it’s not as good as hers, but I’m still proud of it! I hope some kids and their grownups enjoy seeing the cursive and feel their own special connection to this style of writing.
A big thank you to Farmer Marc for trusting me to create the illustrations for his book. It was a real pleasure working with him and learning about the farm. Thank you to Lilly and to all of the Hilltop Hanover team for the inspiration and support for the book too.
The book will be available to purchase in person at Hilltop Hanover Farm Stand in Yorktown Heights, NY on Thursdays through Sundays, 10am-4pm, as well as online through the author’s website.
Hope you have a pleasant week! Charlotte