Sweet breezes and a warm sun greeted us Saturday afternoon when we arrived at Windjammer Park in Oak Harbor on Whidbey Island. The park had reopened just that morning after a year of renovation and kids exulted in the warm weather, swarming the spouts and fountains along an ersatz river at the splash end of the park. At the other end, a huge pirate ship play structure crawled with more little ones.

Sno-Isle Libraries interim director district manager Mary Campbell and Oak Harbor librarian Jane Lopez-Santilliana. Mary passed out cookies at the close of the event. (library photo credit)

Between the splash park and Bailey’s playground, meandering along the shoreline above the driftwood and the beach, waited the brand new Story Trail. My sister Kate and I had been invited to the Story Trail’s opening because our book, Little Wolf’s First Howling is the inaugural book. We could see Little Wolf laid out spread-by-spread in cases along the path, awaiting the ribbon cutting.

The sponsors of the cases plus Kate and I snipped the opening ribbon together. (library photo credit)

“Follow the trail, read the tale,” says the tagline along the bottom of each case. And, after introductions and the ribbon cutting, that’s exactly what we did. With the help of a moveable audio system, Kate and I read our book to the many community members gathered for the occasion. What a joy.

The Oak Harbor Story Trail came into being when a new Clean Water treatment plant necessitated reworking adjacent Windjammer park. Sno-Isle librarians saw an opportunity. They had heard about Story Trails on the east coast and wished for one for their patrons. Mary Campbell met with city planners to suggest that the library partner with the city and parks department to plan and install the Story Trail.  Mary and Jane Lopez-Santilliana worked with Sno-Isle administration staff to draft and submit a proposal to the City of Oak Harbor planning committee, parks department and city council. All three organizations approved the Story Trail proposal and partnered together to make it a reality. Donors stepped forward to sponsor the 26 cases along the harborside path. Jane will have the task of changing the books every few months.

If you happen to be in Dallas, Texas, you can see fellow BATT author/illustrator Julie Paschkis’s book Vivid is also part of what they call a ‘Story Path’ in Highland Park. The announcement of that path’s opening included this history: The first ‘Story Walk’ was built in 2007 in Vermont, the brainchild of Anne Ferguson with the assistance of Rachel Senechal, a librarian at the Kellogg-Hubbard Library. Since then, variations of the program have been implemented in all 50 states, and at least 12 countries.

Author/illustrator Kevan Atteberry told me about the ‘Popup Storywalks’ program in our Seattle area. His book, Bunnies, was a first book when it was installed at St. Edwards Park earlier this year.

My husband, John, made a short video about the Oak Harbor Story Trail opening. Click here to see it.

Thanks to the Oak Harbor librarians and sponsors and everyone else who made it possible for Little Wolf to spend this summer at the beach.

Most of my life I have been saving quotes. Today I offer a few that encourage me as a writer and a human being. Hope they speak to you, as well.

“Writers are like the cheese in the ‘Farmer and the Dell’ – standing there all alone but deciding to take a few notes.” – Annie Lamott in Bird by Bird.

“You absorb these influences almost by osmosis and then how many years later – it’s been 22 years – they just come out. I think it’s beautiful. It’s like when there’s no rain in the desert for a long time and then it rains and these beautiful flowers pop up.” – k.d. lang speaking on NPR about the influence of Roy Orbison on her new songs. April 16, 2011

“Maclean was deeply influenced by Wordsworth’s notion of ‘spots of time,’ or moments that give life shape and meaning, ‘as if an artist had made them,’ in Maclean’s own words… His aim, he wrote, ‘was to study the topography of certain exposed portions of the surface of the soul.’” – from my sister, Susan Britton’s notes of a Norman Maclean interview

“Sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.” –Itzhak Perlman

“As long as I live, I’ll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I’ll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm and avalanche. I’ll acquaint myself with glaciers and wild gardens and get as near the heart of the world as I can.” – John Muir

Do you have some quotable quotes to add to the stack? Extra points for inspiration and humor.

A wonderful side benefit of judging the 2018 Margaret Wise Brown prize has been the opportunity to develop a sense of the state of picture books in 2018, based on the 200+ books that publishers entered.

One group that caught my eye are meta books – those that use the object of a book as part of the story. If you are familiar with Grover’s There’s a Monster at the End of This Book or, more recently, Herve Tullet’s Press Here, you know what I’m talking about.

The 2018 crop that I read had at least four that fit this interactive category. I think the most effective is Jon Agee’s The Wall in the Middle of the Book (Dial). The premise is that a brick wall divides the left and right hand pages.

Text tells us the wall protects the safe left side from the right. On each spread, there is one story on the left: initially about a little knight raising a ladder, and another on the right: a stack of fearsome animals and an ogre.

Then – oh no! – the water rises on the left side.

Luckily the scary ogre reaches over the wall and saves the little knight from drowning. “I’m actually a nice ogre,” he says. “And this side of the book is fantastic.” Meanwhile, on the now ocean-filled left side of the book, bigger fish eat big fish.

The great satisfaction is that expectations are flipped. Things are not as they seemed. And we get to watch the stories on each side of the wall as this change is accomplished. It says so much about walls.

Beware the Monster! by Michael Escoffier, art by Amandine Piu, (annick press), begins with a warning: “This book contains a monster with a great big appetite!”

The colorful monster proceeds to eat all the apples, then leaves, then trees, then cows.

Next spread: “Yikes. I think he’s spotted you. You’ve got to get away!” (Many of these books use the second person directive to draw in the child reader and escalate the drama. It’s kind of the picture book equivalent of theatre’s breaking the fourth wall.)

Next spread: “Here he comes! Close the book!” (This is a line used in many of these meta books. Of course the readers plunge onward, despite warnings.)

The monster moves in closer and closer as spreads whiz by. Luckily just when he’s about to eat the child reader he burps instead. Everything flies out of his mouth and he decides to take a nap, saying “I’ll take care of you later.”

Also written in second person is Nothing Happens in this Book by Judy Ann Sadler, art by Vigg, (Kids Can Press). This accumulative story is meta in its voice; the little guy on the cover has an ongoing one-sided discussion with the reader about what is going to happen in the book. Eventually he gathers up a bunch of stuff and distributes it to a wild assortment of beings.

As they march away in a fold-out page parade, he exclaims, “Everything happens in this book!” Another nice flip of expectations.

A red grosgrain ribbon bookmark is key to the story in Hungry Bunny by Claudia Reuda, (Chronicle Books). This one gives a nod to Press Here. For instance, it asks the reader to shake the book so some apples will fall off the tree, then blow away the leaves when the apples don’t fall.

The reader helps the bunny use his red “scarf” to climb up and get the apples. Bunny’s ride home in the wagon is helped by various physical movements of the book. Then the reader is asked to give Bunny a push through a die-cut hole so he can return to the burrow where his mom bakes apple pie. Of course the reader is offered a piece.

Makes sense that the dedication acknowledges the participatory nature of this book: “Bunny would like to dedicate this book to you, for all your help with the harvest. Also dedicated to children’s play.”

Every one of these examples uses the object of the book to boost interaction with the story. All of them engage the reader and listener in movement and response. I think it’s an interesting niche in our children’s book world, another tool we could add to our toolbelts.

Have you seen the meta mechanism used to good effect? Please chime in with other titles that use the object of the book to tell stories.