This is the season to take a
sketchpad or journal outside, walk a trail or just lie in the grass. Watching.
Writing. Drawing.
That’s what Lulu Delacre did before writing ¡Olinguato De la A al la Z! Descubriendo el bosque nublado (Unveiling the Cloud Forest) . She traveled high up in the Andes
Mountains of Ecuador to find the elusive little mammal, the olinguito. Lulu’s
book was inspired by a Washington Post article about the discovery of the olinguito . Her journey to the cloud forest of Ecuador resulted
in a fascinating, elegant bilingual book filled with a whole alphabet of
wildlife – and many ideas to spark summer writing and drawing.
1.
Look at a
newspaper and find an article that inspires you to write a short story or a
poem. Illustrate your story.
2.
During your own
walk outside, try to find something that begins with each letter of the
alphabet. Take the first five words on your list and write a story using all
the words. It might be a very silly story!
3.
If you are in a
place where you can pick up leaves or twigs from the ground, bring some back to
use in your illustrations. Lulu used real leaves to get the texture just right
for the background in these pictures (now on display at Strathmore Mansion in
Rockville, Maryland.
4. Find the
zoologist hiding on every page of ¡Olinguito! Go to the library or use the
Internet to find other people who work with animals. Choose one and write a
paragraph about what that person does.
Maybe you can even interview someone who works in your community.
You never know where an outdoor
adventure could lead on paper and in your heart. Lulu says she “came back from my trip amazed
at the interconnectedness among all the life-forms in the cloud forest, and
with a deep respect for what these rich places mean to humans and the earth.”
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