illustrator interviews

Happy to welcome back Vermont artist Ashley Wolff to talk about her latest picture book, My Towering Tree, written by Janna Matthies and published by Beach Lane Books (2024).

In Matthies’s lyrical ode to a special tree, a girl appreciates the natural wonders in her own back yard, from squirrel to garden to bee. Beneath the towering tree’s leafy canopy, she can think, breathe, rest, write, reflect, and simply be. She can also remember her dog who’s buried there beneath “a squarish stone,” and joyfully bask in the warm rays of sunshine streaming through the branches.

*In my yard’s a towering tree. It reaches high to cover me.*

Ashley’s lush, color-saturated gouache and pastel illustrations bring Janna’s spare rhyming text to vivid, glorious life. Her dramatic use of scale in several double page spreads creates a sense of intimacy and introspection, while charming details such as the squirrel stealing a tomato, the girl blissfully reclining in a wheelbarrow, and her endearing notebook doodles keep us turning the pages. The majestic tree, with its thick sturdy trunk, generous branches teeming with wildlife, and foliage rendered in soft, fluid daubs of green is soothing and inviting.

*In my yard’s a squeaky squirrel. He zigzags like a tilt-a-whirl and races up the towering tree that reaches high to cover me.*

Big thanks to Ashley for dropping by to tell us more about creating the art for this lovely study in meditation and mindfulness, and for sharing so many wonderful reference photos. 🙂

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“INSPIRE means, Seeing what you’ve done here fills me with energy and new thoughts and the desire to now try to see what I can do!” ~ Amy Krouse Rosenthal (One Smart Cookie: Bite-Size Lessons for the School Years and Beyond)

About ten years ago, I read my first Amy Krouse Rosenthal book, her adult memoir Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life. It spoke to me because I’m an alphabet freak, and I’d never seen anyone tell her life’s story in a series of quirky alphabetized entries, a free-flowing yet carefully curated non-linear celebration of simply being alive.

I loved Amy’s penchant for cataloging ideas, recalibrating time, pruning memory. She embraced spontaneity and serendipity, indulging an irrepressible passion for making, creating and connecting. In the playground of her brilliant mind, she made the muddy, crystal clear; the cliché, passé; the ordinary, extraordinary.

*Amy Krouse Rosenthal lost her battle with ovarian cancer on March 13, 2017.*

After reading her memoir, I looked forward to each of her children’s picture books. Like a fairy godmother, Amy could wave her intuitive magic wand and make time-worn concepts and storylines fresh, relevant, and fun. Her joy and heart were infectious, and she had an uncanny knack for imparting advice and wisdom with a light, whimsical touch.

About twenty-five years ago, I purchased a copy of Baby Bear’s Bedtime Book, written by Jane Yolen and illustrated by Jane Dyer. As an avid teddy bear collector, I was mad for bear books and instantly fell in love with Goldie and Baby Bear. There was such warmth in Jane Dyer’s pictures, a quaint old-fashioned charm and innocence that made me feel safe and comforted.

I’ve been a Dyer fan ever since, swooning over her work in Piggins, Time for Bed, Animal Crackers, I Love You Like Crazycakes, Blue Moon Soup, the Little Brown Bear series, and more recently, Oh My Baby, Little One, The House That’s Your Home, and All We Know. Sweet, but never cloying, gentle and endearing, her human and animal characters are always rendered with such love.

*from The House That’s Your Home, written by Sally Lloyd-Jones (2015)*

I want to inhabit her cozy interiors with their wainscoted walls, polka dot curtains and checked tablecloths, and befriend the adorable dogs, cats, bunnies and sheep dressed in human clothing.

*GENEROUS means offering some to others (COOKIES: Bite-Size Life Lessons)*

Needless to say, I was over the moon when I saw Amy and Jane’s first COOKIE book. Two of the very people I’d admired for so long in the same book! Double the goodness, double the joy! 🙂

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