Elephant Quest - Couverture rigide

Lewin, Ted; Lewin, Betsy

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0688141110 ISBN 13 : 9780688141110

Editeur : HarperCollins Children's Books, 2000

Synopsis

Book by Lewin Ted

A propos du livre

Biographie de l'auteur

Ted Lewin grew up in an old frame house in Buffalo, New York, with two brothers, one sister, two parents, a lion, an iguana, a chimpanzee, and an assortment of more conventional pets. The lion was given to his older brother, Don, while he was traveling as a professional wrestler, and he shipped it home. The family kept Sheba in the basement fruit cellar until Don returned and their mother convinced him to give it to the Buffalo zoo.

Ted always knew he wanted to be an illustrator. As a child he copied the work of illustrators and painters he admired, including N. C. Wyeth, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Velázquez, and Goya. When it came time to go to art school (Pratt), he needed to earn money to finance his education. So, following in his brother’s footsteps, he took a summer job as a wrestler -- the beginning of a 15-year part-time career that eventually inspired his autobiographical book I Was a Teenage Professional Wrestler. Ted’s career as an artist began with illustrations for adventure magazines, and it’s only over the last several years that he has devoted his time to writing and illustrating children’s books. "I’m having more fun doing this than anything I’ve ever done before," he says. He is an avid traveler, and many of his books are inspired by trips to such places as the Amazon River, the Sahara Desert, Botswana, Egypt, Lapland, and India. His Market!, published in 1996, showcases markets around the world, from Uganda to Ireland to Ecuador.

Touch and Go is a collection of stories about the adventures Ted had while researching his books. Gorilla Walk is his first collaboration with his wife, Betsy, and is about their trek to see the mountain gorillas in Uganda. They’ve just completed their second collaboration, Elephant Quest, set in the Okavango Delta of Botswana. Ted’s current project is about a Civil War drummer boy.

Ted and Betsy live in Brooklyn, New York, where they share their home with two cats, Slick and Chopper.

Betsy Lewin grew up in Clearfield,Pennsylvania. She always loved to draw and can’t remember ever wanting to be anything but an artist. Her mother (a kindergarten teacher) is responsible for her love of children’s books. She read to Betsy and her brother every night: Winnie the Pooh, The Adventures of Babar, Uncle Remus, and all the fairy-tale books. The illustrators Ernest Shepard and A. B. Frost were among her earliest heroes. Later on, when she started illustrating for children, Betsy realized how strongly she’d been influenced by the gentle watercolors of Beatrix Potter and the energetic line and humor of James Stevenson and Quentin Blake.

After graduating from Pratt Institute, where she studied illustration, Betsy took a job as an assistant art director at a greeting-card company in New York, which led to freelance work for several other card companies. Then she began to write and illustrate stories for children’s magazines. When an editor at Dodd, Mead & Company asked her to expand one of those stories into a picture book, Betsy says, “I jumped at the chance. I’ve been doing picture books ever since and loving every moment.”

Betsy’s art is usually humorous, drawn in pen with watercolor washes, as in Is It Far to Zanzibar? But she also paints in a naturalistic style, as in Walk a Green Path, in which she expresses her love for the natural world through paintings and poetry. Gorilla Walk is her first collaboration with her husband, Ted, and is about their trek to see the mountain gorillas in Uganda. They’ve just completed their second collaboration, Elephant Quest, set in the Okavango Delta of Botswana.

When not at work on their books, Ted and Betsy love to travel to exotic places around the world gathering material for new books. At home each of them has a studio in their brownstone house in Brooklyn. Besides the usual clutter of pencils and pens, paint tubes and brushes, drawing paper, and, of course, books, they surround themselves with mementos of their travels: peacock feathers from India, Herero dolls from Botswana, galimoto toys from Namibia and Brazil, brass pots from Egypt, postcards and snapshots.

Présentation de l'éditeur

Ted and Betsy Lewin arrive in the Okavango Delta of Botswana in February -- the rainy season. Because there is always water in the delta, it is rich in animal life: hippos, Cape buffalo, lions, leopards, wildebeest, lechwe, giraffes, and some seventy thousand elephants! It is the elephants that Ted and Betsy have especially come to see. As they make their way through the flooded grasslands,they encounter impalas, baboons, wild dogs, and a huge crocodile--but where are the elephants hiding?

In Elephant Quest, Ted's realistic paintings and Betsy's field sketches illuminate the real-life adventure story of this exhilarating and often dangerous trip to the Moremi Reserve.

Outstanding Science Trade Books for Children 2001--selected by Natn'l Science Tchrs Assoc. & Child. Bk Cncl.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: HarperCollins Children's Books
• Date d'édition: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0688141110
• ISBN 13: 9780688141110
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 50