Wildwood

Attention!  We’ve made three original Wildwood illustrations available for auction to raise money for Skyline School.  We love Skyline, which is adjacent to Forest Park (in North Wood for you Wildwood nerds) and like many Portland public schools, they depend on their annual auction to fund important programs and keep critical teaching staff employed there.  So bid generously and know it’s going to a good cause.  All three illustrations are being auctioned on ebay.  They are:

The Council Tree

One of 6 color illustrations in Wildwood.  The only other one that’s been made available for purchase is the illustration of the Ghost Bridge, which was also donated to a school auction last year. The Council Tree is the spiritual heart of The Wood and owning it will probably, maybe, possibly bring you good luck. Bid on it HERE.

The Map of the Under Wood

One of three maps in Under Wildwood.  Each of the book’s three parts begin with a map detailing an area where much of that section’s action takes place.  This map features the labyrinthine world of tunnels, caverns, and mole cites  that make up the Under Wood.  It’s the only Wildwood Chronicles map that has been made available for purchase.  Bid on it HERE.

The Postal Van

A half page illustration from Wildwood.  Here Richard, the postmaster, smuggles Prue out of South Wood under cover of darkness.  Bid on it HERE.

All of these illustrations have since been signed.  You can get a better sense of what the actual art looks like on their auction pages.  Thank you for supporting a terrific Portland school!

the grand prize winners of our UNDER WILDWOOD booksellers contest!  We loved this window display by Porter Square in Cambridge, especially the little cut paper moles.

Thanks for participating!  The above drawing is your prize, making it’s way slowly across the country to you as we speak.

So get this: UNDER WILDWOOD comes out on September 25th, which, by this one’s reckoning, is a MERE WEEK AWAY! A perfect time for a BOOKSELLERS’ CONTEST, don’t you think?

We’re challenging booksellers of all stripe to engage their creative faculties and decorate their bookstores in a decidedly WILDWOOD way. The best and most imaginative redesign, judged by myself and Ms. Ellis, will be awarded an ORIGINAL PIECE OF ART drawn by the illustratrix, Carson Ellis, that will incorporate the name of your bookstore in a pretty banner. But that’s not all: runners up will receive nifty exclusive stuff, which is awfully cool.

But I won’t yammer on: the details have been laid out in graphic form by the nice folks at our publisher. Check it:

Under Wildwood Bookstore Contest Flier

Disclaimer: this only really applies to bookstore employees. If you happen to be a civilian, this may be one of those rare moments in the current economic state-of-things when you might wish you’d taken a job in bookselling. Extra points will be awarded to hedge fund managers and the like who quit their jobs and get hired on at the local bookstore in order to fulfill the requirements of the contest.

So Carson and I will be hitting the road soon, popping into fine, upstanding and discriminating bookstores (or their offsite annexes) everywhere this fall. We’ll be reading from and chatting re: Under Wildwood, the next book in the Wildwood Chronicles. Come say hello!

Cast your eyes, folks, on the jacket of UNDER WILDWOOD, the sequel to WILDWOOD. Look for it, cozily embracing the book itself, in fine bookstores everywhere this September.

I’m done illustrating Under Wildwood!  I’ve been working on it around the clock for months and now I’m done and it’s summer and I’m going outside.  Here’s the final illustration (it’s not the final illustration in the book, but it’s the last one I worked on.)

Corporal Donalbain in The Great Hall

Battle at the Plinth

Are you a fan of Wildwood?  A supporter of 826 and their writing programs for kids and teens?  Both?!  Well, feel free to bid on the above illustration as part of this charity event for 826 LA.  (Even though, if I were you, I’d bid on this.)

As promised, here are the runners-up.  We could’ve chosen twice as many of these – there were so many great ones – but we had to stop somewhere.  And so:

BEST MAP FEATURING A NIGHTMARISH, FUTURISTIC POWER PLANT:  Sengi’s Map by Stephen Reali, age 26, of Bowie, Maryland.

Stephen would like you to know that Sengi is an elephant shrew.

BEST MAP IN THE CANDY GENRE:  Land of the Sweets by Kate Li, age 10, of Honolulu, Hawaii.

Candy-inspired worlds turned out to be a popular map subject. Who knew? We especially like hilarious, pitiful Mr. Broccoli's house.

BEST INSCRUTABLE MAP:  Casual Road Map by Leo Spunt, age 9, of Memphis, Tennessee.

Wow!

BEST SEA SERPENT, BEST OBSIDIAN LAKE OF DEADLY WATERS AND NEVERENDING DEPTHS, and BEST USE OF AN OPEN FLAME:  Land of Telesia by Olive Ward, age 8, of New York, New York.

This also won BEST WORTLE BRAMBLE.

BEST MAP BY A 6 YEAR OLD:  Wombat and Dingo Kingdoms by Oliver Bolan Chambers, age 6, naturally, of Corvallis, Oregon.

There's a lot going on here. Dingo catapult?

BEST MAP BY A PRO WITH A NICE WEBSITE:  Danger Island by Mat Husdon, age 24, of Bellingham, Washington

We like islands shaped like bones.

BEST KEY with the BEST BIRD DRAWINGS:  Top Secret Outpost of the Backyard Brooklyn Fairies by Ada Grazia Cowan, age 8, of Brooklyn, New York.

Ada says: "The keys are attached to the map on either side. They can roll up and be tied with ribbons."

Also: "There are birds in my map because I was working on this after I went with my parents to find birds that had died by smashing into glass buildings for the Audubon Society." Alas.

And: "The mushrooms are because I love mushrooms."

BEST MAP FOR A NOVEL-IN-PROGRESS:  Steelhead, Washington by Ingrid Rochon, age 21, of New Haven, Connecticut.

Ingrid says: "Steelhead is the setting of my beloved novel-in-progress, Deep Homology. It's a place where seals, whales and people negotiate an uneasy peace, and the annual salmon run stretches strange politicians to their breaking point."

and BEST TINY MAP:  by Eli Beeker, age 22, of Salisbury, NC.

tiny!

Okay, that’s all she wrote!  Runners-up, we’ll be sending you all a little something in the mail.  Thanks and good night!

Ladies and gentlemen, it is with great pleasure that we present to you the grand-prize winning map.  But first, a description by its cartographer:

Dear, my friend!
I invite you to my home in “Turmdorf” to drink lemonade with me on my balcony.
I draw a map for you so you’ll find me easily. 

If you come from the northeast you’ll surely take the “sea-train”.
The rails lead right through the unspectacular sea and end up in Fridolins big guitar (still working!) on Fridolins ice floe.
He’s some kind of a bear. First he seems to be a little scary with his sharp claws and his yellow teeth but if you take your
time and talk to him he’ll maybe allow you to sleep in his hammock.
And if you have wet clothes he’ll dry them at his guitar strings. Great guy!

If you come from the south-east you’ll definitely see one of the most terrific things in the area: The “old-camera-forest”.
When the trees are in full bloom you collect as many old cameras as you want.
Don’t forget to take some of the filmroll-leaves. To cross the close river (“great river of boneless fishes” g-r-o-b-f)
you’ll have to take the “sorry-you-have-to-jump-bridge”. The builder obviously forget to build the middle part of it.

If you come from the southwest you’ll maybe have to swim through the “g-r-o-b-f”.
But don’t be afraid they are only printed on a big tissue which comes from a spire beyond the “waterfalls of cloth”.
It seems someone in the spire likes stamping.
Take a break and go fishing or have a look at the smallest rollercoaster in the world – right under the rosy main street.

If you come from northwest you’ll take the “land-train” through “meringues mountains” (mjamm!!).
At the right hand of the rails you’ll see the old farm. A place where everybody is allowed to cultivate something.
My new project: planting knitting wool. It works!
At the station you can find my bike. Take the rosy main street, then the direct way to the market square and you’ll just stand in front of my house-tower. Ring the bell and I’ll open the door
Yours,
Julika

 

click to enlarge

We don’t know what Julika’s last name is. We also don’t know how old she is or where she lives. She did a very bad job filling out her entry form. In fact, she sent it back to us but she didn’t fill in any of the blanks.  Is Julika too magical for entry forms? Perhaps.

Fortunately, we love her map so much that we don’t care. Congratulations, Julika! You’ve won four giant Wildwood prints. They’ll be making their way slowly to your many-towered home via land-train through the Meringues Mountains. If you end up with a bumper crop of knitting wool this year and want some potatoes, drop me a line. I have lots of the latter and always a need for the former.

Thanks, Julika and everyone else who submitted maps.  It’s been fun!  And we still have a bunch of runners-up to announce, so check back tomorrow.

***

UPDATE!

Julika is Julika Hartmann, age 25, of Heidelberg, Germany.  We still think she’s magical.

I have to reiterate: we received a lot of amazing submissions for this contest. It is unbearably hard to pick the winners, but nonetheless: it must be done! Here is your 2nd place finalist, Sierra Smart, 10 years old, of sunny Honolulu, Hawaii:

Ms. Smart gives us the description:

Here is my map. I made the J.A.C.K (Jipponeck Astronomy Cooperation Kingdom) as an agency that kind of protects all of East Star. A Jipponeck is a mixture of a pig, an eagle, and a cat. They are born inside of stars and circle the universe to find a suitable planet to live on. They are very powerful and valuable. The Fortress of Fire is a horrible place where the reward to the people who live there is getting their house (which is made out of iron) burned. The Palace of Sea, is a land with people who live in glass houses, and has sidewalks made out of ever-lasting ice. The ground is made out of tile, and the Fountain of Winter is a fountain that can never run out of water. The Forest of Ink is all Bonewillow trees. Jay Lake is a flowing lake of clear water with a small island all made out of glass. There is more, but I know you are busy.

Not so busy that we can’t receive regular dispatches from East Star! Write that stuff down, Sierra! We really loved this map for lots of different reasons: it’s so colorful, it has a great variety of different worlds all contained within the one country and the whole thing has obviously been born from a totally free-range imagination, which is the best thing of all.

I think I could spend a very happy summer in a cabin on the banks of Jay Lake, just watching the oinking Jipponecks migrate and listening to the rushing babble of the nearby Glistening River.

Tomorrow: our first place winner!