Wildwood

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!

Friends, we received so many brilliant entries to this contest.  So many!  Thanks to everybody who submitted something.  We’re big map enthusiasts here at Wildwood Headquarters and it was a pleasure to pore over them all.

Choosing the contest winners was difficult.  We thought about it a lot.

In the end we chose a grand prize winner, along with 2nd and 3rd place winners and a number of runners-up.  Because we think each of the top three winning maps deserve their own blog post (and in the interest of building suspense), we’re going to announce the third place winner today, the second place winner tomorrow, and the grand prize winner on Wednesday.  Then, on Thursday, we’ll announce the runners-up.

Okay, cartographers, without further ado:  the third place prize goes to YenaStoy by Benjamin Siler, age 11, and Graham Boswell, age 12, of Memphis, Tennessee!

There are a number of things we like about this map.

1.  It’s mysterious. Is this place even called YenaStoy?  Or is it VenaStoy?  We’re not sure.  It came with no description.  Is this place in Russia or the Ukraine?  Is Jockleshev a space age city?  What goes on in Boehhbiй?  How do you pronounce Boehhbiй?  We don’t know.  And there’s a lot to be said for leaving things to the imagination, especially when it comes to maps.  I have a lot of questions about this mysterious nation and even more about the enigmatic, possibly Russian-speaking duo who created it.

2.  It’s beautiful. The cities and towns are thoughtfully rendered with lots of attention to detail.  The red and purple palette looks nice and helps to make it more readable.  The pattern the roads make is terrific.  The big red road to Boehhbiй is great and foreboding and draws your eye down to the bottom of the page.  A+ for composition.

3.  Cyrillic. We’re suckers for things Russian, quasi-Russian and near-Russian.  Cyrillic is the alphabet used to write Russian and Ukranian and the languages of some other countries in that part of the world and we’re a sucker for it too.

Congratulations Benjamin and Graham!  You’ve won a German edition of Wildwood.  We realize that’s a weird prize but we’ll personalize it for you and include a few other goodies as well.  And, who knows, maybe you speak German. It doesn’t seem impossible.

Tomorrow:  we announce the 2nd place prize winner!  Stay tuned.

***

UPDATE!

Benjamin and Graham have provided some background on mysterious YenaStoy:

The idea for YenaStoy came after doing a work at school where we invented a country, wrote a constitution for it, and drew a picture of it. Before drawing a map of a second country (YenaStoy) we studied the shapes of different landforms: bays, peninsulas, gulfs, spits, lagoons, capes. All of these forms are included in our map. We are interested in the Russian language, so we looked in an atlas at Russian city names, chopped the words in halves, and combined them to make new city names. Other real Russian words for military, resort, factory, and suburb are included. We drew the outline first, then the cities, then the roads. We imagine this island as a Russian province.

Here’s another illustration from Under Wildwood.  Perhaps you recognize this building?

The Joffrey Unthank Home for Wayward Youth and Industrial Machine Parts

Last night we attended “Into the Impassable Wilderness”, a play based on Wildwood, staged by the students of Franciscan Montessori Earth School, here in Portland.  It featured a cast of 71!  Plus singing!  And slapstick!  It totally knocked our socks off.

Prue gets the third degree from Samuel the rabbit in a colander helmet

Thanks, FMES, for a terrific night.  We loved it and Hank can’t stop talking about it.  Here he is in his Into The Impassable Wilderness t-shirt and his postmaster’s hat, a gift from Richard himself.

Calling all fans of Wildwood and aspiring cartographers!

I have four giant Wildwood prints in my very small studio and I’d like to find a home for them.  They are a little scuffed at the corners but otherwise very nice and VERY BIG (more details below).  Would you like them?  If so, we invite you to enter the IMPROMPTU WILDWOOD MAPMAKING CONTEST.

THE RULES:  Draw a map of an imaginary place.  It must be an imaginary place that YOU imagined; a place YOU invented.  All ages are welcome to participate, though we won’t be judging the maps on how well they’re drawn.  That is to say, maps made by older people who draw very well won’t necessarily win out over maps made by little kids who are still working on their drawing chops.  They’ll be judged by how much Colin and I like them and the main things we like when it comes to maps of imaginary places are creativity and originality.  Just have fun and make something great!  Also, please read THIS VERY IN-DEPTH LIST OF CONTEST RULES PROVIDED BY OUR PUBLISHER.

Once you have drawn your map, please write a short description of it, scan it or, if you must, take a good, clear photo of it and email it, along with THIS ENTRY FORM to wildwoodchronicles (at) harpercollins.com.  Please write “MAP!” in the subject line so we don’t lose track of it and make sure the file is at least 500 pixels wide.

THE PRIZES:

Grand Prize:  These four crazy, giant prints, signed by Colin and me.  They are one-of-a-kind, having been printed by my professional printer dad for the Wildwood book tour.  Each one is 24″ x 36″ and mounted on foam core.  They depict the map of the wood, the badger with the rickshaw, Prue and Curtis entering Wildwood and the book’s cover.  With the exception of the cover, they all have a foldout support on the back so that they can be free-standing.  They probably won’t all fit in your room, unless your room is a lot bigger than my studio, but maybe they would make nice birthday presents for your friends.

Here are the prints with Hank Meloy for scale.

Second Place Prize:  this little drawing of Septimus that wasn’t in the book because Colin saw it and said that he wished that Septimus was wearing pants.  “Why?” I asked.  “Because he looks naked,” said he.  I made the argument that all rats are naked, all the time, but it was no use.  Anyhow, win a drawing of a naked rat!

for shame!

Third Place Prize:  a signed copy of Wildwood…..in German!  Do you read German?  Well, maybe it’s time to learn.

WILDWALD

We’ll also include a WILDWOOD IRREGULARS button with each prize and we’ll send some to the runners-up too.

THE FINE PRINT:  All entries must be received by Friday, May 4th.  Contest winners will be announced Monday, May 7th.  By sending your maps to us, you are agreeing to let us post them on our blog and Facebook page, though we promise to credit you.  May the most-inspired cartographer win!