Author, artist create children’s book on Madera Canyon

When Jane Holt saw a poster that artist Rick Wheeler had done for Glacier National Park she loved his technique and later commissioned him to do something similar for her family’s Santa Rita Lodge in Madera Canyon.

After initially approving Wheeler’s black and white detailed rendering, Holt asked him to add color.

“Once it was colored I saw a children’s book,” Holt said.

Her first children’s book, “In Madera Canyon” is a progressive verse similar to “The House That Jack Built” or “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”

It’s also a cumulative verse because it repeats and builds as it goes.

Once realizing there were the elements for a children’s book Holt said she didn’t know what form the text would take. Did she know from the start that it would be a “continuous” or “building” rhyme?

“No, not at all. The animals didn’t interconnect with each other, yet there was an interconnection because they all lived In Madera Canyon.”

Wheeler, who teaches his unique scratchboarding technique in Tubac, joined Holt, and after two years of writing, re-writing, editing, tweaking and making sure each full-color scratchboard art piece was just right, “In Madera Canyon” is off the presses and on the shelves of local bookshops.

There are 13 elements in the book featuring the magnificent hummingbird, the side-blotched lizard, the Arizona gray squirrel, the white-tailed deer, the Harris hawk, the white-nosed coati and other wonders of nature.

They come together in verse and cadence like this:

This is the lizard that lies on a stone

warm from the sun, all alone

next to the creek that flows over rocks, sprinkling the flowers whose nectar so sweet feeds the hummingbird buzzing away, In Madera Canyon.

Holt said she has always liked art prints done with wood blocks and was attracted to Wheeler’s scratch-boarding technique because the finished look is similar.

She said seeing the published product in a certain way in her mind’s eye was her the biggest challenge — “getting the wording exactly right… getting the rhythm as I wanted it.”

Easier was working with Wheeler.

“Rick was very easy with changes, etc. And he loves the book.

“‘In Madera Canyon’ is a beautiful book for anyone who loves the canyon, the artwork is superior,” Holt said. “It’s a great read-aloud book for 4- to 6-year olds and fun reading for kids 7 or 8 and up.”

The closing pages include photographs of the animals along with a brief description. The book is available locally at The Book Shop in Green Valley Village, Meredith’s Hallmark in Continental Plaza, the Santa Rita Lodge in Madera Canyon and Tortuga Books in Tubac. When purchased at these locations the book comes with a free, color 12x24-inch poster.

A preview is available at www.JaneEHolt.com.

Ellen Sussman is a freelance writer in Green Valley. Contact her at ellen2414@cox.net.