Vermont author Natalie Kinsey-Warnock gave three inspiring presentations to students at Orchard School on November 20, 2003.  Here are some pictures from her day with us:

Natalie showed us slides of her home in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.  She's been building her house for about twenty years and it's still not done yet!  Natalie also showed us pictures of her trip to Scotland, where she played the bagpipes.  Natalie showed us her pictures of snow geese, a fox, a moose, and black bear.  Natalie rescues animals and she had lots of pictures of her horses, dogs and cats, too.

Natalie's grandmother made quilts.  Here's one called "The Northern Lights."  It shows red-eyed loons swimming under the northern lights.

Natalie and her grandmother made the quilts together.  First, Natalie designed the quilt on a big piece of paper.  She picked the colors of the cloth and helped her grandmother cut out the pieces.  Her grandmother then sewed the entire quilt by hand!  What a lot of work!

This quilt was made to hang on a wall.  It shows a black-backed gull (not a "sea gull") with black-eyed Susans.  The pattern of triangles around the quilt are called "Flying Geese" since geese fly in a V-shape.

These common merganser ducks can be found on Natalie's pond.  The male merganser duck has a green head and the female has a red head.  Merganser ducks and loons can dive between 2 and 3 hundred feet under the water.  They are amazing!

On the left is the Canada geese quilt, the one that Natalie wrote the book about.  The stitching in the birds' wings helps to give the look of real feathers.

The book's character, Ariel, is really Natalie.

Natalie writes about things that she has experienced. 

The editor and illustrator write notes to each other about just how they'd like the book to look.

Then comes the large color pictures.  The illustrator decides where they want the words to appear on the page.  This copy is called "the dummy."  After the book first goes to the printer, the "fold and gather" copy is produced.  Natalie calls this the "fall apart book" because that's just what it does.  Machines then sew the book together and they glue a hard cover on.  

After Natalie has finished writing a story, it takes about four years for it to be an illustrated and published book.

A Farm of Her Own took about seven years from the time Natalie wrote the story until the final book was finished.  It tells a story about Natalie's aunt and uncle.

The story of Wilderness Cat is in this quilt.  The quilt was made by Natalie's sister.

As Long As There Are Mountains is very much about Natalie's life....

So is From Dawn Till Dusk

Potato is a book that was written by an eight-year old girl.  Natalie showed us another book which was written AND illustrated by a six-year old boy.  Natalie told us that if they could do it, we could, too.  Everyone has at least one family story good enough to become a book.

Natalie is now writing about 50 stories all at the same time!

Natalie told us a family story that happened during the time of the Civil War on a ship called the Sultana.  (I'm not going to spoil Natalie's unpublished book by telling you the entire story here.)

We can't wait to read her book about this amazing event!  Natalie is still writing it now.  Watch for it!

Natalie enjoyed lunch with representatives from each of the kindergarten through third grade classes in the school.

The 4/5 teachers visited with Natalie, too.

Thank you Natalie for a truly unforgettable day!

You can find out more information about Natalie by visiting her web site: http://www.kinsey-warnock.com/

Many thanks to the Orchard School PTO, especially Anita Tuttle,  for arranging this very special event!  
Thanks also to Lynn Romagnoli for all her hard work on the Book Fair!