Overview

Climb aboard the earth for the adventure of a lifetime! As you travel, watch shadows move from here to there as day stretches into night, and feel the weather change as one season rolls into the next. All these amazing things happen because the earth is constantly in motion. Spinning and circling, gliding and tilting, as passengers of the earth, our voyage never ends! With poetic text and gorgeous illustrations, G. Brian Karas illuminates our earth and its cycles and does a brilliant job of making the concepts of rotation and revolution understandable to even the youngest readers.

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9780399240256

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Reviews

Written in succinct, poetic language, [On Earth] will capture childrenAEs imagination. <b>ChildrenAEs Literature</b>

Really quite glorious in his simplicity, Karas in word and picture effortlessly imparts understanding of time, calendars, seasons and growth in the rotation and revolution of planet earth. Arrows show the earth spinning on its axis and the way it circles the sun in a great sweep. Children face the sun and watch the shadows show the length of a day. Then on a wonderful orb, a child in bed faces the stars on the periwinkle night half, and another one, fishing on a riverbank, faces a blue, rainbowed sky on the blue-green-and-gold half that is day. The planet spinning and orbiting around the sun follows the months, so by the time we get back to where we started, we're one year older. The tilt of the earth's axis shows how we're warmer when our hemisphere tilts toward the sun. But with all this spinning and circling and rotating and revolving, we don't fall off because gravity holds us. The illustrations have texture and charm, but also whimsy and a light, supple touch, as they move in close to the children's faces or out to the whole solar system. Terrific. (glossary) (Picture book. 5-10) (Kirkus Reviews)

Written in succinct, poetic language, [On Earth] will capture childrenAEs imagination. ChildrenAEs Literature

Author Information

"""My career in art had a humble beginning. I was in kindergarten. We had just finished a study on Native Americans. I was inspired. Our teacher gave us an unprecedented one whole week to create something of our own choice. At the end of the week we were to show her our creations. I immediately set out with an ambitious plan. A life sized three dimensional teepee. It didn't matter that I had never attempted 3-D before, I thought. I was wrong. I labored and sweated for the entire week over something I was unable to do and was too... something, afraid, proud?, to ask for help. At the end of the week, surrounded by truly awesome projects my classmates had constructed, when I had nothing to show for my week's worth of work, I hastily drew a three inch teepee on white paper and cut it out. Maybe she wouldn't notice its modest size I hoped. She did, and pointed out to the entire class how some people can manage to waste a great amount of time when others work so hard. I was crushed. Great intentions sometimes have sad endings.""I resurrected my stature as a serious artist in the first grade. I drew caricatures. Mostly of my teacher who found them, and found them most unflattering. My classmates, however, thought they were brilliant. I had gained their respect. I had become 'the class artist'. Through my school years my projects began to improve in merit. I moved onto stage sets, snowflakes for holiday windows, and posters for the walls. I remember being very impressed with the artwork of Charles Schulz. I thought of the Peanuts characters as close friends, I liked their subtle humor. I managed to do a very good rendition of Schulz's work. And I enjoyed that more than anything I had done before. I also read a great deal and had an interest in writing. At one point I was selected to be part of a creative writing class in a different school system, an experience that freed my creativity in a way I hadn't known before. ""At home, sadly, I was not encouraged to pursue art as a profession. So I didn't take seriously the notion of being an artist until late into my senior year in high school. When it became clear that I had no clear direction to go in, I felt like I was adrift. I couldn't find anyplace where I fit. It was at that time I found a person who changed the course of my life, my art teacher. I enrolled in her art class. She took a special interest in me and my work. I think she saw that I had the talent but lacked the confidence and drive, and support, to apply to art schools. She encouraged me to apply to the school she had once taught in, and began to help me pull together a portfolio. ""I knew from the first day of art school that there was no other choice for me. This was it, a place where I fit. I had the good fortune of having many fine teachers, some of whom were working in the field of children's book publishing. In a way, there was never a question in my mind of what to do in the field of art. There was never a defining moment when I said, I want to be a children's book artist. I just was.I've illustrated over fifty books for children at the time of this writing, two of which I also wrote. I can still say that there is never a question of what I should do. This is what I do, and it comes very naturally to me. Not that I don't struggle with it or that it doesn't present a challenge, or that I can't continue to grow as an artist. Because I do, and it does, and I can. But what doesn't exist is a question of my purpose. Aside from watching my children grow, creating books for children is the most gratifying and worthwhile thing I can do."" G. Brian Karas was born in Milford, Connecticut. After graduating from Paier School of Art with highest honors, he worked s a greeting card artist at Hallmark Cards in Kansas City, Missouri. After three years he moved to New York and began freelancing as a commercial illustrator. His first illustrated book was published in 1983 (Home On The Bayou which won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor) and he has since illustrated more than fifty books for children. His first book as author-illustrator received a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor in 1997. Saving Sweetness by Diane Stanley was a Capitol Choices Noteworthy Book for Children in 1996, received a Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books Blue Ribbon in 1996, and was a School Library Journal Best Book of 1996. Like Butter On Pancakes by Jonathan London was a School Library Journal Best Book of 1995. On The Trail With Miss Pace by Sharon Phillips Denslow was a Smithsonian Magazine Notable Children's Book of 1995. In 1995, I Know An Old Lady received a Parent's Choice Honor and was a 1996 Booklist Editors' Choice. copyright (c) 2000 by Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers. All rights reserved. ""My career in art had a humble beginning. I was in kindergarten. We had just finished a study on Native Americans. I was inspired. Our teacher gave us an unprecedented one whole week to create something of our own choice. At the end of the week we were to show her our creations. I immediately set out with an ambitious plan. A life sized three dimensional teepee. It didn't matter that I had never attempted 3-D before, I thought. I was wrong. I labored and sweated for the entire week over something I was unable to do and was too... something, afraid, proud?, to ask for help. At the end of the week, surrounded by truly awesome projects my classmates had constructed, when I had nothing to show for my week's worth of work, I hastily drew a three inch teepee on white paper and cut it out. Maybe she wouldn't notice its modest size I hoped. She did, and pointed out to the entire class how some people can manage to waste a great amount of time when others work so hard. I was crushed. Great intentions sometimes have sad endings. ""I resurrected my stature as a serious artist in the first grade. I drew caricatures. Mostly of my teacher who found them, and found them most unflattering. My classmates, however, thought they were brilliant. I had gained their respect. I had become 'the class artist'. Through my school years my projects began to improve in merit. I moved onto stage sets, snowflakes for holiday windows, and posters for the walls. I remember being very impressed with the artwork of Charles Schulz. I thought of the Peanuts characters as close friends, I liked their subtle humor. I managed to do a very good rendition of Schulz's work. And I enjoyed that more than anything I had done before. I also read a great deal and had an interest in writing. At one point I was selected to be part of a creative writing class in a different school system, an experience that freed my creativity in a way I hadn't known before. ""At home, sadly, I was not encouraged to pursue art as a profession. So I didn't take seriously the notion of being an artist until late into my senior year in high school. When it became clear that I had no clear direction to go in, I felt like I was adrift. I couldn't find anyplace where I fit. It was at that time I found a person who changed the course of my life, my art teacher. I enrolled in her art class. She took a special interest in me and my work. I think she saw that I had the talent but lacked the confidence and drive, and support, to apply to art schools. She encouraged me to apply to the school she had once taught in, and began to help me pull together a portfolio. ""I knew from the first day of art school that there was no other choice for me. This was it, a place where I fit. I had the good fortune of having many fine teachers, some of whom were working in the field of children's book publishing. In a way, there was never a question in my mind of what to do in the field of art. There was never a defining moment when I said, I want to be a children's book artist. I just was.I've illustrated over fifty books for children at the time of this writing, two of which I also wrote. I can still say that there is never a question of what I should do. This is what I do, and it comes very naturally to me. Not that I don't struggle with it or that it doesn't present a challenge, or that I can't continue to grow as an artist. Because I do, and it does, and I can. But what doesn't exist is a question of my purpose. Aside from watching my children grow, creating books for children is the most gratifying and worthwhile thing I can do."" G. Brian Karas was born in Milford, Connecticut. After graduating from Paier School of Art with highest honors, he worked s a greeting card artist at Hallmark Cards in Kansas City, Missouri. After three years he moved to New York and began freelancing as a commercial illustrator. His first illustrated book was published in 1983 (Home On The Bayou which won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor) and he has since illustrated more than fifty books for children. His first book as author-illustrator received a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor in 1997. Saving Sweetness by Diane Stanley was a Capitol Choices Noteworthy Book for Children in 1996, received a Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books Blue Ribbon in 1996, and was a School Library Journal Best Book of 1996. Like Butter On Pancakes by Jonathan London was a School Library Journal Best Book of 1995. On The Trail With Miss Pace by Sharon Phillips Denslow was a Smithsonian Magazine Notable Children's Book of 1995. In 1995, I Know An Old Lady received a Parent's Choice Honor and was a 1996 Booklist Editors' Choice. copyright (c) 2000 by Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers. All rights reserved."

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