Robyn with Hyewon Yum at the 2013 Fay B. Kaigler Children’s Book Festival

Waving howdy from the Fay B. Kaigler Children’s Book Festival in Hattiesburg, MS!

I’m on a poetry panel here with Irene Latham and April Halprin Wayland, as we present a workshop called “Take 5 – Create Fun with the Poetry Friday Anthology.” (I mentioned on my author blog here.)

Also on my author blog a few months ago, I featured an illustration from Hyewon Yum.  I was thrilled because she illustrated a poem of mine in the Nov./Dec. 2012 issue of Ladybug.  (Here’s my post about all that.) Yum is an acclaimed author/illustrator of many books including: MOM, IT’S MY FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN (2012), THE TWINS’ BLANKET (2011), THERE ARE NO SCARY WOLVES (2010), and LAST NIGHT (2008) all from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. More books are soon to hit the shelves, which she either illustrated or wrote and illustrated.

I was extra-thrilled to discover last month that she won the Ezra Jack Keats New Illustrator Award, presented at this festival!  Here’s her blog post about that.

She kindly permitted me to post her artwork for my poem in December, so I’d like to share it here with you to day as I’m wishing her hearty congratulations on her new award.

This is a linoleum cut print, and, being a print fanatic, I just love it.

Many thanks to Hyewon for sharing her artwork, and to The LADYBUG/Carus folks for granting permission to share my poem online.

GRAY FOX

by Robyn Hood Black

At the edge of winter,
at the edge of the wood,
at the edge of the brush,
a gray fox stood.

I took a small step,
I took a breath in –
then nothing was there
where the gray fox had been.

© 2012 by Carus Publishing

If you’re an educator, click here for a link to the LADYBUG Teacher’s Guide for this issue.

The future of children’s book illustration looks to be in good hands!