About the book:
Winner of the 2022 National Outdoor Book Award—Children’s Category
Alaska is for the Birds! is inspiring a new generation of bird enthusiasts. Quick, witty verses introduce the superpowers of fourteen birds that reside or summer in Alaska. (Important superpowers like being pelagic, changing feather color to match the willows, or having a handy pectinate claw!)
Susan explores the lives of birds—their habits and peculiarities—through her witty poems that are grounded in natural history. We look at water birds, song birds, hole drillers, nectar drinkers, dancing birds, and both migratory birds and residents. The state bird walks into one double page spread.
Evon captures each bird personality in handsome linocut portraits. With a rich palette of antique hues, these bird cuts have important features that a reader will recognize in nature, yet are whimsical enough to entertain.
40 pages include more about the birds, and bird words, to enhance the reader’s journey into birds.
This is the book for birders to share with their young nieces and nephews and for art and bird lovers of all ages!
Find a book/study guide with activities at https://www.evonzerbetz.com/alaskaisforthebirds
About the artist:
“Relief printmaking has been my passion for over 20 years. I prefer carving tools over pencils, and relish the physicality of mark making as I carve into linoleum and other matrices to make my printing plates.
Ultimately, it’s all about the line. I am passionate about the lines that can only be created in carving relief plates. The characteristic thick and thin lines, chop and hatch marks —created with my knife, that give my work its distinctive look. My reductive medium requires me to think backwards, and to think about positive and negative space, both physically and energetically.
I enjoy the process all the way through, from carving, to inking and printing my plates by hand. My current interest is to translate my linocuts into large format installations.
When it comes to how I work, curiosity is in the driver’s seat and I am along for the ride, sometimes as a willing traveler—with a map in my lap—and sometimes as a terrified passenger, albeit eagerly so, as I turn a corner into unknown territory.
This is where I find my juice—in problem-solving through my art—whether working within the parameters of architect’s dimensions, new materials, or designing public art that will speak to and reflect the community of users in a building or space. There is magic in creating a conceptual design and then getting to figure out how to fabricate it, draw on fabricators as needed, and bring a piece to fruition. “
See more of Evon’s work on her website: www.evonzerbetz.com