Celia Godkin

Readings

• Putting a book together - what it takes
• Wolf Island - story; discussion of wolves, population dynamics etc.
• Ladybug Garden - story; discussion of harmful and beneficial insects etc.
• Sea Otter Inlet - story; discussion of sea otters, kelp forests etc.
• When the Giant Stirred - story; discussion of Polynesians, volcanoes, tsunamis.
• Flying Lessons – told with puppets; recommended for K – 2.
• Fire! – forest ecology and the impact of fires on forest plants and animals.
  Readings are accompanied by slides of the illustrations and illustration process. Props may include shells, plastic animals or puppets (depending on the story). The ecology behind the story is explained. Questions are encouraged.

Information Guides are available to teachers for the first three books, free of charge. Teacher presentations are also available on how to use these titles to teach ecology.

Special Equipment:

slide projector or powerpoint

Book Sales:

Celia will provide ordering information and will sign books.

Biography

Celia spent her childhood in Brazil, her adolescence in England and her adult life in Canada. Trained as a biologist, she worked variously as a school aide, fisheries biologist and herpetologist before embarking on a career as a scientific illustrator. An illustration job preparing signs for the Winnipeg zoo led to collaboration with zoo director, Clive Roots, on Endangered Species: Canada's Disappearing Wildlife, published in 1987 by Fitzhenry & Whiteside. Encouraged by this success, Celia illustrated an ecology story she had written many years earlier and showed it to her publisher. The resulting book, Wolf Island, won the Children's Literature Roundtables of Canada 1990 Best Information Book Award and led to a succession of information story books.

In addition to her publications in children's literature, Celia has illustrated many textbooks and scientific papers and has written a number of technical works. She taught scientific illustration, painting and drawing at the University of Toronto for many years, but now lives and works in an old farmhouse in Eastern Ontario.