Jan Thornhill

Readings

Jan’s presentations are packed with information and humour. With older kids, she usually begins with a short talk about the writing process (where ideas come from, different types of research, editing, etc.), as well as explanations about her various illustration techniques – including digital photo-collage. After this, things get much more interactive as she and the kids explore the content of one or more of her Kids’ Guides series of books (Dead Bird, This Is My Planet, Who Wants Pizza?). With younger kids she spends more time talking about how she makes her illustrations and about wildlife.

Near the end of each session, she tells the kids about each of the the items in her “Museum-in-a-Bag” (a collection of animal skulls, snake skins, feathers, dinosaur bones, mummified bats and hummingbirds, etc.), treasure that all get passed around afterwards. Because of this hands-on element, the maximum number of kids per session is limited to 2 classes.

Special Equipment:

n/a

Book Sales:

Copies of books can be brought to be sold and autographed.

Other Presentations

• Keynote addresses - open topics
• Professional Development sessions about introducing the topics of death or global warming to kids

Biography

Jan Thornhill was born in 1955 and spent most of her childhood in southern Ontario where she developed a life-long passion for both art and the natural world (her mother is an artist, her father a scientist). After high school, she attended the Ontario College of Art where she majored in Experimental Film & Video and Printmaking. To make a living after graduating, she worked for ten years as a freelance magazine illustrator in Toronto before switching to writing and illustrating children’s books in the late eighties. From the beginning, the aim of these wild-life based books has been to encourage in young readers a love of art, nature and the environment.

Jan has written and illustrated/designed 11 kids’ books. Among other honours, The Wildlife 123 won the international UNICEF Ezra Jack Keats Award for illustration, and in 2003 The Rumor won the Conaculta 7th International Award for the Illustration of a Children’s Book and I Found a Dead Bird won the Norma Fleck non-fiction award. Her books have been translated into many other languages, including Korean, Finnish and Dutch. On her website, there are 3 pages of step-by-step explanations of how she creates her illustrations.

Jan’s most recent books are non-fiction, each packed with accessible information and illustrated with a multitude of photographs. Who Wants Pizza is an in depth exploration of the food we eat, This Is My Planet is a multi-facetted introduction to climate change, and I Found a Dead Bird is a dynamic introduction to life, death and decomposition in the living world. This series is geared towards 9-13 year-olds. For the younger set, Over in the Meadow and The Wildlife ABC are being rereleased in new paperback formats in 2012.

As well as creating children’s books, Jan also writes fiction for adults. She lives in central Ontario in a house that she and her husband built. In her spare time, she wanders about in the woods looking for birds, animal bones, wild mushrooms and slime moulds.