{"product_id":"stringbeans-trip-to-the-shining-sea-9780688167011","title":"Stringbean's Trip to the Shining Sea","description":"\u003cp\u003eDear Reader, \u003cbr\u003eHere are the postcards and snapshots that Stringbean Coe and his brother Fred sent home from the long trip they made one summer in Fred's truck. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTheir grandfather made this album for the family--and for you. Enjoy yourselves!\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLove, \u003cbr\u003eVera and Jennifer\u003c\/p\u003eStringbean Coe, his big brother, Fred, and their dog, Potato, are driving from Kansas to California in a pickup truck with a little house built on the back. Reading the postcards they send home every day is the next best thing to having a cross-country adventure all your own.\u003cp\u003e \"A good-hearted celebration of life and experience, and a gift to the public.\"--School Library Journal\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eWilliams, Vera B.:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eVera B. Williams began her career in children's books by illustrating \u003cem\u003eHooray for Me!\u003c\/em\u003e, written by Remy Charlip with Lilian Moore. Her beloved \u003cem\u003eA Chair for My Mother\u003c\/em\u003e won multiple awards, including a Caldecott Honor, and \"More, More, More,\" \u003cem\u003eSaid the Baby\u003c\/em\u003e also received a Caldecott Honor. Vera B. Williams was the recipient of the Jane Addams Children's Book Award; she was awarded the 2009 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children's Literature; and she was the US nominee for the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2004. Vera B. Williams died on October 16, 2015, shortly before this book was completed. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eWilliams:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - \u003cp\u003eVera B. Williams is the creator of many distinguished books and was the U.S. Illustrator Nominee for the 2004 Hans Christian Andersen Award. She lives in New York City.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eIn Her Own Words...\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThroughout my childhood I was encouraged to make pictures, tell stories, act, and dance—all of this at a heaven in our New York City neighborhood called the Bronx House.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOn Saturdays I painted with a crusading art director, Florence Cane. In her book \u003cem\u003eThe Growth of the Child Through Art\u003c\/em\u003e, I appear under the name Linda. I was sixteen when the book appeared and embarrassed by it. But at age nine I had been totally proud when a painting of mine was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and I was later shown in the Movietone News explaining to Eleanor Roosevelt its Yiddish title, Yentas.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn 1945 I went to Black Mountain College in North Carolina, a unique educational community. I graduated in 1949 in graphic art, which I studied with Josef Albers. Along the way I planted corn, made butter, worked on the printing press, and helped to build the house in which I lived with Paul Williams, a fellow student I married there.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI wanted that connection of art and community to continue. And it did at the Gate Hill Cooperative, a community we built with other Black Mountain people—a poet, musicians, and potters. I lived and worked there from 1953-1970 (after which I moved to Canada). My children (Sarah, Jenny, and Merce) grew up there. For them, we branched out into a school, part of the Surnmerhill movement. The gingerbread houses that led to my first book for Greenwillow I first made in sticky variety at our school. I have always liked to teach, and have taught art, cooking, writing, and nature study, for nursery age on.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt forty-six, no longer married, living in a houseboat on the bay at Vancouver, British Columbia, I did my first book. But before that could happen, the fates decreed a stint of cooking and running a bakery at a small school in the Ontario countryside. My love affair with Canada included also a 500-mile trip on the Yukon River. Many of those adventures I put in \u003cem\u003eThree Days on a River in a Red Canoe\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI also write and draw for adults-short stories, leaflets, and posters. As a lover of children, I try to do what I can to help save their earth from nuclear disaster. This pursuit, too, has added its excitement to my biography, including, in 1981, a month's stay in the federal penitentiary in Alderson, West Virginia (an outcome of a women's peaceful blockade of the Pentagon). Perhaps this experience will some day appear in one of my books. So far I've found children's books a wonderfully accommodating medium where any of my various activities might pop up.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Greenwillow Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50543895314706,"sku":"9780688167011","price":5.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_158fbfba-ee06-4528-a07b-82006701e420.jpg?v=1731516141","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/stringbeans-trip-to-the-shining-sea-9780688167011","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}