TWO SUMMERS
BLURB
Rick is coming to visit the farm again. But will he recognise the farm? Will he have as much fun as last time? Same friend. Same farm. Totally different landscape. A book about the great cycles of nature that rule our lives, from award-winning author John Heffernan and talented new illustrator Freya Blackwood.
SAMPLE
From chapter 1
AWARDS
CBCA 2004 Picture Book of the Year: Shortlist
Crichton Award for Illustration
AUTHOR NOTE
I've been a farmer for most of my adult life, and I never cease to be amazed by the beauty and power of Nature. It can be something as simple as an eagle circling in a china blue sky, or a spider's web frozen into filigree. It can be a new lamb bleating, or helping a heifer give birth, or the first realisation that the season has changed. It can be something as small as a gnarled piece of wood, or as big as a flood, torrents washing everything away. Or it can be a drought, with its cloak of deathly grey. All these things are part of rural life. You see Nature in all her different moods, and I wanted to get that feeling across in this book.
I used a young boy as the narrator, because there is a kind of freedom in viewing the world through a kid's eyes. You cut away all those emotional strings that can get in the way of a good yarn, "telling it as it is", rather than dressing it up in the garments of emotion. As such, you can deal with quite complex issues without hammering home a clumsy message..
By using young eyes, you don't spell it all out. It's there in subtle ways, understated, often not even stated at all. Some readers fill in the gaps. And if you’re really lucky, the illustrator does it. In Two Summers, Freya Blackwood's illustrations have allowed the text to be reduced to an absolute essence.
I can't overstate the delight I feel in Freya's illustrations. I find myself looking back through the book, over and over. Her illustrations have a wonderful gentleness about them, and a simplicity, both of which mirror and extend the narrator's voice. They capture perfectly the mood I was in when I wrote the story.