It’s 1978, and my little brother and I are getting ready for bed. Mom’s beautifully painted, 7 foot high Snuffleupagus looks down at us from the wall. (The bunk beds and WWI bi-plane wallpaper are still a few years away.) Matt bounces his little legs on his bed endlessly, unable to rest… and I wiggle my toes inside the plastic-soled feet of my footed pajamas.

Like it was for millions of other kids, at this point Mom or Dad would come in to end our day with a bedtime story. If I Ran the Zoo was one of my favorites, and to this day is a prime example of what I think is important in children’s literature – particularly the happy, silly, made-up ideas that celebrate imagination and the idea that the world just might be a better place were kids to be put in charge. The fact that it’s never been turned into a Hollywood movie, or chewed up and regurgitated into a million stupid pop culture references – just makes it that much better.

The book depicts an adventure that takes place completely in a child’s daydream. We watch him conjure up creatures to capture, places that don’t exist, using words that make no sense. Yet it makes perfect sense.

As I look around at things I’m unhappy with in this world, I often find myself shaking my head, muttering, “If I ran the zoo…” So the other day, I hopped online and picked up this first printing of Zoo. Dating from 1950, it’s in excellent condition and has none of the awful cropping, re-coloring or other gimmicks that have ruined many of todays reprints of classic books. This is the real deal – every page exactly where I left it, the same flat colors, that old familiar typeface.

All these great memories for the hefty price of eleven dollars.

Just a few days left in July, and I’m finishing up my project du jour: the middle deck renderings of that big yacht. There’ll still be a smaller upper deck to complete down the road, but by this weekend I hope to be giving full attention to the Ramadan children’s book project. (Snapshots forthcoming.)

Much of what these renderings has been about is simulating endless wood samples, fabrics, steel and stone textures in watercolor and colored pencil. Here’s an example of a chair that I’m pretty happy with…

The material.

The result – click to see larger.

Behind the scenes: I painted the yellow ochre color first, (called “ground color” in interior design-speak). Now the design – but it’s light cream in color. Since watercolor is a transparent medium, light colors painted on dark ones just disappear. So I mixed in a touch of white gouache with the cream color, transforming it into an opaque paint that behaves just like watercolor. The untrained viewer is left to ponder if I went loony from painting the brown around all those little loops and swirls. Yes I’m crazy – but it wasn’t that!

After uploading that photo of the wooly mammoth at Principia, I came across an article at Salon about the interest in some scientific circles to bring them back to life via cloning. Imagine that. The article even mentions a group working to build a mammoth habitat, so the creatures will have a place to roam once they return to the planet. Lots of “if’s” in this one.

The article.