For a number of you who might be interested in the schedule and content of my next “a la carte” classes through ChathamArts.org, I will send that soon.

If you never-ever want to be emailed like this again, please let me know. On the other hand, if you know someone else who might be interested in this Blog as it continues to take shape, please forward to them or send me info so I can include them on the email list.

Best wishes,
Bob
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Beginning Two New Children’s Books: February 4, 2010

10:08pm 2-4-2010
I should have started this 5 days ago: I’ve already gone through so many changes with this project that I’ll probably never be able to remember. But my writing about this sort of stuff is way overdue.

I’m beginning to figure out that 26 years in the elementary classroom has engrained in me a “way’’ that is very much a part of me- and I think it has most to do with the immediate feedback of teaching children: they let you know immediately in one way or another exactly what they think or feel about what you do with them. And the closer I became to my students, that feedback was so fulfilling, both in terms of “feeding” me emotionally, and in terms of seeing positive results in them, that now whatever I learn, I want to share it. And I’m learning so much now, but I have very few people who can “listen” to it! No-one has time- they certainly don’t have the six hours a day I have become used to from the length of 26 years of instructional days.

So in this “blog” process, I want to share – not bore or impose. But I know children just “turn you off”, most of the time, if they’re not interested- and we never know the difference, especially in the classroom- so if you’re reading this, and your mind begins to wander, or parts of it are not really what you want at the time- please feel free to “check out”, or pick and choose, or come back later. I’m just glad to have someone to talk to about it! And if you feel like commenting, I think there’s a way to do that, too. The blog for me is like a new computer: I’m not totally sure how it works…But I intend to learn!

11:56pm 2-4-10

I have been drawing, drawing, drawing, the past two days.
All in a spiral 9×11 drawing paper notebook from Harris Teeter. For about a month and a half, nothing. No drawings, no inspiration. I woke up at 5:30 in the morning one day in December and “saw” the way the illustrations should look for The Tiny Turtle of the Marsh. I got up and sketched it out, with barely legible (to me) notes, on a 3X5 cut scrap of watercolor paper, and for weeks and weeks, proudly carried it around with me in the pocket of my green corduroy jacket. Pulling it out and smiling over it. And sharing it with whoever would listen. But I couldn’t get any further with it. It took me until three days ago to figure out that even if it is going to be a book for pre-readers, with the customary one sentence per page, no way could I progress with it by thinking of the story through the little “storyboard” I had scratched down at 5:30 in the morning.

I had to write the stories out in detail, or I wouldn’t know the “world” the characters lived in, or the details that would go into the illustrations that would help convey that world
in the pictures, when the words wouldn’t be there to help me. Even if… the preliminary stories were far more than the 14-20 sentences long they would need to be for the book.

So I’m going to include this first draft of The Tiny Turtle of the Marsh, with all its typos and grammatical mistakes- please don’t write me about those, because I normally wouldn’t show a manuscript in this state to anybody- much less an email- but believe it or not, just getting this much down has created the excitement, the focus, and the commitment to start drawing, and spending hour after hour in the past two days on the illustrations. I wish I could include these, too: I will as soon as I can. I just want to get this much up and out:

The Tiny Turtle of the Marsh

Copyright 2010 Bob Palmatier

Matt and his father were excited about getting down to the beach house. They had been waiting all year for this week, as a matter of fact.

And now it was here. Matt loved the blue weathered boards of the house on the marsh, and the deck and the dock that led right down to the water.

Many good times were had in the rowboat tied up there, pushing off early in the morning with lunch in a basket, and fishing poles, and a cast net for the bait.

Back at home, his mother was holding down the fort with Matt’s two older sisters and their soccer games. But Jennie and Lauren and everyone else knew this was Matt’s week at the beach house

with his father, spending these days on the sand or the water.

Right now Matt was very curious about the crab trap he spied off the end of the dock, half in and out of the water., and the things the tide had left half in it . On it sat a gull and two marsh sparrows, and Matt was determined to kneel down and peer at the creatures that were surely waiting below water in the trap: an eel? Blue crabs?

Generally father pulled the crab trap up for the week on the deck and tied it down. It must have been one of the renters who had left it out in the water- “for two weeks now”- his father said, and Matt could tell he wasn’t too happy about it.

“No sense trapping creatures you’re not going to tend to or eat!”
father half-whispered when had they stepped out on the deck and saw the crap trap half out of the water.

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“Still yet”, Matt thought, “Still yet…” As he approached the end of the dock and knelt down to get a closer view, the gull flew off scolding, and the marsh sparrows flew one in one direction and one in the other.

As father walked up behind him, Matt called out what he saw below: “Six or eight blue crabs, climbing in and out of the trap! And there is an eel- oh Dad, it’s so slimy looking! And all so many tiny fish!”

“Here, son, help me pull it out, and we’ll let these creatures go back into the marsh!” Father pulled up on the cord that secured the trap to the dock. Matt stuck his fingers through the mesh of the trap and helped guide the trap flat up on the dock.

Matt’s father loosened the cord that held the escape door shut- “Quick!”,he called, because the crabs were scuttling back and forth and the fish were flopping themselves over and over as they found themselves out of water ! Father was getting ready to tip the trap and empty everything back into the water.

Then Matt and his father saw it at the same time- a tiny turtle about the size of Matt’s hand, with gray speckled skin and a beautiful orange shell!

“Dad! Dad! Don’t drop the turtle! I want to see it!” And as the crabs and the fish and the eel slid off the trap door into the marsh, father made a grab with his long arm and his big hand, and saved the little turtle before he slid off forever into the brackish water below!

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Dad smiled, and motioned “two hands!” to Matt, who cupped his hands and took the little turtle from his father. A good thing, too, because it was swimming as fast as its little feet could
move , trying to get away!

But then, feeling Matt’s hands gently, firmly holding him, the tiny turtle stopped struggling, and looked straight into Matt’s eyes. “The Tiny Turtle of the Marsh!” laughed his father.

Matt held tight, and touched the tiny turtle‘s shell, and the soft skin on the top of his head, and “oohed and aahed” over the size of his back webbed feet. Meanwhile his father sprayed the crab trap clean with the hose and tied it down out of the water on the dock.

“Do you remember the bigger turtles we saw basking on a sand bar out in the marsh last summer, Matt?”

“Yeah, Dad, and they slid and scurried off the bar into the water the minute they heard us! You said they were very special turtles, Dad!”

“Because they only live in the salt marshes, Matt, and not up on the barrier islands, except to nest, and not up on the mainland, in the fresh water ponds, where we come from. And not on the ocean side of the island where the beaches are and the sea turtles nest: These are special turtles: They are Diamondback Terrapins!

“Well this one must be a baby, Dad! The ones we saw basking weren’t little like this.”

“Not exactly a baby, Matt, but maybe like you-_not too old yet either!”

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“Hey Dad! I want to keep him in the fish bowl on my night stand, so he can tell me what it’s like to be a turtle in the marsh!”

Father smiled. He helped Matt fill the bowl with salty marsh
water, and the tiny turtle didn’t look as sad you’re maybe thinking.

That night, as his Father stayed up a bit late to read, Matt lay snuggled up on his beach bunk, with a fresh breeze whipping through his window screen. His eyes were heavy and his head felt comfy on his pillow

Before he knew it, he was fast asleep. And the tiny turtle stretched his front legs out forward, and his back legs down with his strong webbed feet, and began to sing Matt the song of his life in the marsh.

I was a tiny baby first, Matt, in the nest my mother dug, warming in the sun, all my parts forming inside the egg, until the day I opened my shell from the inside with the egg tooth on my nose. I reached out with my tiny arm, and touched my brother’s arm, and my sister’s, and all of us began threshing up through the sand with excitement until we hit the fresh air and I caught sight of the green marsh grass and the turquoise-blue water. What fun we had, Matt! We tumbled over each other, laughing and giggling, scrambling into the grass, and plopping into the water! That was a happy day, the first day of the babies!

Just think of my first peek into the water! Brother and sister baby turtles swimming with tiny fast strokes- didn’t bother the tiny schooling fish, though. They “followed the leader” right, straight, t left, straight, zigging and zagging, all together! Watching them made me laugh, though! Little turtles go where they want!

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Oh- and Matt- Listen! Those first bites of tiny wiggling things, swimming in and out of rafts of marsh grass, like hide and seek. I didn’t see brothers and sister turles too much- maybe one here- one there. We were spreading out: we were on our own!

I would nap and sleep, too, Matt- in the rafts of sea grass that floated on the edge of the tidal creeks. So hidden, so safe, sleeping as the tides moved the sea grass out along the edges of the creek!

I could crawl out on the sand, too, to get warm, and nap in the sun. But how many times did I stay awake just a little bit longer to watch the silly fiddler crabs scurry across the wet sand; into their holes and out of their holes, peeking out with their eyes on the top of stalks and waving their fiddling claws. As I got bigger- just watch me shove them back into their holes!

It’s not all fun and games, though. Sometimes you have to really watch and not move forever, it seems. Who told us? No-one, I guess, but every tiny creature in the marsh grass knows to hide from the osprey- what a big bird with a fast grip and a dive and a swoop and a mouth full of fish. I wasn’t silly, I listened to the fish
and the crabs and the tiny creatures: Some creatures in the marsh you must respect.

If you’re a little terrapin, you grow up listening to the “cronk”, “crunch”, and “grind and crunch” the bigger turtles make as they float through the marsh grass at high tide. I was curious! I had to go and look and find out what was going on- and then I saw what they were crunching: the periwinkles, the shell snails who eat the film of food off the marsh grass. They climb up when the tide rises, climb down when the tide falls, eating off the surface of the green marsh grass.

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The “cronking?” The “crunching? ”Watch the larger mother terrapin grab a periwinkle in its jaws and crunch down! And the smaller father terrapins chewing off the smaller periwinkles, each for its own size. How many days did I spend hearing that sound, until I finally got old enough to grab a tiny periwinkle myself? The best taste there is in the marsh, with no exception!

It’s the best life for a tiny turtle of the marsh, Matt! I like you; you’ve got gentle warm hands. But I hope you will take me back to the marsh , because I have many new things to learn, through many dawns and sunsets that are coming.

“Dad…” Matt stood next to his father’s bed. His father opened one eye kind of like, “ Is it really time to get up?” “But Dad, the tiny turtle of the marsh told me stories all night, kind of between my dreaming…” Now his dad smiled and leaned on his elbows looking down at the tiny turtle in the bowl his son held firmly around with his two arms. “And what did he tell you, Matt?” asked Father.

“He told me all about the marsh, Dad- where he hides, and how good it is for him to be living there, living and learning every day. He’s got a lot to learn, Dad: He told me!” Matt paused. “So we should gently take him down to the marsh and put him back, Dad! I’m sure of it!”

And so that afternoon they took their favorite rowboat out into the salt marsh, as Matt told his father all the tales of the Tiny Turtle of the Marsh. And just in the right place, between the marsh grass covered with periwinkles and the creek side with rafts of sea grass, Matt held the little terrapin first in two hands, and then placed him in the water. He swam in a circle for just a minute, looking up at Matt and his Dad, and then he dove down, and the wind blew across the marsh grass and they knew he was safe and sound.

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That’s all for tonite: 12:42 am
Bob Palmatier
Children’s Book Writer and Illustrator
Environmental Educator
3320 Coachman’s Way
Durham, NC 27705