Student in front of his art created during the Summer Writer's Workshop

The e-Thology Project

The e-Thology Project is a unique opportunity for schools or other groups to use the creative process to develop communication skills. More than just another compilation of student works, the e-Thology Project guides the creative process over several months to stimulate individual expression.

An author-in-residence is an integral part of the program, bringing a published author of children's books to the classroom to inspire both students and teachers. In the end, a professional-looking e-book is produced on CD and distributed to every student or family as a lasting example of that year's learning.

Will working with students.

The e-Thology Project helps children of all ages create, through words and art, an expression that is uniquely and totally their own ­ and to celebrate the diversity found in individual expression.

The e-Thology Project fits the needs of today¹s educational environment perfectly. It creates outcome-based lessons that help children develop skills in critical thinking, writing, visual expression, communication and other subjects, like science or geography, according to the theme chosen.

For more information about the e-Thology Project contact Mark Ehrnschwender at mark@willhillenbrand.com.

You can also download the e-Thology presentation. (328K)

The Artist's Role
This free PDF download explains the role of the picture book illustrator--past, present, and future. Anyone interested in picture books and what an illustrator does should think about viewing this document.

Download The Artist's Role (1 MB)

Download a picture of Will!
Looking for a full-size picture of Will for author visit promotion? You can download one here!

To save the photo, when the full-size image appears, right-click on the image and select "save picture as" to download the image to your hard drive.

Free Downloadable Bookmark!
Will has created this special bookmark for teachers to download and print for students. It's in PDF format, and it's free!

Download the free bookmark (111K)

Draw It Yourself!
I often talk to classes about illustrating children's picture books. After I spoke to sixth, seventh and eighth graders at Teays Valley Middle School, their art teacher, Jean Siriano, gave them a fun assignment based on a piece I did for Ladybug magazine. The students drew sketches for each line of the familiar nursery rhyme, "This Little Pig."

Mrs. Siriano urged the students to think about the rhyme and what each line meant to them. She told them to use their imaginations to come up with their own individual approaches to communicating the story.

To see some of the illustrations created by Mrs. Siriano' s students please download "You Try It!."

More Teacher Tips--Extension Ideas

• Try Will's idea of having students illustrate various lines of nursery rhymes. A downloadable file "Starting from Sketch" is available in the Art Process section. It is a 16 page full color Adobe Acrobat file. Each page in the booklet has activities called "You Try It", art ideas for young people.
  
  
• Also in the Art Process section are the following:
  
  
  • an illustrated audio presentation of "Counting Crocodiles"
  • a downloadable slide show of the process used for creating "Wicked Jack"
  • a downloadable slide show of "Down by the Station"
  
  
  
• Share a story with students and have each illustrate a page in their own style. Then have them talk about how they visually "saw" the story. As suggested above, it might be a good idea to begin with nursery rhymes. This activity can begin a good discussion of the various artistic styles used by children¹s picture books and comparing the artistic styles from several of Hillenbrand¹s books.
  
  
• In an article in the bibliography below by Kenneth and Sylvia Marantz "The Dream World of Picture Book Artist Will Hillenbrand," Hillenbrand mentions several artistic activities to try with children including some relating to imagination, characterization, and setting. The article is also available via SIRS Discoverer.
  
  
• Create other new "fractured holiday stories" using "The House that Drac Built" and "The Fright Before Christmas" as models.
  
  
• Share a variety of Cinderella stories including the Middle Eastern version illustrated by Hillenbrand titled "The Golden Sandal." Other suggestions include:
  
  
  • "Yeh-Shin: A Cinderella Story from China" (Written by AI-Ling Louie. Illustrated by Ed Young. Philomel, 1982);
  • "Smoky Mountain Rose" (Written by Allen Schroeder. Illustrated by Brad Sneed. Dial, 1997)
  • "Cinderella" (Written by Charles Perrault. Illustrated by Diane Goode. Knopf, 1988).
  • For additional Cinderella ideas, consult the professional book, "Cinderella (The Oryx Multicultural Folktale Series)" by Judy Sierra (Oryx, 1992).