About This Thesis Project
When deciding on a project for my MFA work, I chose to write and illustrate a 32-page children’s picture book, based on one of my father’s adventures to the Allagash during the Depression.

My parents live in Fort Kent, Maine, a small town across the St. John River from Clair, New Brunswick, Canada. My father was born in Fort Kent, my mother in Clair. All my life, I listened to my father’s stories of growing up before and during the Great Depression in this remote part of northern Maine. However, my father is now 87 years old and I’ve become acutely aware that, one day, the stories will end.

"Pat and the Longjohns Run" is loosely based on a trip my father took with his father to the logging camps during the summer of 1930, when he was twelve years old. Although I altered the story somewhat to make it more appealing to children, some parts are accurate. And yes, the part about the animals actually happened.

I spent most of the first semester researching my subject matter: hours of phone conversations with my father, hours finding reference material online at the Maine Memory Network and at the library. For help with the writing, I joined a children’s writers critique group (and eventually formed my own with illustrator/writers), and had the manuscript critiqued by author Karen Winnick at the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators 2004 National Conference in Los Angeles.

My exhibition features some of the finished illustrations, many sketches, and the pages from my picture book mockup called a book dummy. The finished work is done in acrylic and colored pencil on 240 pound watercolor paper. My final goal for this project is to find a publisher for my work.

 Mr. McBriearty's Junk Truck