“I’ve never done this before,” said artist and children’s book illustrator Tina Michaud, as she sat down to read two books she illustrated to a group of very attentive Grade 1 and 2 students at Franklin Elementary School.
Michaud, who lives in Huntingdon, collaborated with author Muriel Davies to illustrate the two books in her Grandma’s Kittens’ Adventures series, which tell the stories of “Fang” the big cat who came to live with the Davies family when Grandma moved into the basement.
In Grandma’s Lost Kittens at the Shawville Fair, Fang fathers three kittens who take part in the pet show at the fair before getting lost. In book two, entitled Hockey Kittens, the three wee cats find themselves sheltering in an arena, where they learn to skate and discover they have a flair for hockey.
Each of the students received a signed copy of Hockey Kittens. They were then treated to a special drawing session led by Michaud following the reading.
“This is great,” she said, while explaining that drawing a cat means using the alphabet, with upside-down Vs for the ears, a C for each eye, an O for the nose, and an upside-down Y for the mouth. The students were then encouraged to come up with their own story about the cats they created, and they enthusiastically took turns showing off their skills as illustrators.
Michaud thanked the students for listening and drawing with her.
“I think she was amazing and I want her to come back,” said one student, while another suggested they should have her books in the school library. A third student said they liked the stories, but they hoped her next book would be about a dog.