School Project of the Week

Congratulations to David D. for his award-winning book report on Middleworld.

Great work – we love it!

Roman vs Mayan

Roman soldiers meet a Maya king at the AIA Archaeology Fair last week-end at The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.

Happy 2012

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Loved this New Year’s greeting from Kenny Brechner, one of our favorite booksellers. (And yes, that is our Maya king costume!)

Old Max, New Max

Teacher Darin Anderson of Moorcroft High School in Wyoming send us these photographs of some sterling work by his 9th grade class. After reading Middleworld, one of their projects was to create posters comparing how Max changes through the course of the book. Great job guys – you really hit the nail on the head! And we LOVE the little faces. (Click on photos to enlarge them, so you can read their work.)

Amazing artwork!

One of our favorite things about school visits is coming face to face with walls of work inspired by the Jaguar Stones books. The students blow us away with their ideas. We’ve been given stories, poems, posters, animations, paintings, collages, postcards Max has sent from the jungle, and wonderful 3-D projects, like models of the characters. One student (see below) even made outfits for each character and hung them on tiny hangers in custom closets. We can’t fit everything in our suitcases, but we love to bring home as much artwork as possible and hang it in the room where we write. Here’s a little taste of the amazing work we saw on our Spring book tour.

This school decorated their halls with posters and sculptures from the Jaguar Stones series. This wall map shows the five sacred pyramids of the Monkey river.

This student made dolls of four characters from our book. Ah Pukuh - Maya god of death (note eyeballs in headdress); Hermanjilio - a Maya archaeologist; Lady Coco - a howler monkey with culinary talents; Lord Six-Dog, Maya king.

This student wrote and designed a hilarious tourist guide to Xibalba, the cold, wet Maya underworld, "a wonderful place full of suffering, misery and sorrow."

This student made little closets for some of the characters in the book with their clothes on hangers. Here are two items from Ah Pukuh's closet.

This student made an ABC book with definitions for each entry. Inside you'll find: A is for archaeologist, B is for Bak'tun, and so on ...

At the Canarelli Middle School the whole class wrote postcards from one Middleworld character to another. This student wrote a postcard from Max to Zia.

This atmospheric acrylic-on-canvas painting is over 3 foot wide and now sits above the doorway in our writing room. It shows the pyramid of Maya rain god Chaak and the underground river.

Max Murphy goes to Bulgaria

Look what we just received in the mail: it’s the Bulgarian edition of Middleworld! Cool, eh? Check out how they spell J&P Voelkel (top left text).

The Turkish version will be out next. Can’t wait!

Parade of Kings

How cool! We received this e-mail from one of our favorite schools and wanted to show everyone the fabulous Maya costumes they made.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Voelkel,
We thought we would share pictures of our Mayan Lords and Ladies from Edison School. We enjoyed your second book just as much as the first one! And we were inspired to make our own headdresses and breast plates after meeting Lord 6Dog.

Please hurry up with Book Three! And don’t forget to visit us again soon!

Edison Book Club

Mighty, magnificent, magical Melissa

When bad weather nixed our evening flight to St Louis at the last minute, we thought our Midwest trip was doomed. But it takes more than a snowstorm to faze Melissa Posten, Children’s buyer and Guru at Pudd’nHead Books (yes it is her official title).  Melissa flew into action and rearranged our schedule, so we could fly out next morning and not miss a single thing. She met us at the airport with coffee, and whisked us away on a magical tour through the schools of St Louis. We arrived to find hallways festooned with jungle foliage, students in a frenzy of excitement thanks to Melissa’s advance visits, and school libraries stacked with our books.

But Melissa hadn’t finished working her magic yet. That night at Pudd’nhead, she assembled a wonderful group of young readers, local authors and Maya fanatics – including Anne, a docent at the St Louis Museum of Art. The next day, Anne took us on a private tour of The Fiery Pool exhibit. This jaw-droppingly amazing collection of Maya artifacts includes the never before displayed Altun Ha jade head from Belize which was the original inspiration for the Jaguar Stones.

It was the perfect end to a perfect visit.

Live from New York

We had a blast presenting at the New York Public Library as part of their KidsLIVE series. The professionally shot video and was just posted on the NY Public Library’s website. You can watch the action by clicking on this: link

First stop: New Jersey

Our 6-week (yikes!) End of the World Club book tour kicked off with school visits and a very fun store event with Watchung Booksellers in Montclair, New Jersey. Guest of honor at the store was our Twitter friend and blogger extraordinaire, Trina of www.booklovingboys. Here’s her take on the evening: Link