Once Upon Alaska: A Kid's Photo Book - Hardcover

Mark Kelley; Nick Jans

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1880865203 ISBN 13: 9781880865200

Publisher: Mark Kelley Photography, 2013

Synopsis

Beautifully updated in 2019 with eight new pages. Now in its seventh printing!
Celebrate Alaska, A land so grand and wide and far...Mark Kelley and Nick Jans are at it again, and this time for the kid in all of us! With beautiful photography and rhyming verse that makes you smile, Mark and Nick express their deep passion for Alaska in a kid`s book that deserves a place on your coffee table. A Mom's Choice Awards® Gold Recipient -- A Foreword's 2013 Book of the Year Awards Finalist -- The Eric Hoffer Book Award 2014, Honorable Mention -- Communication Arts Magazine: Photography Annual 55 Winner, Book Category

About this title

About the Author:

"I live on the edge of unbelievable wilderness", says Mark Kelley, "I love my family and I love kids, so my next book just had to be a kid's book".

"I always wanted to write a kids book", says Alaska author Nick Jans, "But it was too scary. Kids are the toughest audience there is". From early childhood, Jans remembers his parents reading aloud to him and his brothers, everything from Shakespeare to Rudyard Kipling to Dr. Seuss, and says those nightly readings are among his strongest and fondest memories. "I learned to love the sounds of the words, not just the stories they told", he says. Writing is meant to be heard, not just seen." Jans has also written eleven adult books, which he hopes get read aloud now and then. His latest book, A Wolf Called Romeo (Houghton Mifflin, 2013), is about a resident wolf in Juneau, Alaska. Nick, his wife, Sherrie, and their four dogs live in Haines, Alaska, and he travels widely across the state.

As principal of a design studio working in print and web with clients in Alaska and California,Heidi Reifenstein,graphic designer, enjoys a diverse range of projects. Her clients include nonprofits in the arts and human services, commercial enterprises in tourism and wine, and private educational institutions and design professionals. Heidi has an affinity for book design and typography, and she is an Adjunct Professor of Typography at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Prior to establishing her own design studio, Heidi gained valuable experience with MINETM and Noon Design, both award-winning studios in San Francisco. Heidi is an alumna of California College of the Arts and Whitman College, with degrees in Graphic Design and Studio Art.

Review:

"A stunning new book by my friends, photographer Mark Kelley and writer/poet Nick Jans. A wonderful gift for anybody with kids; a nice reminder that the greatest show on earth isn't the circus, it's wild nature. Thank you, Mark and Nick." --Kim Heacox - Author of "The Only Kayak"

"This photographic book takes you on a journey through Alaska's landscape. Along the way, you meet many of the animals living there as you explore the scenery. The rhyming verse on each page flows smoothly but actually acts as the backdrop to the detailed pictures. The vivid photographs are what truly tell the story of the wildlife and nature in Alaska." --US Review of Books/The Eric Hoffer Award

Longtime Alaska photographer Mark Kelley and writer Nick Jans have teamed up to create a children s book. Jans is a contributing editor to Alaska Magazine and has written several books. But this is his first time writing for kids, something Jans says intimidated him: It took me nine books to get up the nerve to finally write a kid s book cause kids are the toughest audience there is, Jans says. Once Upon Alaska is written in rhyming verse. While Jans is most known for descriptive prose, his first publication was poetry, which appeared in Rolling Stone Magazine. He also studied poetry in graduate school at the University of Washington. My parents read to me Rudyard Kipling, Shakespeare, Longfellow, Wordsworth, Coleridge you name it. And I grew up hearing that and my mom was a musician, too, so I always had the music of words going in my head, Jans says.
Once Upon Alaska, A Kid s Photo Book features 25 photographs by Kelley that were shot mostly in Southeast over several decades. One photo dates back to 1976. So it spans a large portion of my life and some of my pictures of my kids are in there. They happen to be in there cause that s who I shot and I wanted to put kids in a kid s book. They were seven or eight in those pictures and now they are 25 and 27, so it is a long span of pictures, including three or four pictures that I shot last summer, Kelley says.
Once Upon Alaska is a new children s book, released today, written by Nick Jans, photographed by Mark Kelley, and designed by Heidi Reifenstein. --Lisa Phu - KTOO Juneau

About this edition

• Publisher: Mark Kelley Photography
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1880865203
• ISBN 13: 9781880865200
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 64