Blog Tour with Guest Post and Giveaway for FOOTSTEPS ON THE MAP by Barbara Kerley

 

Welcome to the blog tour for

Footsteps on the Map from National Geographic Kids.  Be sure and enter the giveaway at the end of the post.  

                                                                                 About the Book:

In this enchanting picture book, two children set out on separate adventures to blaze their very own trail, mapping it as they go.

Set out, pen in hand. Yours are the first footsteps on the map! You never know where the path to adventure might lead! This imaginative picture book combines brief, lyrical text with a stunning combination of photographs and artist’s illustrations as it spins a charming story that introduces the art of mapmaking from a child’s perspective.

Perfect for preschoolers and early elementary kids just learning about maps, the book also includes basic information needed to read maps, such as symbols and a map key. Filled with beautifully illustrated, child-centered maps, Footsteps on the Map will inspire budding cartographers to map their own world and tell their own stories.  Available at Amazon

Guest Post

    Several years ago, I wrote a draft of a picture book in which a kid makes a map of their world, from home to playground to whole neighborhood. He’s so happy with it that at the end of the book, he decides to make a bigger map.

    I sent the manuscript to my wonderful Nat Geo editor at the time, Erica Green. She loved the idea and wondered if there was a way to marry it to an idea she’d been thinking about: a book where two kids start at opposite ends and meet in the middle.

    That was the inspiration for FOOTSTEPS ON THE MAP—a story of two kids each making a map of their journey, who meet at the end, join their maps together, and create something bigger and better than either could have imagined.

    It was my husband, Scott, who helped me figure out how to show that on the page. Brainstorming at dinner one night, he suggested that the pages of the book could be split, with illustrations showing the kids walking and a banner along the bottom, showing their maps as they get bigger and bigger and slowly come to meet in the middle.

    Erica was the editor who helped conceptualize the book, but when it was time to create it, Erica had a new job and so the task fell to my wonderful new editor, Marfé Ferguson Delano. She took the manuscript and guided it through all the stages to turn it into a beautiful book. It’s dedicated to both Erica and Marfé because it wouldn’t exist without them.

                                                                                                About the Author

BARBARA KERLEY is the award-winning author of numerous nonfiction picture books, including The Extraordinary Mark Twain, Those Rebels, John and Tom, and A Home for Mr. Emerson. Her titles for National Geographic include The World Is Waiting For You; You and Me Together; A Little Peace; Brave Like Me; One World, One Day; With a Friend by Your Side; and A Cool Drink of Water.

OKSANA DRACHKOVSKA is an illustrator from Ukraine. A finalist in the Bologna Book Fair illustration competition in 2021 and 2022, Oksana finds inspiration in nature, landscapes, and travels. She likes to experiment with different ways of creating books, stories, and her own invented worlds.

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