Damselflies pulse with the wild frequency of summer lust, tangled up in a humid breeze, their mating a river-mad embrace. • Ebony Jewelwing damselfly | Calopteryx maculata
Author: Rick Lieder
Painter and photographer Rick Lieder has been creating fine art and conceptual illustration for many years. His art has appeared on award-winning novels ranging from mysteries and science fiction, to books based on the X-Files TV series, to Newbery Award-winning books for children, A Single Shard and Princess Academy.
His work has been published widely in magazines and online (Orion, Natural
History Magazine and others), and by HarperCollins, Random House, Simon &
Shuster and Farrar, Straus & Giroux and more.
Recently he has concentrated on a body of work centering on ordinary backyard wildlife. These photographs capture the unique qualities of light interacting with the natural world, including luminous photographs of honey bees and small birds in flight, glowing fireflies mating and hovering over twilight fields, mosquitoes with a belly full of blood, and new-born praying mantis nymphs emerging from their egg cases.
STEP GENTLY OUT is his new nature picture book for all ages, a collaboration between painter and photographer Rick Lieder and novelist and poet Helen Frost.
Three starred reviews from Kirkus, Publisher's Weekly and Booklist. Kirkus Reviews has selected Step Gently Out as one of four outstanding poetry titles for children to be featured on the Kirkus website for National Poetry Month, along with an interview.
A website with all the news, reviews and up-to-date information for the book, plus a book trailer: http://bugdreams.com/sgo/
Demanding Answers
Two easily offended songbirds demand answers, incompatible on either side of a breeze. • Sparrow | Passer domesticus
Tangled Airstrip
Hunting empty trails, launching from tangled airstrips into a world just out of reach, a cricket waits for the wind to break. • Carolina Ground Cricket | Eunemobius carolinus
Olympian Ant
An Olympian ant caps the throne of chronos, dismantling her world and staring at the pieces. • Eastern black carpenter ant | Camponotus pennsylvanicus
Visit to a Small World
Making each breeze swing, a visit to the small world of pollination, inhaling the fiery scent of sunlight. • Honey bee | Apis mellifera
Below the Stars
Flying so fast just below the stars, even standing still the wind couldn’t keep up . • Sparrow | Passer domesticus
A Siren’s Secret
A hunter plays hide and seek with color, misted berries like stolen carny balloons concealing a siren’s secret appetite. • Chinese Praying Mantis | Tenodera aridifolia sinensis