Songbird Theater: An intimate moment brought to you by an avian private investigator: “I don’t like you when you’re stoned.” “I don’t like you when I’m straight.” • Sparrow | Passer domesticus
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/
Emperor of the Glade
Searching out rumors of light, a Night Heron slips past evening’s commotion, ignoring the hot and confused air, emperor of the glade. • Yellow-crowned Night Heron | Nyctanassa violacea
Homeschooled Secrets
A mantis nymph maps traces of evaporated dew, homeschooled in the garden’s secrets as she ties up the last bits of morning. • Chinese Praying Mantis | Tenodera aridifolia sinensis
Living Alphabet
A slave to plant cryptography, she feels the garden’s myths pass through stems, a living alphabet of growth. • Eastern black carpenter ant | Camponotus pennsylvanicus
Bent on Misadventure
Bent on misadventure, a streaming squadron of bees dissolves into the sun, unhooking their anchor to my garden. • Honey bee | Apis mellifera
A Spectrum Out for Vengeance
A wasp is assaulted by a flower’s wild side, a small detective on the edge of desperation, the only witness to a spectrum out for vengeance. • Braconid wasp
Waking Clouds
Songbirds jostle for position with no time to waste, waking sleepy clouds from their spring sleep. • Sparrow | Passer domesticus
The New Prometheus
Keeping the gods at bay, the new Prometheus strips the heat from fire, chokes the thunder from a raptor’s wings. • Sawfly Larva | Cimbicid