Image of the Week: Spotted Salamander
© Durga Yael Bernhard
One day last month I took my dog down to the stream near my house so she could cool off in the bubbly current, still swollen from the tropical storm that flung its tail over the Northeast, flooding the New York metropolitan area. As I stepped on a rock, I noticed a slender brown creature with a fine yellow stripe sliver under a wet tree root. A striped salamander had been flushed out by the storm. The sight of the lithe little amphibian brought to mind one summer twenty-five years ago, when I illustrated a whole picture book about salamanders. Titled simply Salamanders, it was written by my ex-husband, Emery Bernhard, designed and illustrated by me, and published by Holiday House, one of the last family-owned dedicated children's book publishers left in New York City at the time.
I'm an artist, not a biologist, but in order to illustrate a natural science title I had to produce biologically accurate images. Visual research for a non-fiction picture book requires finding out about both subject and context – the creature as well as its home, whether a city neighborhood or an aquatic habitat. For the "illo" shown above, I had to know the markings on a spotted salamander, the number of its toes, the appearance of its eggs, and the plants and insects that live in its pond at the right time of year for the eggs to be laid. I learned a lot about the life cycle of these humble critters and their watery world.
For other natural science books I learned about prairie dogs and their role in the food chain; reindeer and their great migratory journeys; eagles of the world and their endangered grandeur; ladybugs and their place in English folklore; and dragonflies in their darting and colorful diversity. I've also learned a lot about trees – fun facts about baobabs (that look like they're planted upside down); kapok trees (whose fruit bears fluff once used to fill life jackets); mulberries (whose leaves are the sole food of silkworms); and willows (whose rapid growth to maturity and short life span is the same as ours). As you can tell, my head is stuffed full of quirky facts as a result of these books, which I pulled out my hat when I did arts-in-ed programs in local schools. Kids eat this stuff up – and so does the child in me.
Did you know salamanders breathe through their skin? And their eggs absorb oxygen exhaled by the algae that grows on them? If you live in the Northeast, you've probably seen Red Efts – a type of eastern newt – with orange skin and tiny iridescent spots. If you live in the south, you've probably seen Mud Puppies. About 100 species of salamanders live in North America, some of which can live up to fifty years.
Salamanders was a fun and relatively easy book to illustrate. My son was nine years old when the book was published – just old enough to be interested in creepy crawly things. It was great illustrating children's books while my kids were growing up.
A good week to all!