The environment has always meant a lot to me. I remember reading a book in grade school about the use of water and how it's easily wasted. Sometime later, I saw a businessman using water to wash off the sidewalk in front of his store and was thoroughly appalled. Of course I was too young to understand the needs of keeping a tidy business front, but, I did understand there was other ways to do so without using our precious life sustaining resources.
When I made the decision to write a children's book, I wanted to make sure it was about a subject I thoroughly loved. There are several things I love, like crafting, creating, music, earth, my children, owls, education, and gardening. All of these subjects seemed to easily flow together into one idea. Knowing I didn't want to write another "this is how you recycle stuff" kind of book that was enamored with numbers and facts, I decided to take a different approach, a creative one.
I haven't always been the picture perfect environmentalist. Let's just say I've had my fair share of consumerism. It's been, only in my 30's, that I've begun to truly realize the truth about our environment and how it can't be fixed by merely changing a few of our living habits. Instead, I've realized I need to change the way we live at home and in the workplace. Uppity Owl is a reflection of how we can change the way we see our world and it's problems enabling us to do something about it. He uses his creative skills to take the ugly and unwanted waste thrown aside and turns it into something new, useful and usually beautiful.
While some of Uppity Owls environmental "fixes" may only be temporary, Uppity Owl reminds us of something bigger. We only get one earth, love it with all we do.
He's a crafty owl that loves to upcycle old stuff into new and useful things!
