Hi everybody! I’m Jan Thornhill and I wrote and designed and found or made all the pictures for This Is My Planet. I’m so thrilled to be nominated for the Silver Birch Award, especially since I was nominated last year, too, for I Found a Dead Bird!

Though I’ve been making books for kids’ for years, that’s not all I do. I also love to travel – my husband Fred and I flew halfway around the world and then traveled by bus and by rickety old boat another couple of thousand kilometers to Komodo Island in Indonesia specifically to see wild Komodo dragons, and last year we drove from Ontario to the Yukon and then up the Dempster highway (really a gravel road) all the way to the Arctic Circle with our dog, Betty Boots. The trip exhausted Betty Boots – she was so afraid she’d miss seeing the next bear or moose or caribou that she just had to stay awake all day, which was hard on her since, like most dogs, she normally spends a lot of time sleeping.

I also collect beetles, which I’m fascinated by because there are so many different kinds – of all the species on Earth, about one third are beetles. They’re amazing-looking things when you look at them magnified. I’m also a bit of nut about fungi, (well, a bit more than a nut – I’m totally obsessed), specifically with all the really weird tiny stuff that grows on rotting twigs and logs, mini cups and rubbery lips and slippery jellies that come in all different colours, including blue. And then there’s bizarre little things called slime molds that are like animals for part of their lives, then like plants. If you want to learn more about slime molds, or about me and how I make my books, including how I make my photo-illustrations, check out my website at: http://www.janthornhill.com.
Hope you like my book!