Lisa Camp has taught art in Texas schools for over twenty years. She thought about the lessons she was teaching her students that she wanted to teach her own children. Life lessons. Lessons like “Nobody is better than anyone else, and we should all chip in,” and “Many hands make light work.” She remembered how her Cooper High School English teacher, Cindi Yaddow, helped her understand and create poetry. She gave Lisa the confidence that she, too, can create beautiful things for this world. Lisa hopes her art students learn this from her as well.
Lisa Camp wrote The Smartest Little Worker Ant 22 years ago, but the book was not published until last year. After thinking it was lost during a move, Lisa found the handwritten story in a box in her garage, and her husband encouraged her to finally do something with it. Jami Moss (the feature author in the November/December 2023 issue) helped point Lisa in the direction of a publisher.
As an art teacher, Lisa expected the illustrating part of this journey to come naturally. But as she drew different ants, none of them were quite right. She asked other local art teachers to draw ants, too. None of those captured what she envisioned either. Through her publisher, Lisa was sent thumbnails of work from fifty different illustrators. As she looked at these tiny drawings, she kept coming back to Alejandro Echavez. The way he depicted the ant captured her ideas. As she worked with him, he included “Easter eggs” (meaningful treasures to find) for her family, like her daughter’s Jeep and love of soccer. Only after her book was in print did she realize that she chose the same illustrator as Jami Moss! “I love that I get to put my words with another artist’s ideas and make him shine as well.”
Lisa’s book can be found online on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Locally, it has been carried in Seven and One Books and now most recently in Texas Star Trading.
Related: Abilene Author, Jami Moss
By Laura Daulton
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