The Cottonwood Tree

Serena Mangus (Fort Collins, CO) has a BS in Applied Ecology. As a Volunteer Master Naturalist and Certified Interpretive Guide, she teaches school groups (kindergarten through high school) about local flora and fauna and leads outdoor-education programs for people of all ages. She fell in love with cottonwood trees on a hot day in Zion National Park—lying in their shade, hearing the wind rustle their leaves, hearing the splash of the river—and began to learn all she could about them. She continues to seek out cottonwood trees in all seasons, and one day the idea for this story came to her. Anait Semirdzhyan grew up in a multicultural family and lived in several countries with diverse cultures before settling in the Seattle area with her husband and twin daughters. Her illustrations begin as pencil sketches on cold-press watercolor paper. She then inks the outlines, paints with watercolors, and scans the illustrations in order to edit them in Photoshop. She is the illustrator of The Arabic Quilt and other works that can be viewed at www.anaitsart.com.