Arizona Environmental Cartoonist Announces Fall 2012 Cartooning Instruction Tour

July 9, 2012 - PRLog -- As America prepares to go “Back-To-School,” cartooning is making its way back into the classroom as an effective tool to teach children and adults valuable lessons about all sorts of topics.  The Environment and green movement head the list.  One in every ten classrooms and one in every five home school environs are using various forms of cartoon/comic strips to educate and enhance confidence-building exercises.  

Travelling only with a tabletop light table, pen and ink, author/cartoonist Drew Aquilina goes on tour this Fall to schools and libraries across the southwest United States demonstrating how anyone can teach themselves to draw through a series of specific fundamental sketching and tracing exercises as well as pen and ink cartooning techniques, while integrating humorous character foibles and storylines.

Aquilina uses his best-selling cartoon collection, Green Pieces: Green From the Pond Up, as a base for the instruction.  Green Pieces humorously profiles nature and provides educators and parents with an effective, funny and positive environmental platform.  This clever cartoon strip teaches children to protect and honor nature through humor.

Do you know the real cause of cloud to cloud lightning?  Will the Pond survive a cartoon character lawsuit brought by P.A.N.I.C., Parents Against Nature in Cartoons?  Can you imagine how T-Rex is transported into today’s society?  Would you like to see just how much of a “bug” a dragonfly truly is? Have you ever seen the dark side of the moon?  Students and readers alike will learn through the presentations to affirmatively answer these questions with a resounding “Yes!”

Read what people are saying about Green Pieces:

“This book should be in every home and every classroom across America." ~ San Francisco Chronicle Book Review and Sacramento Book Review.
   
“This is a wonderful book, full of top-notch illustrations and adorable characters that will bring nature and the inhabitants alive to you in a superb way.  Very well done and highly recommended."  ~ Shirley Johnson/Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

“A true master of the craft can also produce a work that appeals to young and old alike.  …  If I were marooned on a desert island and could take ten books with me, the first two that popped into my mind were Wind In The Willows, and Alice In Wonderland. Although both are primarily children’s books, both have that unique ability to cross generational boundaries.  I see Green Pieces as being such a book.  …  Much of the humor operates on both a child’s level and an adult one.  I mentioned earlier that a vital component in a successful book is the educational value.  I see a huge amount of education in these simple cartoons.  Much of it concerns environmental issues that we all should be worried about.  … Clearly this man is a creative and very humorous genius.”  ~ Simon Barrett, Blogger News Network  

When not on cartooning tour, Aquilina is the staff cartoonist at AZTV Channel 13 in Phoenix.  He also produces a daily Green Pieces strip at http://www.GreenPiecesCartoons.com and http://www.GoComics.com/green-pieces, and his Studio celebrated the publication of his second and third cartoon compilations, Green Pieces: Meet the Pond Friends and Green Pieces: One Piece At a Time, in June 2012.  Visit http://www.GreenPiecesBooks.com.

Aquilina's Studio is now scheduling a nationwide Spring 2013 Cartooning Tour, with an emphasis on and new presentations for Earth Day and Earth Month (April 2013).  To receive a sample lesson plan, for more information and/or to schedule a cartooning presentation for your school, library, organization or charitable event, email or telephone Aquilina’s publicist at mail@greenpiecestoons.com and 602-510-8076 (AZ), or contact his agent, The Carolyn Jenks Agency, http://www.CarolynJenksAgency.com, carolynjenks@comcast.net, 617-354-5099 (MA).  Aquilina also is available as a last minute guest for radio and live in-studio TV segments.