When a child enters the world of Bonita Forsyth they enter a world of fantasy. In her Huckleberry Hollow series, Bonita takes very young readers on adventures in nature with her beautiful paintings and just a few words.Now in her very first chapter book ICE, the first in a trilogy called The Chronicles of Mineria, Bonita takes older readers on an adventure into the realm of magic and fantasy through the adventure of reading.

“It is my first experience in painting with words, instead of a paint brush to get kids to see what I am imagining,” Bonita says. In ICE, two very popular characters from her previous books, Jonathan and Sunny, the snowboarding bunny, find themselves in an outer world called Mineria, where insects, and in particular, butterflies have become the dominant species.

The butterflies have evolved to about the size of humans. They raise dragon flies from infants for them to ride on long distances. They use mind control to train trees to grow into the shape of houses for them to live in. They raise spiders and silk worms to provide them with fibers for their clothing. And they generally live in harmony with nature.

Jonathan and Sunny are summoned to Mineria through a gazing globe to help save both Earth and Mineria, because they both have experience travelling in the ice and snow of mountains, where butterflies are too fragile to go.

From The
Williams Lake Tribune
Written By - Gaele Farrar

Newspaper Article Cont.

Bonita says she chose the name Mineria because in Latin it means delight in mirror image.

“I just liked the sound of it. It just had a magical sound,” Bonita says.

“It’s been fun thinking of every detail in Mineria. I have really enjoyed that.” Bonita says the gazing globe in ICE is also a real thing that just appeared in her garden one summer. She doesn’t know where it came from, but she carefully brings it in for the winter and puts it out in the garden again each spring. ICE is filled with themes children have loved in fantasy stories forever -- wizards, dragons, flying creatures, magic, and mystery. While ICE is a chapter book written for young readers ages 10 to 14, Bonita couldn’t resist peppering it with her illustrations. At first she put the paintings in as full colour images, but realized the colour was just too distracting for a chapter book where the focus is on reading. So the pictures appear in the book in black and white and give the book a classical feeling of old time books illustrated with etchings.

ICE, which was four years in the creating, was released in June and has proved so popular that it will go into its second printing in January in both hard and soft cover versions. Born in Nelson, Bonita spent the first few years of her life in the ghost town of Sandon. She and her husband, Chris, have three sons, Jonathan, Jesse and James. They live on Lac la Hache which has been the inspiration for Bonita’s paintings and writings. Jonathan is the boy in her picture book series.  Jesse has a degree in animation, and designed the book cover for her book Snowboarding Bunny’s Mountain Adventure and will be a character in the next Chronicals of Mineria series called Fire. Bonita was a teacher for 20 years before discovering her gift for painting animals, inspired by her enjoyment of nature, kayaking on Lac la Hache and enjoying the animals that visit her yard.

“My love of children’s stories and painting animals were the inspiration behind the dream of creating a series of children’s books,” Bonita says. “The picture books gave me the experience and confidence to write The Chronicles of Mineria for  more mature readers.”  Over the past 10 years Bonita has become a prolific children’s book author of the Huckleberry Hollow children’s picture book series which include the titles Snowboarding Bunny, Huckleberry Tea, Beautiful Noise, Snowboarding Bunny’s Mountain Adventure, Finn Fawn, and The Huckleberry Hollow Alphabet. She is also working on a new picture book for her Huckleberry Hollow series called One-Eye. This book will feature the beloved little mouse, Nibbles, that hides in the illustrations of every book Bonita has created, including The Chronicles of Mineria.

She says One-Eye is based on a true story of a mouse which she and son Jonathan rescued from a fox, who is also featured in her books. The mouse lived with the family  for a year while it was recovering from its injuries and was then released back into the wild.

•Click Here to read another article from The Prince George Citizen

Evauation By Maria Lepitich , Teacher/Librarian, 150 Mile Elementary

"Teachers, You and your students will be quickly absorbed into Bonita Forsyth's magical and mystical book presentations. You will be firstly seated amongst many of her original bold and textured watercolour illustrations. The richness of colour and detail leaves you breathless. She gently captivates you by sharing her personal stories from the woods surrounding her home place at Lac La Hache into her fictional setting of Huckleberry Hollow Books.

Bonita then cleverly transports some of these characters to a new world, a land of immense fantasy in her new series called "The Chronicles of Mineria". In Mineria, Bonita reveals an amazing fantasy which is descriptivley rich with many layers of suspense and unsuspected surprises...

Bonita spent two full days at our school. On her second day students were immersed into her watercolour workshops. Students practiced six watercolour techniques with this extremely talented self-taught artist. Bonita left students and staff dizzy with excitement. She nurtured and ignited the creativity we all have within ourselves.

Teachers here have invited Bonita back to provide writing workshops using her setting map and storyboard technique. Students and teachers are eagerly awaiting for Bonita to put her magical spell into their writing."

Comments From My Readers