Catherine Maria Woolf’s book My First Hike, is a way to share with very young children the notion that the natural world holds undiscovered delights. As a child, Woolf loved to explore neighborhood parks, and learned to love animals and the changing seasons. As an artist, she deftly communicates the fresh joy of discovery in nature. Perhaps that’s partly because she did not start out to make a book. She just did illustrations of kids hiking with their grandpa. Eventually she arranged the drawings to make a story, added words and a few more drawings, and put it in a drawer. She thought it was too simple for anyone to be interested in.

A few years later, Catherine showed the drawings to her sister, who encouraged her to send it to a publisher. It is her first book. The illustrations are in watercolor, finished with some color pencil and graphite pencil. Woolf is a graduate of art history at the University of California, Berkeley. She lives in Berkeley, California and says, “I love the nature and hiking here.” My First Hike is Catherine’s first book with Dawn Publications.

Visit Catherine’s website for more examples of her illustrations.