Bill Smith’s latest book, Chickadeeland, celebrates national parks and shores of America, including Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Michael Soukup, recently retired chief scientist for the National Park Service, calls Chickadeeland “a beautiful, delightful introduction to America’s natural wonders.”
If you are election-weary and searching for ways to honor the “best” in all of us, consider Four a.m. December 25. Written and illustrated by the local team of Bill O. Smith and Glenn Wolff, Four a.m. is a holiday picture book that takes the reader around the world at this one wondrous moment, then back home to the United States where a soldier is trying to get home in time for Christmas.
Just days after the Dec. 14, 2012, mass-shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Leelanau County author Bill Smith wrote to the Cyrenius H. Booth Library in Newtown, Conn., and offered to send copies of his children’s book, Chickadees at Night. Like the hundreds of thousands around the world who sent prayers and gifts to the devastated community, he wanted to help the town heal.
What’s the best-selling hardcover book in northern Michigan this year? Is it John Grisham’s Calico Kid or Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins? Surprise. It’s Chickadees At Night, a picture book for all ages by Empire author Bill O. Smith. According to Horizon Books in Traverse City, hundreds of these Chickadees have been flying off the shelves since the book’s release in late April. “People see it as an heirloom book,” says Jill Beauchamp of Horizon. “They are delighted by it and want to pass it along to their families.” Smith is quick to add that “it doesn’t hurt at all” that the illustrator is the gifted Traverse City watercolorist Charles R. Murphy.