I love giving back to my community. Providing free books to local kids so that they can participate in the hodag legend was one of the main reasons I created Happy in the first place.
These are snaps from a book reading I did at the Chamber of Commerce for the Rhinelander First Books for Kids.
The Reading
The Signing
The Interview, local television station WJFW stopped by for a chat.
On that donation note, anyone formerly associated with the Rhinelander chapter of First Book For Kids who knows where the loads of extra books I donated are at, please let me know, I would love to get those back in the schools as the donation they were intended to be!
XO,
Jill
]]>By Sarah Juon, editor, The Northstar Journal
If you grew up in Rhinelander, no doubt you can recite the story about the ferocious mythical creature of the swamps known as the hodag, captured by Eugene Shepard. And if you move away? Do you forget about the hodag, or do you feel compelled to tell others about it?
If the outpouring of books, plays and poems about the hodag by former Rhinelander natives is any indication, the passion only grows stronger with distance.
Jill Kuczmarski, a 1994 Rhinelander High School graduate, earned a bachelor’s in graphic design from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. She worked as a graphic artist in Milwaukee for five years, and later moved to Helena, Montana to work for Farcountry Press. She now lives in Chicago, with a day job as a design artist for a large law firm. And off-hours? Why, of course, she pursues her passion for the hodag.
“It’s a cool legend,” she says. “ Wherever I’ve lived, I’ve always had a lot of hodag stuff with me – slippers, t-shirts, hats, you name it. The hodag is a combination of folklore and mythology. It existed before Gene Shepard, and it’s tied up with other myths and folk tales, like Big foot and Paul Bunyan’s Blue Ox.”
Kuczmarski has just published her own tribute to the hodag in a book for young children. But in Tales From The Trees, Kuczmarski’s hodag is nothing like carnivorous, foul-smelling beast Shepard described. “I wanted my little nieces growing up in Green Bay to know about the hodag,” she explains, “so I tried to make him more cuddly and friendly.” Kuczmarski did many trial drawings before coming up with her trademarked Happy the Hodag. “I put him on t-shirts, postcards, and balloons,” she says, “so I could give him as gifts to my nieces.”
To illustrate a book about Happy, she needs a context and a story for him. That’s where Buddy the Bulldog comes in. “That’s Happy’s sidekick who narrates the story of who the hodag is, “ she says. It’s a sly twist on the legend in which the hodag dines on white bulldogs (only on Sundays).
Other friendly-looking creatures grace the page of the slim, elegant book, sized for small hands and printed on durable, “cuddle-proof” stock paper. There is a cute little worm, for instance, that pops up in unexpected places and makes wry comments. “I was heavily influenced by those I Spy books,” Kuczmarski admits. There are humorous cameo appearances by both Big Foot and the Blue Ox, and funny asides spoken throughout by the characters. “I wanted adults to get a kick out of this as much as the children,” Kuczmarski says.
Kuczmarski initially collaborated with a writer to create the story to accompany her illustrations, but the writer “didn’t get the hodag thing, so I decided to write it myself.”
Is there a sequel? “Not for a while,” she replies. “This took a lot out of me. I basically did not have a Winter.” Through business classes, Kuczmarski learned to proceed with caution and to have a carefully worked out marketing play, obtaining [trademarks] and copyrights as she went along. “I heard horror stories about artist getting ripped off,” she says. “This is too dear to me to lose control of it.”
Kuczmarski, who came back to work at Camp Deerhorn for many summers, often visits Rhinelander, where her parents, Lorry and Jerry Kuczmarski, live. Her boyfriend, Jess Paddock, is also from Rhinelander. His mother, Susie Miller, Kuczmarski says, “made some wonderful suggestions for this book.”
I don't remember saying a lot of the things in this article and lol'd my way through a lot of it. As this is an interview from over ten years ago, it makes sense that I wouldn't remember some things, but I was pretty sure that at the launch of my first book I had zero intention of writing another. It wasn't until later in the Summer that it became clear that I needed to create another book to explain how on earth a hodag came to be friends with a bulldog.
I launched at Brown Street Books and the owner, Joan Belongia, had also been my editor and publishing mentor. It's funny, it never occurred to me at the time to ask any other stores in town if they would carry my book. That's how much of a plan had back then.
Here are a few other things to ponder about the year 2006:
By Heather Schaefer, Daily News Staff
Newsflash: There’s a new Hodag in town.
His name is Happy and he’s the brainchild of graphic designer and former Rhinelander resident, Jill Kuczmarski.
Happy is a kinder, gentler Hodag than what most of us are used to but that’s because Happy is a Hodag for a younger generation. He is the main character in “Tales From The Trees,” a read-to-me book for kids written and illustrated by Kuczmarski.
One thing that sets Happy apart from our traditional Hodag is his relationship with white bulldogs. As most self-respecting Rhinelander residents know, the Hodag (according to legend) eats white bulldogs, but that’s not the case with Happy at all. Happy is best friends with Buddy the Bulldog…
Kuczmarski, a 1994 graduate of Rhinelander High School, says she thinks Happy is a good way to introduce little ones… to the infamous Hodag and other Northwoods legends.
“Originally, I just wanted to create a friendlier Hodag character that children could enjoy,” Kuczmarski said. “My brother and sisters have kids now and I thought it would be fun if they could participate in the Hodag legend, but the traditional depiction of the Hodag is pretty intimidating.”
Kuczmarski says she went through a few drafts before coming up with Happy.
“Happy was first and it took me a while to come up with a character illustration I liked. I actually did a lot of illustration research and worked with several different styles before I settled on this [simple] illustration and I created Buddy... because I thought Happy should have a sidekick. Buddy is drawn from several adorable pictures I found of bulldog puppies whereas Happy came straight from my imagination."
Although she was satisfied with Happy and Buddy, Kuczmarski quickly realized her main characters were living in a vacuum.
“After I created Happy I realized that he didn’t make any sense without some sort of context, that’s when I started writing out some ideas for a Hodag story for kids,” she said. “I wanted my story to be a quick blended overview about what is currently shared on the Hodag, but mostly I wanted to show that the Hodag is as great a legend and tale as Paul and Babe, and just as mysterious and sought after as mythical creatures like Bigfoot.”
The fledgling author says she though about incorporating the “Hodag’s eats bulldogs” legend into her books but couldn’t come up with a way to do it that would fit with the tastes of young children.
“The fact that I was creating this for children definitely created some issues when it came to the unsavory aspects of the Hodag legend,” she admitted. “I thought about it a lot and decided it could be a fun, kid-friendly twist to the legend if I could write in my first book something along the lines of ‘Buddy lived in a town and went to visit Happy the first Sunday of each month. People would see him leave, but they never saw him come back… thus the legend of eating white bulldogs on Sunday. One of my first drafts was leading to this and I just couldn’t make it work with the other ideas I wanted to incorporate. I finally just had to accept that I was going to have to do a couple of books, fleshing out relationships, and ties to the true legend,” she explained.
Kuczmarski says she hasn’t started work on it yet but she is planning at least one Happy and Buddy sequel.
“Older children are already asking what else Happy, Buddy and their friends do in the forest so I should get busy,” she said.
In fact, if “Tales from Trees” becomes a series, Kuczmarski says she plans to branch out and add more characters.
“I think Happy and Buddy will always be the main characters but other characters will definitely be introduced into story lines. Sadly some kids don’t even know who Babe (the blue ox) is so I’m thinking he (or is it she?) may need to have a larger role in upcoming stories. I also have illustrations that didn’t make the cut on the first book where some other animals were forefront and I’m hoping to use them down the line,” she said. When not working on more tales involving Happy and Buddy, Kuczmarski, a graduate of Minneapolis College of Art and Design, works as an in-house corporate designer in the marketing department of a large law firm in Chicago. She also has her own business, Jill Kuczmarski Designs [LLC], through which she publishes and provides creative consulting services.
Tales from the Trees, Kuczmarski’s first attempt at designing her own product, was published through Kuczmarski Designs [LLC]. The book itself has a unique construction, a reverse fold, which is perfect for little hands to hold.
“I wanted my book to be ‘soft’ but it still needed to be durable enough for toddler handling, so I designed it as a reverse fold, bingeing on the loose end. This allowed the pages to remain soft but more durable against tears and also Mae it easier for little fingers to turn the pages. Printing and folding the pages like this also helped bulk up the book in order to be eligible for perfect binding instead of saddle stitching. I didn’t want the saddle stitching because the staples could come unbent or fall out with rough handling which is no good for little feet and carpet crawlers,” Kuczmarski explained.
The insides of the folds also harbor a nice surprise for young bookworms.
“I had originally intended to keep the insides of the fold blank but the designer in me just couldn’t handle it, it felt wrong and unfinished so I designed a one color peek-a-boo surprise for the interiors. The least destructive way for little ones to check it out is to put the book upright on a table, stick a finger in the fold and then bow it out by pressing in on the folded outer edge of the page,” Kuczmarski advised.
“Tales From The Trees” is available at Brown Street Books.
Kuczmarski will appear at Brown Street Books for a book signing on Saturday, May 27 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and on Sunday, May 28 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
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QUESTION:🌲What year did Eugene Shepard first discover the Hodag? 1822 / 1893 / 1900 / 1991🌲
ANSWER: Kurt Kortenhof explains in his book ‘Long Live the Hodag’ that “The Hodag first made its appearance in the autumn of 1893 near the lumbering frontier community of Rhinelander, Wisconsin…. Although a seasoned woodsmen, Shepard had never before encountered a Hodag, the beast so often spoke of in the lumber-camp bunkhouses. The sighting, however, was unmistakable. Shepard stood face to face with a 185 pound, seven-foot-long, lizard-like beast. Its head was disproportionately large for its body with two horns growing from its temples, large fangs and green eyes.”
QUESTION: 🌲In 1928, who claimed in writing that a hodags eyes are green?🌲
ANSWER: Lake Shore (Luke Sylvester) Kearney wrote in his 1928 publication, ‘The Hodag and other Tales of the Logging Camps’, that the Hodag has “glowing, green eyes.“ Found in this excerpt from Lake Shore’s The Hodag story, “Though a student of wood lore and of both prehistoric and other wild animals, Mr. Shepherd could not classify the monstrosity, which was gazing at him with glowing, green eyes and sniffing from nostrils of flaming hue.”
QUESTION:🌲What year did the first Hodag kids book debut?🌲 1974 / 1989 / 1994 / 2006
ANSWER:Caroline Arnold released ‘The Terrible Hodag’ in 1989, the first book for kids (that I know of) featuring the Hodag. Caroline followed up with ‘The Terrible Hodag and The Animal Catchers’ in 2006, the same year Happy the Hodag debuted in ‘Tales From The Trees’ as an inclusive Hodag for kids. Other friendly depictions of the Hodag have been created more recently for kids as well.
]]>Hodag
Last, but not least, is the Hodag, a frog-headed creature with long fangs and red glowing eyes. Reputed to be the size of a large dog, the Hodag model looks powerful and rather like a hyena.
BUY IT AT THE POTTERMORE SHOP HERE
At $6.99, do you even have to think about it?
That doubly goes for author and designer Jill Kuczmarski's hodag Happy — an all-teeth-and-no-bite take on a local legend. In fact, Kuczmarski has spent the last decade using Happy to re-spin a dark and scary urban legend into a picture book character young children would love. It's all a part of the Rhinelander native's effort to challenge how we think about nature and community."
READ THE FULL STORY (Wausau Daily Herald)
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