The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Jonathon Naylor Editor Some people are natural storytellers. Christie Jedele is a natural at helping bring those stories to life. The Flin Flon teacher enjoys moonlighting as a children's book illustrator, a job which, while time consuming, is a true labour of love. 'We get so busy in doing a bunch of different things in life,' says Jedele, a Grade 5 teacher at Ecole McIsaac School. 'It's a chance for me to sit back and do something that's relaxing and fulfilling. And it's not competitive, it's just for me, and if something comes out of, great, and if it doesn't, it doesn't bother me, either.' But a lot has come out of Jedele's artistic passion. So far her vivid watercolour pieces have graced the pages of seven books It all started in the 1990s when Jedele began urging her friend, Tina Umperville of Cranberry Portage, to compile some of her creative stories into a book for kids. Jedele, a lifelong artist who studied the craft in university, offered to illustrate. 'The stories were really good stories, and so I wanted to see them get done,' she says. Manuscripts were forwarded to several different publishers, with Winnipeg-based Pemmican Publications taking the first bite. In 1995, The Spring Celebration, the story of a young Cree girl in northern Manitoba, hit store and library shelves. It was a rewarding occasion, not only because Jedele was now a published illustrator, but also because she had overcome the inherent challenge of finding just the right images to tell the story. 'Usually you have so many ideas for a book, and then you'll get stumped on something, like 'How am I going to portray that part of it?' and that's about the biggest challenge,' she says. 'Then of course once it goes to the publisher, the publisher goes through and decides which paintings or illustrations to use. If they decide not to use something you really thought was portraying the story, then that's hard, too.' Two years later, in 1997, Jedele and Umperville followed up their success with Jack Pine Fish Camp, which follows the same Cree girl into a summer fish camp. Taking notice By now people were taking notice of Jedele's talent, including another northern Manitoba author, Blaine Klippenstein. Klippenstein asked her to illustrate four small books he was writing for an aboriginal-themed reading series for Winnipeg's Loon Books. In 2000 Jedele's art appeared in The Skating Rink, Buzzing Mosquitoes, Ravens Fly High and Springtime Mud. Jedele's most recent work, Andrea's Fiddle, also by Klippenstein, came out in 2008. It's the story of a young girl who inherits a fiddle carved from an old Spruce tree that had befriended her great-great grandfather. With the artwork two years in the making, the book stands out as one of Jedele's proudest accomplishments. 'It's just a beautiful story and I had no problem illustrating it,' she says. 'I kind of envisioned the book right as I was reading the story.' While her students at McIsaac think her second job is 'pretty neat,' Jedele says the message they and other children acquire from her success is the most important. '(It shows that) it doesn't matter where you are from, if you put enough effort into whatever task you do, you can accomplish something,' she says. 'It gives them incentive to work harder so they can do something similar.'
