Featured Illustrator: Virginia Rinkel

Cursive, chestnuts roasting, Jack Bergeron, Amy Nielander, and Dr. Mira Reisberg: Writer/illustrator Virginia Rinkel

Charlie Barshaw coordinates our regular Writer Spotlight feature and interviews writers of SCBWI-MI. In this piece, meet writer/illustrator/chestnut grower, Virginia (Ginger) Rinkel.

Thank you for making the summer 2026 banner for The Mitten! Could you tell us about it?

When I made the watercolor banner for July 2026, I thought it would be a good idea to do two pictures of the same scene: one on cold-press watercolor paper and the other, an exact same scene (with minor changes), on hot-press paper. 

July 2026 banner: Watercolor on cold-press watercolor paper

I usually use cold-press as I like how the paint flows. But, I'm playing around with hot-press paper for my squirrel illustrations in the "Look for the Tail" story.

When referring to watercolor papers, the UK and other international countries use the word "not" when they are referring to a cold press paper. That’s because it is rolled through cold rollers to form a more absorbent surface texture of the paper. Hot press paper has a hot press applied to it to form a  smoother finish. 

Alternate version of July 2026 banner: Watercolor on hot-press watercolor paper

And, there is one more type of paper referred to as "rough." That means less cold rollers flattened this type, making it even more absorbent for a looser style of painting with watercolors.

I wanted to share both versions with you so you can see the difference paper choice makes. 

 

I'm holding a bag of chestnuts. Some of them are fresh-frozen, peeled (the yellow ones), and the others are fresh in their brown shells

Did young Ginny like to read? 

Yes! Here’s a picture of the first book I liked to have read to me as a child, and so the literary bug began.

 

When did you discover that you were an artist?  

I remember using crayons and creating a scene of 4 fish on a white piece of cloth in 4th grade. There were four different views of a fish: 2 sides, 1 front, and 1 back view of a fish in water. I thought that was pretty cool, as that’s the first time I had ever drawn different views of the
same object.

I don’t think I knew at that point that I was gifted as an artist. However, seeing my maternal grandfather’s handwriting in his American Shorthorn Breeders’ Association receipt book probably gave me a small clue that some form of artistry was in my family. I thought his handwriting was gorgeous!. I print, as my cursive does not meet his standard.
 

We met one time when you were selling roasted chestnuts at Silver Bells in the City in Lansing, just before Thanksgiving. They were chestnuts you had grown. How did you end up running a chestnut orchard? 

The day my apple orchard hobbyist father died in 1992, the Lansing State Journal’s headline was “Northern Nut Growers Association’s Meeting coming to MSU”. 

My father had worked as a plant manager at McDonald's Ice Cream Division in Flint, Michigan. When he returned to Michigan after a short time making ice cream in New Jersey (a new invention from the recent World’s Fair), he saw a piece of property for sale with two lakes on it that he had fished on as a child with his uncle.
 

It had 2 kettle lakes (a 13-acre and a 6-acre lake on 65 acres). He bought it for under $5,000 in 1952. He built a cottage and planted 600 apple trees on it with the help of an orchard man just up the road from the property. So, I grew up loving trees.
 

After my husband retired from teaching, we wanted to plant trees on some land, somewhere, somehow, and attended this NNGA meeting looking for guidance. There, we met the recently late MSU professor, Dr. Dennis Fulbright, Plant Pathologist, who wanted to help feed the world
by growing nuts, chestnuts, to be exact. 

He knew what killed the American chestnut trees, so he wanted to work with types like the European, Japanese, and Chinese trees, which are more resistant to this blight than American trees. So these types were imported, and newer cultivars come from them nowadays. 

The American chestnut tree, which covered the states from Maine
to Georgia, numbered 4 billion and was wiped out by chestnut blight from ~1904 to ~1927.

Chestnut blight was a gigantic ecological disaster in American history. Over 30 million acres of chestnut forest were killed in 40 years. Much of this happened during the Great Depression, so the impact on both the mountain people who ate chestnuts and the animals that depended on
them in autumn was doubly devastating.

Today, our property has approximately 75/ 25-year-old chestnut trees. We originally planted 300 trees. We only have 75 left, as the trees didn’t like “water on their feet” and died. We have never had chestnut blight in this orchard. 

We also grow hazelnut trees, and we had some blight about 15 years ago. We removed those trees and immediately burned them. We have not had blight since with our remaining ~80 trees. We now have cultivars from Oregon State University’s extensive work. 

Now, the University of Rutgers has released some newer EFB (Eastern Filbert Blight)-resistant trees like "Raritan, Somerset, Monmouth, and Hunterdon.” More releases will be coming soon. This will help orchardists be more confident that planting hazelnut trees in Michigan, a native region for hazelnuts, will ensure their success.
 

Angus standing between two different chestnut trees in Look for the Tail

Blight looks like a straight vertical line of small gray football shapes on a branch higher in the tree. It’s easiest to see on a cloudy day in February, with no leaves on the tree. Our hazelnut orchard has ~ 80 hazelnut trees in the 1-10-year-old range.
 

Early on, your stories revolved around chestnuts. Do you still have a passion for telling stories about chestnuts? 

I guess I do, because it’s something I know. Once I realized what my husband and I had gotten ourselves into, caring for and growing a chestnut orchard, there was no turning back. Either we needed to sell the place or take care of it, and because I love trees, we chose the latter. 

A chestnut orchard is somewhat different than an apple orchard. The chestnut nut, or better yet, it should have been named “chestfruit” as the “nut” is a living legume. When it falls to the ground, out of its bur, it needs to be picked up and refrigerated asap. 

Otherwise, these fruit/nuts will challenge any Halloween spooky scene you’ve ever known as they grow their long white beards of mold and become oh so spooky looking.
 

(There’s been a long debate in the agricultural world that this live, edible legume should have been named “chestfruit” instead of chestnut, as it has to be refrigerated ASAP to keep in its best condition. If you see chestnuts sitting out on a shelf in the grocery store, outside of refrigeration, let the manager know fresh chestnuts will stay fresher longer if they are in a refrigerated section.)
 

Here are some chestnut characters I created, named after some actual existing cultivars.

Chestnut character's names

 

Chestnut characters at their Union Job planting trees

A cartoon scene where the nuts working in their “1.5 Union” job, where some confusion over how to plant a tree seems to confuse “P.M.”
”Colosa” and “E.F.” think they are giving clear directions to “P.M.”

You surprised me at an in person Lansing Area Shop Talks by sketching an impromptu portrait of your truly. When did you start taking your art talent seriously?
 

Pencil portrait sketches.

I’m not real sure. I asked my elementary teacher later in life if he could see my artistic talent. He said, “Yes, but I didn’t know what to do with you.”
In high school, I scored in the 98th percentile in spatial ability and thought I would like to go to GMI (General Motors Institute in Flint, MI.), and study architecture, but girls weren’t allowed in the school at that time and high school counselors didn’t give much guidance in any related field to my interests in the late 50’s.
 

At that time, my choices of occupation came down to being a teacher or a nurse. I was a decent 2nd-grade teacher, especially with the art lessons where I taught 1-8th graders, but my husband was a better 4th-grade teacher in his classes of math, etc.
 

He could lead students to the right answer through his type of questioning, whereas I would almost get there with a student, but after 10 minutes of struggling and they still didn’t get it, I gave in and gave them the answer. That’s not the best way for a student to learn!
 

I remember a Lansing Community College life drawing teacher, Jack Bergeron, suggested I do portraits as a real job after college. Another LCC teacher said, “Ahhh, an illustrator," when I turned in this final composition of different images on the same subject, our cat.

Design 1 Final - multiple views of a subject

 

And a third LCC teacher’s style of teaching was to yell at me “to get the whole object on the page first before worrying about working on the details.” He was right. I still fight this.
 

I loved the teachers and the “hands-on” art classes at LCC back in the 80’s. I took close to 100 credits there, not for the degree, as I had a degree in teaching, but for the best instructors I could find in art. Computers were just coming in, but there was nothing like having a real person instructing you in different art techniques.
 

Currently, she is working on a children’s book about a stubborn squirrel’s dilemma of choosing between two chestnut trees for his winter house. How’s the story coming?
 

Suggested cover for Look for the Tail

I’ve finished it. The third writing revision and illustration dummy, “Look for the Tail” was submitted to last year’s SCBWI Carousel Critique, which was submitted to Katie Heit. Sr. Editor at Scholastic in May. She gave me her 10-point Critique Notes and Talking Points. I followed them up and submitted it to Chronicle Books' open submission days in May 2026 and will await their 6-month notification. I am still working on some different scenes of illustrative double-spreads
 

I entered the previous Carousel Critique in 2022 with this same book idea. The agent, Sarah Stephens from Red Fox Literary, thought I had a good story here if I fleshed it out a bit more, which I now have, but then she wrote in her second comment that she could not see my story in
her line of representation.
 

On LinkedIn, this is your entry:
Assistant Editor for Northern Nut Growers Association
Small grower of chestnut and hazelnuts in Michigan
Artist working on non-fiction picture books for children
What does your job as assistant editor entail?
 

I have retired from my 24-year position as Assistant Editor at NNGA. When I worked there, I would take the approved papers another person had written, which had been ok’d by the editor, and enter them into an InDesign document that became part of a yearly publication. That
included fixing the tables, some artwork, and cleaning up the bibliographies in the submitted papers. 

I did get to do a cover for the Hazelnut separate book that was published by this organization. I drew the hazelnut line drawing for the cover.

My cover

 

When you say “small grower,” what does that mean?
 

We have only planted a small number of trees (in the hundreds), compared to the thousands planted by other growers in the Chestnut Growers Cooperative.
 

Are you primarily working in non-fiction? Why?
My writing is “informative fiction” if that term is still around. I like to tell a story about the chestnuts, inserting true information about them, but in an anthropomorphic, fictionalized form 

I have some other work. Big, Medium, Small is about chestnuts participating in a parade, but the crowd goers complain that they can’t ever see them! So, their chestnut schoolteacher gives his students the job to figure out a solution. In an unsuspecting way, they finally meet success.

Digital Cover of BMS

Amy Nielander featured two of your granddaughters, artists as well, on her blog. What can you say about their experience? 

The two granddaughters she is speaking about were the result of us entering one of Amy’s first sessions, where we were taking shapes and turning them into a character. That was fun. 

We have another granddaughter in her second year at Bournemouth University in England, studying animation. I’m amazed at her ability. She’s drawn since she could hold a crayon. Dinosaurs and dragons are her love. She’s displayed her art on Deviant Art.

Who is Mira Reisberg? What classes did you take with her? What other art instruction have you pursued? 

I took some online classes from Mira Reisberg, creator of The Children’s Book Academy. She is known as the Children’s Book Whisperer. Through this class, my BMS (Big, Medium, Small) foundations for a story began, and I have one last picture to correct in this illustrated book. She was a great online teacher.

I’m also taken classes from Mark Mitchell. He’s an instructor at the Contemporary Austin Art School at Laguna Gloria. He lives in Pflugerville, Texas and holds an online class called “Deep Dives.”

I’m in this once-a-month class.” It’s a fun group, and he gives us something challenging to work on every month. I try to keep up, but during harvest season for me with hazelnuts and
soon, chestnuts, I don’t always make the sessions or complete his assignments.

There was a time when the American chestnut tree flourished from Maine to Georgia in America. Disease ravaged the trees. You expressed some hope for the recovery of the species. How goes the American Chestnut? Do you have any growing on your farm?
 

I spoke to this earlier in the interview, but to answer this question, there is a group in NY trying to resurrect this species, and they are trying to release a strain of cultivars that may attempt to do this, but these chestnut trees will not be of the same genetics as the original American
chestnut species.
 

I remember Dr. Fulbright years ago saying that if something comes back, it will have to be changed in some way, as the original tree would still get hit by the blight and be wiped out again. I’m not sure they will succeed.
And no, we do not have any growing on our farm. If we did, they would pick up the blight from spores in the air and die, and would also likely kill our other cultivars that are not resistant.

You are active online and often leave comments. Have you formed some relationships in following these online artists? Is online the cheapest/best way to take classes? 

I have developed a relationship with both Mira and Mark, mostly with Mark. He encourages me when I “get down on myself” and helps me to keep trying. I appreciate this effort. He’s proud I submitted my book in May to Chronicle Books.

Look For The Tail - Squirrel Pictures

As far as the “cheapest/best” way to take classes online, these two classes have helped me, but in my younger years, I preferred going to an actual college class, where I could use hands-on tools and get feedback from a real, live person, the teacher or professor.

But that way of learning seems to be disappearing, as now most classes are computer-driven. I have a BA in elementary education and just under 100 credits in art classes from LCC. 

Girl in the Green Hat" (done for Mark Mitchell's online class)

Old Bee

Skateboard Race in Town

Modern Day Squirrel Deterrents

The economics of the times may call for online classes, but do your research to know which ones will benefit you the most. And then, in my case, this orchard definitely keeps my whole body involved and sometimes overwhelmed at finishing an art project.
 

What’s next for Virginia Rinkel?
Good question. I remember a sign I hung in my kitchen many years ago. It said, “Bloom Where You’re Planted.” I’ve tried to follow that advice in general, and also live by a motto, “Be kind and be a helper. ”
 

I’ve been working on making at least one watercolor picture for each of our 7 grandkids depicting something they loved doing or helping out with. Here’s a couple I finished last year for their Christmas presents. In the picture of the 3 kids, the oldest granddaughter received that picture, and holding the dolphin picture was given to that granddaughter who loved her job at Gulf World in Panama City, FL. She is now at another job caring for giraffes and hippo’s at the Milwaukee, Wisconsin Zoo.
 

Life is short and I will continue doing the things I love; learning, drawing, painting and taking care of trees for as long as I’m able.
 

Please include any social media:
FB : https://www.facebook.com/virginia.rinkel1/ 

Virginia's website: Virginia Rinkel
 

Another recent interview with Ginger:

More chestnut-related story:

An example of my type of work with cartoons

A New Generation of Storytellers! By Isabel Estrada O’Hagin

On Wednesday, May 13, I had the honor of being the featured author at the 39th Young Writers Day coordinated by the Heritage Southwest Intermediate School District held at the beautiful campus of Southwestern Michigan College in Cass County. The program included an illustrator, Aaron Zenk, and storyteller, Kevin Kammerad.   

“The purpose of Young Writers Day is to enhance and motivate elementary students to write.”

HSISD directs this fine celebration of student writing both by exhibiting literally hundreds of student works, and by introducing children to published authors and illustrators, as well as leading storytellers. The program is open to 2nd through 5th grades, and each participating student must submit a book for display.

Teachers from four different school districts brought fifteen students per grade level per school system. Each of the grade level groups, 2^nd-3^rd and 4^th-5^th, rotated between the three sessions: writing, storytelling, and illustration, in addition to two breaks and lunch.

After a quick plot summary of my picture book, LA MARIACHI (illustrated by Addy Sonda Rivera), I shared the inspiration that led to my manuscript and talked about my background and writing process. I emphasized the idea of connecting your passion with the heart of your story.  To get them started, I encouraged students to draw on their own life experiences using a template: What Do You Bring to the Picture, inspired by Linda Sue Park’s concept of what a writer brings to the table. After identifying their strengths, interests, and unique traits, I encouraged students to build on those traits combined with their imaginations to create a Story Spine (Leslie Helakoski)—one of the fundamental building blocks to writing a story. First, we created a story as a group, and then students were given time to work on their individual stories and were encouraged to discuss their story ideas with their peers. The Young Writers were engaged and involved throughout the process—an exciting opportunity for all.

A marvelous aspect of the Young Writers Day involves students preparing their own manuscripts and sharing them with their peers. The schedule allows breaks for students to peruse the manuscripts and books written by their peers. Last year, students asked for more time to read each other’s books, and this year’s schedule reflected that change. How awesome is that? Student-created works were on display before the event, during two fifteen-minute breaks, and during the lunch break. Lowry’s Books also offered books for sale.

Let me tell you—after I perused the fourth & fifth-grade book displays, I joked with their teachers that I would never write again. The students’ stories were fabulous with creative titles, exciting characters, pages full of driving action moving the plot forward, and eye-catching book covers and illustrations. Some students even had their books hardbound at a print shop! Other students included a comments page where readers (their fan base) could share a like. All were positive and supportive.

Author visits are typically filled with memorable moments. . . I glanced at a fourth-grader’s What Do You Bring to the Picture? worksheet where she’d written two sentences: I am a queen.  I am funny. The second part of the writing task was to use the Story Spine as a springboard for their story. This part was left blank. I walked around the hall and came back. The queen was stumped.

I asked, “What does the queen want?” I waited. When she didn’t respond, I made a suggestion by saying something like: “You wrote that you were funny. If I were the queen at this court, I might want everyone to laugh at my jokes and order them to do so.” Immediately, she sat up and with imperial flare gazed down at me. “No, you can’t do that. I’m the queen, and I decide what happens in my court.”

“Yes, I replied. “It’s your queendom after all.”  The Queen’s POV? Covered.

Another awesome memory: After my presentation, students lined up for my autograph—totally unexpected. I’ve signed books at book launches and book festivals, but not at an event like this. After I signed his folder, one boy told me: “This is great. I have Raul the Third’s autograph, and now I have yours.”  Wow! My name in the same sentence as Raul the Third! What fun to feel like a school celebrity!

Other SCBWI members have presented at this event in past years such as Leslie Helakoski, Kat Higgs-Coulthard, Lori Eslick, and LaurieKeller. I’m sure there are others! Please add your name to this list in the comments section.

Final thoughts:

Like Lisa Cron, I believe that we are wired for story and have been since the beginning of time. Story is what keeps us alive and keeps us going. My experience left me with hope that the next generation will value human-based stories. Young writers are writing their own stories and young illustrators are illustrating, and I can’t wait to read them!

 “The best stories are those that come from the heart.” - Kate DiCamillo

Isabel grew up in the desert borderlands of Arizona, dancing and singing her way through life. Always a dreamer, she blends her life experiences as a performing arts educator with her love of Mexican-American culture & folklore into stories. When she’s not writing, she loves to dance, cook, read, daydream, and play with her two gatitos, Dante and Cosmo. She also loves her volunteer work for SCBWI-Michigan as Outreach Coordinator and K.A.S.T. Co-Coordinator (A shout-out to my KAST friends—Where everyone’s a star!)  LA MARIACHI is her debut storybook! Isabel would like to remind everyone that her author name is Isabel Estrada.

 

Book Birthday Blog with Darren Cools

 

Welcome to SCBWI-MI's Book Birthday Blog!

Where we celebrate new books from Michigan's authors, illustrators and translators.

 

Congratulations to Darren Cools on the release of Light in the Canyon

 

 

How did you come up with the idea for your book?

Around 2015 I was flipping through an old notebook and found an entry from when I was 15 years old. It describes a dream I had just awoken from: I opened my teenage eyes to discover I’d become a girl overnight. In this dream I was distraught, exhilarated, and utterly preoccupied with a sense of dread about what might happen when I encountered parents, siblings, friends. My 30-something year-old self, reading this forgotten old diary scrawl with fresh eyes, felt there was something intriguing here, something I might want to touch on in a story someday.

In 2016 I completed a century ride. 100 miles in one day on a bicycle. I didn’t bring headphones — a fortunate oversight, it turns out. While riding my bike around Puget Sound all alone, from Seattle to Bremerton, I crafted (in my head) the rough plot of what eventually became Light in the Canyon. It took me another five years and a move across the country to actually sit down and write the book, but it progressed quickly once I really got going.

 

 

What is something you hope your readers will take away from your book?

I find the strict division of gender roles, interests, and self-expression a bit mystifying. Aren’t we all human, first, after all? Simply living in open, generous community together as fellow humans with all our various interests, hopes, desires, and inclinations is, to me, the basis of our interconnectedness. Not so much how we’re ‘allowed’ to behave or what we’re supposed to do and not do based on some rigid notion of what’s correct for ‘our kind’. I’m oversimplifying. But I try to explore these ideas in a respectful, thoughtful way in my book. I also talk about forgiveness. Of letting go of anger, even if that means losing ourselves a bit. A lot of young adult novels out there right now focus on justice, often through violence and vengeance, and I get that there’s a place for that narrative. But I’m trying to do something very different.

I hope there are people of all ages (but especially young people) out there who might experience something of the same excitement I would’ve felt if I’d found this particular story during my own complicated, internally turbulent teen years. My book is about a lot of challenging things: identity, accepting oneself, daring to say ‘yes’. It was written for young me, but it’s for everyone who feels they’re on the outside or who don’t quite fit in. It’s for those who wonder about what happens when science and magic get all mixed up. It’s for all who delight in the unusual and the unexpected.

What was the most difficult part of writing this book?

Being brave enough to tackle the parts of the plot that deal with gender head on. Those moments are some of my favorite scenes in the book, but it was difficult to get them just right. To really say what I meant to say.

What inspires you to write/illustrate?

I’m a silly, old-fashioned person. One of my absolute heroes is Edward Gorey. I love his absurd, dark, wistfully funny vibes. I’m transported by ghost stories, cloudy skies, long road trips, tall brick apartment buildings, cluttered bookstores, the sound of a Meadowlark. I’m deeply inspired by amazing women (men, too!). I wish I could be Joan of Arc or Ellington Feint or Matilda — but I’m entirely unwilling to suffer as much as they had to! There’s nothing more compelling to me than a smart, fierce, quietly incredible woman who is too brave and honest to accept things as they are — or a man who flips everything on its head because he cares about the wellbeing of children and clean dishes and isn’t afraid of others witnessing his tears over something beautiful.  

What's next for you and where can we find your book?

I’m working on a solarpunk trilogy, a series of YA novels about a near-future world suffering from rapidly accelerating climate change and political issues. I’m also developing a stand-alone YA novel about growing up in the endless, empty wheat fields of eastern Washington State, and a graphic novel about a secret island and a message in a bottle, set on Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula. I dream of achieving just enough success to keep writing and publishing for the rest of my life. (What author doesn’t?) I’m about halfway through it already (my life), so I feel it’s a reasonable ask, haha! 

People can order from any independent bookstore, and if they're willing to suggest that the store stock my book (as opposed to just ordering a single one for themselves), that would be wonderful.

If folks want to order online, here are some places to find it:

IndieBound (Bookshop.org) 

Hudson Booksellers 

Barnes & Noble 

Amazon 

Walmart 

More about the book . . . 

A year has passed since Halley’s mom died, but she still feels like she’s falling to pieces. Dad talks her into joining him at her uncle Gill’s house for yet another homemade science experiment (something to do with black holes and cosmic rays), but to their horror, his machine explodes in a flash of blue light.

Jamie finds himself increasingly isolated now that his brother Ash left for college—not long after his father left for forever. Out for a walk, he’s thinking about the book that Raina, the neighborhood librarian, gave him when there’s a sudden explosion down the street…

A few houses away, the blast hits Raina too. She’s joined by Halley’s dad, who can’t find his daughter—or his brother. Their search leads them first to Gill’s wrecked machine, then to a secluded farmhouse where a young girl died many years ago.

This astonishing debut novel for young adults and readers of all ages—in the spirit of beloved writers like Madeleine L’Engle and Maile Meloy—is by turns chilling, tender, and profound. A story of loss and courage, Light in the Canyon explores how change can help us discover who we’re truly meant to be. 

Published by: Slant Books https://slantbooks.org/ 

More about the author/illustrator . . . 

Darren is an author, illustrator, and designer. When he’s not writing or working, he likes to spend time outside running, biking, or relaxing with friends around a campfire. His home is in Michigan with his wife Anna and their three children (and two cats). 

X https://x.com/darrencools 

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/d.j.cools 

Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/darrencools.bsky.social 

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrencools/