The Mitten: 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.

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.

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.

July 2026 banner: Watercolor on cold-press watercolor paper

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

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.