Creativity is the essence of individuality; doing what has not been done before defines the individual.  Team work, the antithesis of individuality, undeniably yields strength and builds critical bonds.  But a team player who does what has always been done is just another cog.  In our current society, standing alone and secure is as important as being a team player.  True leaders evolve from the team player who is creative.
      On Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SAT), both verbal and math scores increase for students with more arts coursework/experience.  The more years of arts study, the higher their score.  And this is true for every form of arts experience: theater, music, photography, and design (source: The College Board, 1993 Profile of SAT and Achievement Tests).  And yet, studies show that creative talent all but disappears between ages 8 or 9, and the end of the teens.  Where does it go?  How do a few people hold on to that talent when so many misplace it? 
       Art is an expression of creativity.  Not just art as paintings or sculptures, but art as process and under standing -- evaluating more the function than the beauty of a work. 
      "Function!", you say?  "Art is not function!" 
       But, I contend it is.  Good art, whether watercolor, twisted steel, novel, or a well made pair of shoes evokes from the viewer/owner a similar mixture of emotions.  Emotions that speak between the creator and the observer.
       Every person is an artist; from the one who says, "I can't draw a straight line with a ruler" to the next Michelangelo.  The characters Ceebee and Tiller represent the artist in all of us, balancing the worlds of individuality and creativity with team and family.  The Adventures of the Crossbill and the Vole journeys along that edge of balance, and does it for readers age 8-14 and their parents. 
 

     Ceebee is young, curious, and willing to adventure.  But his curiosity is thwarted by his flock.  His community of crossbills finds danger in differences, whether the color of feathers or the willingness to explore.
     An elder bird of a different flock seems to know so much more than Ceebee and wants to know even more.  This bird, wise, aging Whistler, imparts to Ceebee only a very little of his adventurousness and enthusiasm and love of learning, but it is enough to start the younger bird on a journey, seeking more than his staid, conservative flock will accept. 
     Tiller is an artist in a world of artists.  The question, "What is art?", has never entered Tiller's mind.  In Voledom, art just is.
Tiller, a vole (a small mouse-like creature), knows in his heart that art is more than paintings on the wall, or a few limited, obscure sculptors and their works.  But never has he had to explain that art is an everyday phenomenon in which anyone can participate.  And act which can bring a greater value to life and meaning to all souls.
      Ceebee and Tiller are forced together by a flash flood.  They follow a river, sharing the adventures of exploring new civilizations.  In the lizard Queendom, Ceebee's power of flight is feared by some.  He is at first deified, then feared for this same innate ability.  He is jailed.  A marauding band of snakes prepares to invade the lizards' homeland.  Tiller uses his artistic skills to free Ceebee who spies from overhead, then drives off the invaders with aerial bombs.  When Tiller breaks Ceebee out of jail (with the help of a friendly lizard), the bird leaps out and flies, swooping and diving, free in the air.  Tiller sees the art in the flying, Ceebee realizes the value of his freedom.  In jail, safe and secure from any threats,  Ceebee has learned that "security" is a figment.  Finally, in driving off the marauders, Ceebee becomes the lizards' hero where he had been their enemy. 
      But more adventures await.  Together on their rebuilt raft, the vole and crossbill drift on to a second civilization.  A wise raccoon, Rembrandt, is sought by the pair, who have but one question on their minds:  "Art?  Art?!  'What isss art?', ask you?  Know I what art is?  Of course do I, of course.  Loook 'ere.  Art is t'is paart of t'is sculptoor, art is t'is part of t'is paintink, and art is t'is paart of t'is caab'net.  And 'ere.  See?  'ere, right in t'is corner joint 'ere, where t' builder toiled wid love in her heart and t'at love came through her chisels.  She cut and mortised, she did, and shaved and cut some more till the fit waar jus' perfect wit'out a fibre oot of place, wit'out a gap 'tween one part and t'other."
      Surprisingly, Tiller and Ceebee have met Rembrandt in a civilization where there is no creativity.  According to the rabbits and squirrels on the island Cristo, the Master of the Mountain, Rembrandt Raccoon, has stolen all of it.  The civilization is in ruins, everyone sad.  But at the Master's, there is art everywhere.  Paintings on every wall, inside and out.  Even the walls them selves are carved and shaped into scenes of the island.  Giant sculptures are on the lawn -- the lawn itself weedless and cut into designs, shaved into patches of different shades of green, sculpted into green snakes. 
      "Stoolen it, they say?!!  Stoolen creativity?"  Rembrandt's voice rises in shrill tones.
      "Stoolen art?  Nononononononono and no.  Say that once more I do.  No!  'Twasn't I nor anyone stoolen their art.  They loost it theyselves." 
       Rembrandt tells a story about a civilization that was once great, many artists, beautiful homes, bridges that spanned a thousand miles to the edge of sunrise.
      "What happened?" asks Tiller, Ceebee's eyes cocked, asking the same question.
      "They loost it theyselfs, that what they did.  Thar wus a war.  A warse war as anyone's ever seen, 'twas.   During the war, and afterward, someone's art spake the story of war, then anoother's the story of loss, then anoother the story of death; still anoother, motherlessness.  Unbaar'ble it becoome, so unbaar'ble the magistrates legislated what art could and could not be.  Then warse, they begun to tell wot the artists could say and wot subjects they could put in their art.  'Stead of cheerin' everyoone up as 'twas planned, things got warse, they did, and thar freedom waar loost.  Wid controls on t'eir creativity, t' creators stopped creatin', did they.  T' followers no longer had anyone to follow.
      "A city needs creativity to survive, it do.  We needed creativity, yes, we needed artistic artists and engineers and teachers and carpenters and masons and more.  For wit'out those, a civilization no can thrive.  For wit'out creativity, I still be doing as me parents dood, and they as thaars.  We all be still no diffr'nt from our ancestoors, ten t'ousand years ago."
     Rembrandt's tale strikes the two hard, but especially Tiller.  He can not bare to think that creativity can have controls placed on it, nor that the citizens of Cristo have lost it completely.  He and Ceebee and Rembrandt devise a plan to restore art and creativity to the island.

The two, Ceebee and Tiller, never do return to their true home in the meadow.  At the end of the book they board their raft and head downstream, unknown adventures awaiting them, perhaps to be told in the next book.

                                            good adventures to you,
                                            Scott Campbell Reuman           BACK TO TOP