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Camden author Chris Van Dusen got the idea for his latest children's book while reading the website of the Harvard University Center for the Environment.
It's perhaps not the first place you'd expect the author of the picture books "Down to the Sea with Mr. Magee" and "King Hugo's Huge Ego" to find inspiration.
But what caught Van Dusen's imagination was a couple sentences about the construction of wind turbines on Vinalhaven island in 2009. One of the giant trucks carrying turbine parts slipped off the pavement, clogging summertime traffic on the island's only north-south road. Traffic backed up in both directions as workers estimated it would take hours to move the massive truck using a crane. But instead of just sitting there, fuming about the appointments or ferries they were going to miss, the islanders started swapping cars. People heading north took cars stuck north of the truck, and visa versa.
"It just seemed to me to be such a display of trust and a very ingenious way to handle the situation," said Van Dusen, 62. "It seemed like something that could only happen on an island. I thought it might really resonate with kids, especially today, about how we can all work together to get past roadblocks, literally."
Van Dusen turned the car-swapping incident into a rhyming children's book called "Big Truck, Little Island" (Candlewick Press), which went on sale in early May.
It's the 11th picture book Van Dusen has written and illustrated, and the second to be based on events tied to Vinalhaven. His 2009 book "The Circus Ship" was about a boat full of animals who end up on a Maine island after a shipwreck. That book was based on the sinking of the Royal Tar, a steamboat carrying passengers and circus animals that burst into flames off Vinalhaven in 1836. Most of the animals died though some people say a few swam to nearby islands.
As with "The Circus Ship," Van Dusen took the basic idea for "Big Truck, Little Island" from something he'd read, but tweaked it to make it more relatable and interesting to young readers. The truck in his story is not carrying a wind turbine, for instance. But the kid-friendly cargo Van Dusen came up...