Willits  Ann Maglinte in costume as author/illustrator Tasha Tudor.(Judi Berdis/Courtesy)
Willits Ann Maglinte in costume as author/illustrator Tasha Tudor. (Judi Berdis/Courtesy) (The Willits News)

Willits' Ann Maglinte says she has been drawn to author/illustrator Tasha Tudor's art since she was a child and was given the book, Mr. Stubbs, in 1956. It featured a tiger cat, and Maglinte says she's "sure it influenced me: I have three tiger cats as pets."

Maglinte is one of six north county women portraying notable women during National Women's History Month. They're taking their characters into Willits and Laytonville school classrooms between March 4 and March 20 as part of the Willits branch of the American Association of University Women's 2013 Women's History Project.

The History Project's characters may be seen at the Mendocino County Museum on Thursday, March 21, at 6:30 p.m. during a donation fundraiser for AAUW's Tech Trek project.

Ann Maglinte s Willits home.(Ann Maglinte/Courtesy)
Ann Maglinte s Willits home. (Ann Maglinte/Courtesy) (The Willits News)
The project sends two seventh-grade girls to Stanford or another California university for a week-long science and math camp to inspire girls to consider careers in these areas.

Four of the characters will be featured on Willits Public Access TV Channel 3 in half-hour segments during March, and later this spring.

"Most of the time it seems we tend to take what life has given us and do our best to work within the parameters of 'what is,'" Maglinte says. "Tasha Tudor never did that."

Born with a great imagination and a gift for storytelling, as her father was, Tudor knew if she could only imagine the world she wanted to live in, she could make it come true.

She lived her life as if it was the 1830s, dividing her time between running her farm, and writing and illustrating books.

Born in 1915 in Boston, Massachusetts, Tudor's father, William Stanley Burgess, was an inventor and designer. He designed yachts, several of which won America's Cup races. Her mother, Rosamund Tudor, was a well- known portrait painter, and the young woman learned to draw by watching her. She also shared her love for gardening with her daughter.

Tudor grew up in the middle of Boston society. Her great-grandfather--known as "Crazy Tudor, the Ice King"--made his fortune by harvesting ice in the winter from the New England ponds, and shipping it by boat all over the world so people could keep their food cold. But by the time Tudor was born, most of the family money was gone. Still her parents were well connected, and many famous people visited the Tudor home: Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oscar Wilde, Louisa May Alcott, Alexander Graham Bell, Albert Einstein and Henry David Thoreau.

Tudor's favorite quotation was from Thoreau: "If one advanced confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."

Tudor dressed and lived as if she was in the 19th century, which may have seemed odd to many but made perfect sense to her. Since childhood, Tudor had felt she was born in the wrong century. She "knew" that in a past life she had been born in 1830, lived on a farm, and was the wife of a sea captain. As a child, other children teased her because she refused to cut her hair and wore vintage clothing.

Before leaving school in the eighth grade, Tudor carried a sketchbook with her to the classroom, spending more time drawing in the borders of her school books than doing math. After her parents divorced, she went to live with family friends, where she was free to run wild in the woods, dance and put on plays.

She made costumes and dolls, and read stories illustrated by Beatrix Potter, Walter Crane, Edmund Dulac and Arthur Rackham. These were artists that would inspire her illustrations.

In 1938, she married at age 23. She and husband Thomas had little in common. The couple moved to her mother's farm, even though he wanted to live in New York City. They raised goats, sold the milk, and had four children together.

They needed more money to live, so Tudor wrote and illustrated a book, Pumpkin Moonshine. No publisher was interested until she went to Oxford Books, which agreed to publish it, and published 21 of her books over the next 21 years.

The couple wanted their own place, and found it in a 17-room home built in the 1740s on 450 acres; Tudor's illustrations for Mother Goose helped pay for the farm.

The house was cold and drafty, and needed a lot of work. Her husband was unhappy; he didn't like the hard life of a farmer. So Tudor ended up doing all the farm chores, as well as taking care of the children and the farm's animals. Her evenings were spent painting her illustrations by candlelight to pay the bills.

The family lived without benefit of electricity, indoor plumbing, a telephone or running water. Tudor washed all their clothes by hand, made her own bread, sewed the family's clothes, and grew their food. But it was the lifestyle she wanted.

The marriage ended in divorce in 1959.

"I always felt the best gift I could give my children was a childhood full of happy memories," she said. "Besides work, our lives were filled with doll tea parties, marionette shows, birthdays, and seasonal celebrations, especially at Christmas.

"But when my children grew up and moved away I knew it was time for me to create my own fantasy world."

In 1964 Tudor's son, Seth, built her a farmhouse, Corgi Cottage, in Vermont, next to his home, without using power tools. Her son, Thomas, did the roofing.

She lived alone with her goats, Corgi dogs and tiger-striped cat, chickens, and acres of gardens. Her days were spent growing her food, tending the gardens, taking care of sheep, spinning, sewing and cooking. She pumped her own water.

After dinner, or in the winter, she would sit at the end of her kitchen table to sketch and paint. The top of the table was littered with moss and plants, flowers, and perhaps a mouse or a frog in an open jar with grass and rocks--captives for a few hours.

Tudor drew from life, never using photographs, keeping a family of mice in a cage to use as models. She also had a pet snake that would curl up in her hand while she read.

She used her children as models in all her books. While loving to paint in watercolor, the main reason Tudor illustrated so many books, she said, was "to earn a living and put food on the table."

She cooked on a wood stove and made soup in a large kettle hung in the fireplace. Meals were served on antique china: "things are meant to be used, not saved," Tudor believed.

People were drawn to the old-fashioned charm of her illustrations. Parents read her books as children, then shared them with their children. Many more read the books written about her life, her heirloom crafts, cooking and gardening.

During her lifetime, Tudor traveled all over the United States, giving talks and sharing her story. She was honored with two Caldecott Honor books, and won the Regina award for children's fiction.

She wrote and illustrated more 100 books and cards before dying in 2008 at age 92.

"Like Tasha," Maglinte says, "I have always felt like I was born in the wrong century, but I did not have the wherewithal to remove myself from the 20th century world. When I was in college I realized that in order to be happy in this century I wanted to live in an old house, preferably Victorian- or Tudor-inspired."

Maglinte collected books on alternative lifestyles, and how things were done in the 1800s. "When my husband, Jon and I moved to Willits," she says, "we decided to build a home that looked like it was from the past, and was filled with antiques, with nothing modern. We had no electricity, no phone, and our water came from our creek.

"Most people who come to visit our home think our home is much older than it is; that was my goal," she says. "I love to wear antique clothing, to sew and cook, and have made many dolls for my daughters. We have several flower, herb, and vegetable gardens.

"We do not have farm animals," she concedes, "but maybe someday we will."

In the 1980s Maglinte provided illustrations and maps for Teresa Edgerton's fantasy books, published by Ace Books. Currently, she is illustrating a series of children's books for Diane Smalley and another book for Jed Diamond.

Like Tudor, Maglinte started illustrating books "when I was a child, in watercolor and pen-and-ink. My dream has always been to be a children's book illustrator."

She has "always been inspired by Tasha's artwork, and in comparing her story to mine I have seen several parallels in our lives.

"I wish very much that I had had the opportunity to meet her, and am honored to be able to portray her."