Childhood visits inspire artist’s book Aunt’s independence molded young girl

When she was a girl, Heather Austin, her sister and parents made annual trips to visit the girls’ Aunt Sylvia in her remote cabin on the other side of the state. It was always fall when they arrived, and the girls would help Aunt Sylvia harvest wild grapes and cut firewood. At night, they listened to piano music or rolled out crust for apple pies baked in an old, roaring cook stove.

Sylvia wasn’t really the girls’ aunt but she treated them like family, and her rustic, independent life was fascinating enough that when the girls got older, they visited her throughout the year.

And that’s how Austin, an artist and art teacher, got the idea for a new children’s book, “Visiting Aunt Sylvia’s,” published by Down East Books.

Austin, who now has a family of her own and lives in Orrington, studied art at Bangor High School and graduated from Gould Academy in Bethel. After high school, she went to Rhode Island School of Design and, as one of her projects, began sketching the outline for a children’s book she hoped to write and illustrate.

“I went back to my childhood and thought about things we had done as a family,” said Austin, who also teaches art in the elementary schools in Eddington and Holden. “The things you write about best are the things you’ve done. Sylvia always intrigued my sister and me as children because she is somewhat of a hippie living in the woods alone. She was strong and she was a lot of fun. She impressed me and made an impression on me.”

The book follows a young girl and her younger brother Toby – Austin turned her sister into a boy to make the story broader in its appeal and, she says, her sister was always something of a tomboy anyway – as they go through the seasons making visits with their parents to Aunt Sylvia.

Unlike “Miss Rumphius,” Barbara Cooney’s tale of an independent Maine woman, “Visiting Aunt Sylvia’s” doesn’t focus on character development. It also has no real plot. Nor does it present a conflict to be resolved or issues to be addressed. Instead, it is a tender extended family connection framed by Austin’s meticulous watercolor paintings of an idyllic setting. Right down to pigtails and cats chasing bugs in the garden, the story has a penetrating simplicity.

For Austin, “Visiting Aunt Sylvia’s” is as much about growing up with a little help from mentors as it is about growing up in Maine.

“I think it’s important for children to have someone to look up to,” said Austin. “This isn’t somebody who’s trying to be a parent or teach any lessons. It’s more about what they role model rather than that they coach you. It’s not an intentional influence.”

Sylvia Harrington, the real Aunt Sylvia, a retired secretary in Bethel, is someone Austin recognized early as unique. Her portrayal is indistinct – her face is often covered by a hat or turned away from the reader’s eye – but her role is mythically familiar: She is the older woman who speaks deep into the life of a little girl.

“I am so impressed,” said Harrington, whose house and property are the setting for the book. “I choke up every time I read what Heather has done. Years ago, I had a woman friend I looked up to and she meant the world to me.”

And now, Harrington knows, she is the woman the young Austin looked up to.

With the book, Austin hopes to transmit some of the same inspiration that was given to her as a child.

“I hope when children read it that they will feel supported in their own creativity,” said Austin. “They can imitate what’s in the book or compare it to their own traditions and memories, and treasure them. I want them to feel they do live in a unique place that is special.”

Maine, after all, has been a special place to Austin. She never doubted when she went away to school and to France, where she studied art, that she would return to her home state. Like Aunt Sylvia, her own back yard offered her sensibilities she couldn’t find elsewhere.

“I came back because of a combination of family and a sense of history and place and inspiration,” said Austin.

Heather Austin will sign copies of “Visiting Aunt Sylvia’s” at 11 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 30, at Briar Patch in Bangor, noon-1 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 7, at Bookstacks in Bucksport, and 5-7 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 7, at Books n’ Things in Bethel.