Duo brings otter to life

By Lisa Kaczke | The Daily Journal

Published 12:00 p.m., October 26, 2009

Creating the children’s book “Ollie’s Otter Tail River Adventure” was a new challenge for both author Tim Rundquist and illustrator Todd Ouren.

The book was published by Otter Tail Power as part of its celebration of 100 years as an operating electric utility.

The story, featuring the company’s mascot “Ollie the Otter” was written at an early-elementary reading level and documents Ollie’s journey to the head of the Otter Tail River. Throughout the book, Ollie stops at locations where he can pay it forward, the anniversary theme of Otter Tail Power.

After two novels and three literary anthologies, this is local author Rundquist’s first time trying his hand at writing a children’s book.

The first draft of the book took him a couple of days to write, less time than it does to write a novel, with several revisions after, he said Friday while at a book signing at The Victor Lundeen Company.

He said he found writing the book to be fun and also liberating to imagine an otter on an adventure.

Rundquist was selected as the author through an Otter Tail Power sponsored contest to write a book with the requirement of using Ollie the Otter as a character.

Ouren, formerly of Erhard and now of north Mankato, said he aimed to create fun, colorful illustrations for the book in a new style he hasn’t tried before.

Ouren said he has illustrated for more than 100 books, mostly nonfiction books such as counting or color books.

Otter Tail Power allowed him full artistic freedom with the illustrations — allowing him to create drawings that were more “funky” than he typically does, he said. Usually an illustrator is restricted by the publisher, he noted.

To help him imagine what Ollie the Otter’s adventure was like, Ouren took a road trip to visit all the places the otter goes in the book. At each place, he took pictures that he could reference as he was illustrating.

To mark the official launch of Otter Tail Company’s book tour, Rundquist, Ouren and Ollie the Otter visited area elementary schools Thursday and Friday.

Before the book signing Friday afternoon, they had completed six presentations on the book and answered a lot of fun questions, Rundquist said. In addition to questions about how they came up with the story, they also answered general questions about otters — including what otters eat and what eats otters, they said.

Also as a part of the book launch, Otter Tail Power donated the book to 400 elementary schools with company employees or retirees reading the book in as many schools as possible.

---

WOULD YOU LIKE TO SHARE THIS STORY?

---