When author Maya Jewell Zeller needed an artist to illustrate her enchanting book, The Wonder of Mushrooms: The Mysterious World of Fungi, her publisher turned to middle school art teacher, Jenny deFouw Geuder, to bring the visuals to the book’s pages. Science and beauty intertwine as the pages fill with the incredible variety of fungi in all shapes, sizes, colors.
“This was such a fun book to work on,” Geuder says. “It was amazing to me how much I learned. Going into this, I wasn’t what I would call a mushroom person.”
By the end of the project, however, Geuder was an expert, illustrating in vibrant watercolor a wide range of the 150,000 species of mushrooms. Less a field guide than a poetic and lyrical appreciation of fungi, the book introduces the reader to fungi features of spores, caps, pores, gills, webs, along with the history and needed environment for mushrooms to flourish.
“It was such an interesting journey of researching and trying to show off each little mushroom,” Geuder says. “The names of mushrooms are so fun, too.”
The author names just a few whimsical mushrooms: Black Jelly Roll, Devil’s Snuff Box, Dog Nose Fungus, Fairy Bonnet, King Alfred’s Cakes, Pigskin Poison Puffball, Vomiter, Witches Butter, and more.
Jenny deFouw Geuder is an award-winning author and illustrator of books including Drawn to Birds and Nature Explorer. Her book, A Naturalist’s Sketchbook, won the National Book Award for Artistic Design in 2023. She has been a beloved middle-school art teacher in Michigan for 20 years. Geuder is a resident of Hamilton, Michigan.
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