Peaks Island children’s book author/illustrator Scott Nash delights Swan’s Island schoolchildren with tales about Captain Blue Jay and the pirate birds featured in his current book in the works.—STAFF PHOTO BY OKA HUTCHINS

SWAN’S ISLAND — Scott Nash recently set out over the ocean blue with a band of pirate birds and crime-fighting stuffed animals. The Maine children’s illustrator and author was bound for Swan’s Island and Frenchboro, where he visited the island schools as a guest of the Island Readers & Writers program founded by a Mount Desert Island book shop five years ago.

“I love this sort of thing. You can’t beat the experience, the adventure. Who’d have thunk it, we took a lobster boat, a tour boat and a ferry — it’s great,” Nash, who makes his home on Peaks Island in Casco Bay. “One of the sides I didn’t really count on was that it is very inspirational. Especially with the younger kids, we have shared interests and speak the same language. The program is just terrific.”

Jan Coates, proprietor of Port in a Storm Bookstore in the Mount Desert village of Somesville, began the Readers & Writers program to connect island children with authors and illustrators in their own environment.

Coates accompanied Nash, the author/illustrator of “Tuff Fluff: The Case of Duckie’s Missing Brain,” and his wife, Nancy Gibson Nash, a collage artist, on their island adventure. As soon as Nash, arrived at the Swan’s Island Elementary School, the children were captivated by his easy manner and engaging, open dialogue.

“The best thing about being an illustrator is that you get to draw something ridiculous,” he told the children, who laughed and leaned forward in their seats.

“He has a particular talent in connecting with children,” Coates observed. “His own work is more whimsical than others that we’ve brought — he works in a child’s world day in and day out.”

As part of the program, each child received a copy of “Tuff Fluff.” His latest children’s book is about a stuffed bunny private eye with an eye patch. The author told the schoolchildren that the story was inspired by a favorite stuffed animal — a talking Bugs Bunny with a missing eye — from his childhood. He asked the children about their favorite stuffed animals, and had them in stitches when he told them about his.

“As much as you love your stuffed animal, sometimes you need to use it to defend yourself,” Nash said, describing a fight in which he targeted his brother with his precious Bugs Bunny. “He had these big beautiful plastic eyes and one of them just shattered into a million pieces.”

“Stories that were important when I was a kid are still important now,” he told the children, describing his childhood love of pirates and birds.

Nash is now combining those loves in a tale of adventure on the high seas centering on Captain Blue Jay. “He decided to get out of the Navy and become a pirate — it’s a long story,” the author told the children gathered closely around him, resting their hands on his shoulder and peering into his black bound sketchbook.

Within the pages of that sketchbook were dozens of pen-and-ink sketches of the pirate birds. Done with an old-fashioned quill, the sketches evoke a sense of seafaring history and old ornithology books at the same time. The birds travel aboard an air ship that has birdlike feet and several unusual sails. “And so it turns into this whole world,” Nash explained.

He demonstrated several drawing exercises, sharing a quick trick to draw faces of characters at different ages.

“My favorite was when he drew the little faces. I like how he drew the hair and the eyes,” said Swan’s Island student Emily Banks, who likes to draw “mermaids and flying bugs.”

For the older children, Nash showed a video sample of some of his animation and logo work. His former production company, Big Blue Dot, designed many of the Nickelodeon children’s network logos and shorts.

“I do a ridiculous amount of things — I am a children’s book author. I have a studio, do animated shows and puppet-based shows, make Web-based products for kids,” said Nash, who has worked in toy development as well. “I’ve been able to do a lot of things in my career,” he told the students.

Nash was as impressed with the island children as they were enthralled with him. “The island kids are centered, energetic, intelligent and inquisitive about what we are doing,” he noted.

That’s exactly what Readers & Writers was designed to do.

The program “nourishes and nurtures that kind of creativity in a child,” Coates said. “They can write, draw the stories within.”

The program, which connects writers and illustrators with island children at least twice a year, is funded by the Port in a Storm Bookstore, the Cabot Charitable Family Trust and the Virginia Wellington Cabot Foundation.

“Each time we’ve done it,” Coates said, “we’ve learned a little bit more.”

Guest artists have included authors and illustrators Jeannie Brett and Chris Van Dusen who, since their initial island visits, have become more involved in the program, contributing illustrations for its literature and doing additional programs for the children.

When asked if he’d come back for an extended visit, Nash didn’t hesitate.

“Sign me up,” he said. “I’d do it in a second.”