Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

 
I want to take a break from your more traditional picture books and spotlight a 3D book today — and a French import. The Acrobat Family (Little Gestalten, November 2019) — a book shaped a lot like a circus tent, when opened — is from French pop-up artists Anouck Boisrobert and Louis Rigaud. (Boisrobert works in watercolors, and Rigaud works as a graphic designer. Both graduated from the School of Decorativ Arts in Strasbourg.)

“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to the circus!” the book opens. Stage curtains, drawn to each side of this spread, reveal the book’s title and opening text. Peering out from the curtains are the members of the Acrobat Family. Turn the page for the first act, featuring Miss Prune. (She is pictured above. As you can see, she is a badass and has “biceps shaped like moons.”) Read the rest of this entry �

 
I’m sending you to the Horn Book’s site today for a review I wrote of Julie Falatko’s very funny The Great Indoors (Disney-Hyperion, April 2019), illustrated by Ruth Chan. The review is here.

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Arthur Geisert’s latest book, Pumpkin Island (Enchanted Lion, October 2018), is set in the very place the author-illustrator calls home — Elkader, a small city in northeast Iowa. In this story, a storm arrives, sweeping a pumpkin down the river. After it breaks into pieces and arrives on a small island, the seeds sprout, vines stretch, and before anyone knows it, the vines have stretched across the bridge and into town — and pumpkins begin to appear everywhere.

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Over here at Kirkus at the tail end of last year, I wrote briefly (in my 2017 Children’s Book Ghost File) about The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine by Mark Twain and Philip Stead with illustrations by Erin Stead. You can head over there to read what I wrote, if you’re so inclined, but it boils down to this: What a remarkable achievement this book is. And what an entertaining story.

I also mentioned the exquisite illustrations by Erin. Today, I am getting out of the way and handing 7-Imp over to her so that she can share what it was like (for both her and Phil) to take on this project. She also shares lots of images and art, which you know makes this blogger happy. I thank her for sharing.

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Look at that number up there. FIVE HUNDRED WEEKS of kickin’, you all! Hard to believe, isn’t it?

I think that it’s fitting that we are celebrating kicking on a day that is a sad anniversary for so many people (9/11), because the whole idea of kicking is trying your damnedest to find the light in something, even if it’s been a hard week. There are some weeks it’s even hard for me to find seven whole kicks, but I usually manage it. It’s a good little exercise, huh?

So, thank you all for kickin’ with me for so long — for meeting here every Sunday to take the time to reflect (as I type every week) on Seven(ish) Exceptionally Fabulous, Beautiful, Interesting, Hilarious, or Otherwise Positive Noteworthy Things from the past week, whether book-related or not, that happened to you. (Thanks to Eisha, who founded the blog with me, for that wording.) I’m re-posting this image from Carin Bramsen. As I note on this page of my site, where I explain what 7-Imp’s 7 Kicks are, kicks kind of make you feel like the children in that image do, even if you’re not wearing a tutu on your head.

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“Langston’s poetry was an early mirror for me. As a child, I didn’t read many novels where the characters looked like me, talked like me, were concerned with the same issues I was worried about. Poetry was where I found my people. In the lines and stanzas of Langston’s poems, my grandmother called out to me, my dark skin and crinkly hair was beautiful, and the stories of my ancestors were honored. There was strength, anger, grace, and ambition all there for the taking. I needed that as a child, and I believe our young people need that now. “

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Over at Kirkus today, I talk to children’s book and YA author Renée Watson, pictured above, about I, Too, Arts Collective, her initiative to turn the brownstone in Harlem where legendary poet Langston Hughes once lived into “a space for poets, a space to honor his legacy.”

That is here this morning.

Until tomorrow …

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Photo of Renée taken by NAACP and used by her permission.

“Every night, when the dark entered the house, traveling slowly down the walls
and over the floors, Ella grew afraid.”
(Click to enlarge spread)

 
Coming to shelves next month from Groundwood is Sandra V. Feder’s The Moon Inside, illustrated by Aimée Sicuro. I like this book so much I want to show you all some spreads from it today.

This is the gently-paced story of a young girl, named Ella, afraid of the dark. There’s no shortage of picture books on this topic, but Feder and Sicuro handle this with such care and thoughtfulness; it really stands out. Note, for one, in the spread featured above, the book’s opening spread, how evocatively and accurate Feder describes how the dark appears to a child (or, more precisely, how it moves). Ella turns on the lights in each room she enters in order “to make the dark go away.” The sun makes Ella happy, and yellow—which dominates the book’s paelette—is her favorite color. For this reason, she avoids dusk.

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“Following an ancient, invisible pathway high above the clouds,
each bird takes a turn to lead the way south.”
(Click to enlarge spread)

 

Last week, I chatted over at Kirkus (here) with Australian author-illustrator Jeannie Baker. It was fascinating to read her description of her collage-making process. Today, I’m following up with two spreads from her newest book, Circle (Candlewick, May 2016).

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“‘You’re really going?’ his mother said.
‘Yes.’ Angus put on his backpack.
‘I’ll miss you.’
‘No, you won’t,’ Angus said, and left.”
(Click to enlarge spread)

 
Today over at Kirkus, I’ve got some new emerging-reader books on the mind. That link is here.

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I’ve got a couple of spreads here today at 7-Imp from Patrick Downes’s Come Home, Angus (Orchard/Scholastic, July 2016), illustrated by Boris Kulikov. I wrote about the book here at Kirkus last week. You can click below to see one more spread.

Enjoy.

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“Sometimes in class I’d gaze at a large map that hung on the wall. …
What would it be like to look out at nothing but dark blue as far as the eye could see?”
(Click to see full spread and read text in its entirety)

 
Good morning, all. I’ve got a review here over at BookPage of Robert Burleigh’s Solving the Puzzle Under the Sea: Marie Tharp Maps the Ocean Floor (Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster, January 2016), illustrated by Raúl Colón.

I’m following up with some art from it today.

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