Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

This week marks an unusual blog tour, Share a Story — Shape a Future, the brainchild of Terry Doherty from The Reading Tub. I meant to post about this earlier this week and was probably way remiss in not doing so, but I’m just coming up for air and uncrossing my eyes after the chock-full-‘o’-art Dave McKean interview.

We hear about blog tours all the time, but this is a unique—and wonderful—one, indeed. It’s a one-week literacy blog tour that is “for and by the people who create and engage their readers: teachers, librarians, parents, and people passionate about literacy.” You can head over to Terry’s blog to catch up on what’s been posted this week at all kinds of blogs, and you can also hit Jen Robinson’s site to take a gander. (That Jen with all her many passionate literacy efforts; I don’t know how she does it. She rocks, as the kids say. Terry, too, for that matter. Everyone behind this entire blog tour deserves a big ‘ol round of applause. I almost typed applesauce. Hey, let’s give ’em some applesauce, too.)

The project has its own site here, probably the very best spot in which to get caught up. (Here’s a master schedule; Day One was devoted to “Raising Readers,” Day Two to “Selecting Reading Material,” and today to “Reading Aloud — It’s Fun, It’s Easy.”) I’ll be involved in the tour tomorrow: I’ll be interviewing/chatting with public librarian extraordinnaire Adrienne Furness about how to make the library work for YOU — yes, YOU, the patron. Let me just say now—so that I don’t make her blush tomorrow—that one of the reasons I chose her to interview is that, seriously, don’t you wish all public librarians were as smart and friendly and fun and passionate about literature and library programming as she is? I made that “passionate about literature” irritatingly big, because I believe it’s fundamental to those who work with children and books. And Adrienne’s got it goin’ on something fierce.

I’m happy to be involved in such a unique blog tour. To celebrate, I’ve got my own pic up here of my wee’est one, reading one of her favorite books (Elisa Kleven’s The Apple Doll) in the sunlight (which is why the feline, Lyra, is also there).

See you tomorrow when I’ll have Adrienne over for coffee and one very possible discussion before breakfast . . .

Well, my blogging plans for today were thwarted by some flu-like something or other that has rather inconveniently visited my home this week. But, lucky for us here at 7-Imp, the ever-so blog-friendly J. Patrick Lewis will occasionally stop by to share some new poetry, as he does at many other blogs. And how nice is it to get a random poem from one of children’s literature’s most talented and prolific poets and authors? Very. And the opportunity to share it? Even better.

So, yes, J. Patrick Lewis has made it easy for me today. I get to let him do the talkin’. In this case, it’s a Valentine’s Day poem, which will appear in COUNTDOWN TO SUMMER: A POEM FOR EVERY DAY OF THE SCHOOL YEAR, to be released by Little, Brown in June of this year. Did we have a Valentine’s Day poem? he asked me and Eisha. No, we didn’t, but now we do. And an adventurous, sea-faring one at that. And one involving amorous octopi sweethearts, three words which I never thought I’d put together. I even had to look up “bosun,” but now I’m in-the-know.

Thanks, Pat! Hope everyone enjoys this. If it doesn’t make you smile, then shiver me timbers! You need to stop and take a break.

Jules: Yes, Rock Obamo. This is what my four-year-old daughter calls him.

Because Eisha and I are so excited about today’s inauguration, we’re sharing this song, which is by Maddy Wyatt, whom Eisha says she actually kinda knows:

Also, not appropos to that at all…7-Imp has a new mad-tea-party image, all thanks to author and cartoonist Ray Friesen, whom we featured Sunday at our kicks post. And we’d simply like to share it with you. He created this just for our blog, and he even put me and Eisha AT THE TABLE with Alice, the Hatter, the March Hare, and the Dormouse! I could even argue that I’m drinking coffee there at this tea party. (Right? Right. Let’s just pretend anyway.)

Ray was trying very hard to finish it for Sunday’s post, but he sent it after we had already posted. He also said he intended to fully color it, too, but time just slipped away from him (hey, he was having way too much fun at a book-signing, including free cartooning classes for kids, which is way more important than an image for our blog anyway, I’m sure you’d agree). But you know what? We like that coloring.

In the book, Alice might think it’s the stupidest tea-party she ever was at in all her life, but we love this cartoon so much. I believe Eisha’s words when she saw it were: “We’ve been cartoonified by a professional! Into an Alice tea party! I think I can die happy now.” We plan to add it to the header of one of our site’s pages, such as we’ve done here and here previously with those mad-tea-party images.

We thank Ray heartily.

Happy Inauguration Day!

So, I’m hardly a saint for buying two books for Flying Horse Farms today, and I don’t need a round of applause for doing so. But this post is my attempt to try to convince you to do the same. Hey, if you’ve got a blog and a barbaric yawp for the world, you’ve got a rooftop on which to scream your yawp, so why not use it for something good?

Flying Horse Farms is a camp and year-round retreat center for children with serious illnesses and their families. It’s an Ohio-based 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization and working to become a member of Paul Newman’s Hole in the Wall Camps, the world’s largest family of camps for children with serious illnesses. I got that from this post at author Sara Lewis Holmes’ blog, Read Write Believe. In that post, she announced that she has started a library of camp- and horse-related books for the organization. Sara’s own niece has been battling cancer for two years now. Sara talked with the director of the camp, and they decided that it would be great to have books about horses (non-fiction and fiction-books-about-horses) available at several spots around the camp—the stables, the craft room, the main activity hall, the cabins, the dining hall, etc. Read the rest of this entry �

Hey, everyone . . . Remember when author/illustrator Maxwell Eaton III stopped by last week during his blog tour for seven questions over breakfast? Well, as part of that tour, he also paddled his way over to The Well-Read Child and did a guest post over there. Eventually, I would have made it over there to read that, but I have Jeremy to thank for leaving a comment here and telling us to go check it out and that Maxwell had posted this great series of reluctant-reader tips in a comic format.

I went. I saw. I loved it. Since Maxwell told me I could post it as long as it was okay with Jill Tullo over at The Well-Read Child, I up and asked her. (I didn’t want to steal her thunder, steal her awesome guest post over there.) Well, Jill very graciously told me that of course I could post it over here, too.

Maxwell introduced these illustrations over at Jill’s site with the following:

In discussing reluctant readers I’ve decided to be a ‘wreluctant writer’ and quickly sketch out a few tips for any parents out there with their own little Ricky at home. Of course, I’m not a child behavior or literacy expert, but I do remember what it was like to be at the age where getting me to read was like taking me to get a haircut (a long, drawn out, hopeless battle where fifteen bucks goes down the drain and somebody’s ear gets cut). Oh to be twenty-three again. Anyway, I hope these little suggestions help or, at the very least, don’t result in any lawsuits. Then I’d have to reluctantly read the fine print on the subpoena, and that isn’t fun at any age. Enjoy!

Again, Jill’s post in its entirety is here. Many thanks to Jeremy and Maxwell — and to Jill for sharing. As someone who has worked in school libraries, this makes me nod my head enthusiastically and say amen a lot.

Read the rest of this entry �

Hey, everybody. Despite oversleeping by an hour and a half on take-off day, two majorly-delayed flights, and two somewhat diabolical taxi drivers trying to convince me that my hotel shuttle had already left the airport, I made it safely to Seoul.

This is me at the N Seoul Tower, which sits on top of a mountain in Namsan Park. I took this pic Tuesday afternoon, which hasn’t even happened for you yet. I’m comin’ at ya from 14 hours into the future, people! I am so pitifully jetlagged at this point that I let some Israeli guy talk me into climbing onto a random SUV for a better chance of getting both my short-ass self and the tower in the same picture.

I did go into Kyobo Bookstore, but they wouldn’t let me take pictures. Too bad, because they had a great little display of the Harry Potter and Twilight books in Korean. That would have been a much more 7-Imp-appropriate image to share. Alas! You’ll have to make do with me and a big metal pole.

No pole-dancing jokes! C’mon, you guys, my mom reads this blog too.

If you’d like to see more pics of my adventures-in-progress, I’m on Flickr.

. . . dysfunctional-family style! This Thanksgiving art work is from illustrator Sophie Blackall (interviewed back here in August). I don’t know about you, but I’d like to get to know the story of that family. (To see a bigger and animated version with a holiday greeting, go to Sophie’s site. And thanks to her for allowing us to share this here as well.)

We at 7-Imp wish everyone a wonderful holiday, as folks are probably travelling today or getting ready to travel or greeting family or thawing their turkeys or tofurkeys or what-have-you.

Here’s to what we in our household anyway call “our gratefuls” (my girls say their “gratefuls” every night before a meal). I hope there are many gratefuls in your life this year. Eisha and I are thankful for our readers, all the willing folks who subject themselves to interviews, all the great books and art we’ve seen thus far this year, all the kicks our readers have come to share, all the illustrators who share their art with us, all our kidlitosphere peeps, and oh-so much more. And, of course, I’m super-nerdy grateful for Eisha’s friendship. (See the above post for her Seoul report!)

Happy Thanksgiving, and I hope to see you on Poetry Friday of this week — if I’m not too stuffed with nine kinds of pie to come and share a poem or two.

XO to all . . .

Thank you, America! And…

THANK YOU, PRESIDENT OBAMA!

(Illustration © 2008 Paul Rogers, adapted for designforobama.org)

Hi, everyone. This is a quick note to say that many kidlitosphere bloggers are participating in an effort called “Blog the Vote,” in which they’re blogging—in a non-partisan manner—about why our votes matter. Colleen Mondor is keeping a master list, which she began on Saturday and to which she will continue to add links until Monday night (I believe), over at Chasing Ray. This is a list of the wonderful posts that have been written thus far, reminding us why elections matter. So, don’t miss it (there are some great posts out there), and don’t forget to vote.

This has nothing to do with books, but I enjoy this so much that I’m going to post it here — bring it out of its obscurity, buried in the comments from yesterday’s post, and feature it here. Thanks to Kathe, one of our readers, for sharing it. I found this a great way to start my week, as in: People on the West Coast may have heard me hoot-laughing.

Here’s the link from which it comes. This is Isaac Hayes’ “Shaft,” as performed by the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain: