Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

A fabulous conversation with Walter Dean Myers—and his work with teens—at NPR this morning:

“The kids were writing such negative stuff about themselves that I began to collect photographs to show how beautiful they actually were,” he says. “I used the photographs in a number of different books.”

Myers also looks back to when he was a young man in Harlem who knew he wanted to write — and meeting Langston Hughes for the first time. Having studied only white, British writers in schools, he tells NPR’s Juan Williams, “He didn’t look to me like a writer because he wasn’t white.” …It’s a great piece. Enjoy.

Now back to your regularly scheduled blog-reading.

Can I just tell you that there are so many books I want to talk about, but my increased work-load, as we’ve already covered, is keeping me from that right now? But no worries. ‘Cause, while I get my act together, you have things like this to read over at good blogs like this.

Yes, it’s the one and the only TadMack—a.k.a. Tanita Davis, author by day, blogger by night (or is it the other way around?), and always-champion-of-YA-books—interviewed over at Jama Rattigan’s Alphabet Soup. That Jama knows how to do her interviews, and it opens with the loveliest photo of Tanita that you just have to see. Jama posted this on Monday, I think it was, and I sat my wee girls down with some watercolors and paintbrushes and told ’em to go crazy — just so I could read that interview without interruption. I didn’t even turn my head away from the computer monitor as they painted the kitchen table.

So, go see. It’ll be worth your time, I promise. Plus, you’ll learn all about Tanita’s hidden talents and secret crushes. Enjoy!

NPR’s Melissa Block has excellent taste.

I’m so glad I caught this yesterday while cooking dinner. Do yourself a favor, and listen to it if you can. E.B. White reads excerpts from the novel, and evidently he did something like SEVENTEEN takes on reading the part about Charlotte’s death when recording it, what with getting choked up so much.

And I own and have read this, but I still learned stuff in this wonderful piece that I didn’t know.

Here’s to Charlotte, who always keeps her promises…

* {I cannot claim to speak for Eisha on that claim. It is mine and mine alone.}

Jules and Eisha: Here’s our Poetry Friday entry for today, an old classic, if you’ll allow us to sing it to ourselves:

Happy birthday to us!
Happy birthday to us!
Happy birthday, 7-Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimp!
Happy birthday to us!

eisha: Is it possible?! We’re TWO! Two years old! And hey, we just had a little tantrum not too long ago, so I guess we’re developing right on schedule. Walking around, feeding ourselves, yelling “NO!” at the slightest provocation… my, how the time flies. J, can you believe it’s been two years already? And we’re still here?

Jules: Yes, we did throw a tantrum, but at least we tried to use words (is that something only mamas-of-toddlers get? I dunno.) Really, it’s just growing pains, I guess.

And we can look back on the year and consider the things we’ve done: Mainly, that I annoyed everyone, I have no doubt, experimenting with font sizes and colors and by putting to use—entirely too often—the marquee tag. But see my restraint here? I didn’t put “marquee tag” in marquee tags!

What was your favorite post this year, E? I think my own question is too hard to answer, but I will include here one of my favorite illustrations we posted this year — from up-and-coming illustrator, James Hindle. ‘Cause who doesn’t want a cupcake belt buckle? I ask you. And do you know: As a result of that post about James, someone contacted us and shared this actual cupcake belt buckle; she found it while looking for something to match her cupcake tattoo. For serious. And that would be Alison Alexander, Australian jewelry-maker, who—incidentally—has this fabulous autograph at her site. (My fan-dom for John Burningham knows no bounds. If we ever got an interview with him, well…I don’t know that it would actually ever get posted, ’cause I’d pass right out and wouldn’t be able to pick myself up.)

Anyway, um, I know we should probably try harder to highlight all the things we did this year, but, shoot….people have the archives. And I’m excited that we re-discovered our roots and are gonna post more of Whatever the Hell We Want Whenever We Want To. Would you say that’s an apt description, E? Read the rest of this entry �

For Knoxville and the members of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church after this tragic event last weekend:

{Taken from Honeybee: Poems & Short Prose, Greenwillow, 2008; posted with gracious permission from Naomi Shihab Nye.}

Jules: So, Eisha, as you know, when we featured Laini Taylor’s lovely ladies this past Sunday, I ended up — long story how — at this artist’s blog, Diary of a Self-Portrait. (That, incidentally, is my favorite “about me” portion of anyone’s blog ever. It’s amazing how much we know about Jessie when she writes merely: “I paint. I write. I love strong coffee, being outside, my dogs, and snow. My dreams are vivid.”)

And, as you also know, Jessie — back in October of last year — launched a Be Brave project, based on this notion:

And all kinds of people joined her, prompting her in early July to do this again. She wrote:

And so I’ve come to the conclusion that it is time to revisit the Be Brave Project and to invite you, once again, to join me in doing so.

I will whole-heartedly return to this project on Monday, July 21st…And I will blog about my experience here, as often as I’m able to.

I want to make it very clear, however, that there is no beginning and no end to this project. If you decide to join in, there are no rules except for the ones you create for yourself…

MAKE YOUR OWN RULES.

Do this for yourself.

Make a commitment for the length of time that best suites YOUR needs–one day, one month, one year, one moment…it’s all up to you, and you alone. 😉

The “brave” or “scary” things that you choose to do can be as big or little as you want them to be. Sometimes it’s the little things that can be the most scary (and beneficial)!

(not to quote Nike, but…) Just do it.

Be on your own schedule. You don’t need to make a commitment until YOU are ready.

This is your unique journey–make it whatever you want it to be.

And that would be when I emailed you and said, hey, at the risk of sounding like Dr. Phil here, don’t you think this’d be fun? I have always loved that notion, that Roosevelt quote, and I’m tired of being a wussy-butt about some things. And, lucky for me, you said yes. Read the rest of this entry �

Hey, guess what? Anyone else remember when illustrator Frank Dormer created a Mad Tea Party image specifically for us and how ga-ga we were over it? We promptly put it on this page of our site, the one that lists our illustrator interviews and lists all the artists and illustrators we’ve featured in one way or another here at 7-Imp. If you’re like us and haven’t had your coffee yet and are too tired to click and look, let us show you here what the top of that page looks like:

Loveliness.

Well, every Sunday we feature the art work of different illustrators/artists, and a couple weeks ago, we featured Argentinian illustrator Fernando Falcone. We opened that feature with his Mad Tea Party image, created in ’06, posted here at his site in all its terrifying and arresting beauty. (That makes us sound a bit like a bad Calvin Klein ad, but…well, just look at it.) We boldly asked him, despite not speaking Spanish ourselves, if we could include that image in the header of another one of our blog’s pages, and he said YES, dear friends! So, we have one more kickin’ Mad Tea Party image to add to our collection — with a brunette Alice, nonetheless.

We decided to include it on our Author Interviews page. Isn’t it just perfect? Oh, still no coffee yet? Here’s what it looks like:

We extend precisely one kerjillion thanks to Mr. Falcone for the use of that illustration.

Many thanks to Jules’ husband, our personal tech support, for manuevering these images into those headers and making ’em look so great there.

AND…a whole heapin’ bunch of thanks to Little Willow, who pointed Falcone out to us in the first place. She’s got our back and is all the time pointing us in the direction of great Alice images.

We hope to eventually have a Mad Tea Party image we’re absolutely in love with for each page of our blog (though we’ll always leave the classic Tenniel on the very front page). And no rush. We’ll get there one day. These things of beauty take time.

P.S. For fun: Jules re-discovered an old email the other day in which someone pointed out another Mad Tea Party image — one by illustrator Tony DiTerlizzi, created when he was in high school, complete with Elton John as the Mad Hatter. Wanna see? Go here, and scroll down.

Jules: Yep, we’re having an identity crisis here at 7-Imp. Actually, we had one. Ultimately, it’s turned out to be a really good thing.

So, here’s my deal: Blogging has always been something I’ve done for fun; that means it has to fall behind my family and my work. My workload has recently doubled, and I’ve had to re-prioritize. I simply don’t have time to post a review of almost every book I read, which is pretty much what I have been doing for almost two years now.

To summarize: When I didn’t work so many hours, things looked like this —

1. My family and friends.
2. Work that pays.
3. Blogging.

Read the rest of this entry �

I was going to talk and talk about some killer new picture books today, but I simply didn’t have time yesterday to formulate a halfway-coherent post.

Instead, I’ll direct you over to The Morning News (which is always wonderful) where recently, as in two days ago, severely talented writer and illustrator Elisha Cooper—and, most recently, author of ridiculous/hilarious/terrible/cool: A Year in an American High School, which I’m currently reading—published an essay on the dream vacation for him and his family. And it’s not what you might think. The Bahamas? The shore? Nah, they flew all over the world without leaving their neighborhood, something to which I can relate this summer. If you’d like to read the essay, a short read, it’s here.

Enjoy.

Hey, everybody. Have you had a chance to check out author Lynn Hazen’s Imaginary Blog? Well, this would be an excellent time to do so, because she just did a fun group-interview with me and Jules, Betsy of Fuse #8, and Cynthia Leitich Smith of Cynsations. She made us write a pyramid-shaped poem-like thingy about our blogs, which was a hoot. Go check it out!