Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Remember this early March post here at 7-Imp? That’s still one of my favorite books of the year, Samantha R. Vamos’ The Cazuela That the Farm Maiden Stirred (Charlesbridge, February 2011), illustrated by my visitor today, Rafael López.

Rafael received the 2010 Pura Belpré Illustrator Award for Pat Mora’s Book Fiesta! and is also the recipient of two Américas Book Awards and a 2006 Pura Belpré Honor. Many of López’s stylized folk-art-style paintings, acrylics on wood, are brimming with joy, as you can see below. (López sent a whole heapin’ ton of art for today’s breakfast, which is how you win over this blogger.) Colorful, bright, bold, evocative, and even “eye-filling” are words that have been used by reviewers to describe López’s art. “His sophisticated, multilayered textures create depth, give form and work together to create an image that is easily readable, humorous and harmonious,” Kirkus wrote about Cazuela.

Rafael has been involved in many other projects, which he describes below. And public librarians all over the nation, who engaged in summer reading programs this year, may recognize this poster artwork:

Read the rest of this entry �

Really devoted 7-Imp readers will note that Alfred, pictured left, is joining me earlier than usual for today’s post. Alfred, who sprung from the mind and paintbrush of Matt Phelan, now lives at 7-Imp and always introduces Bernard Pivot’s famous Pivot Questionnaire, which is how I consistently close my interviews. (As noted elsewhere at the blog, Alfred makes good, strong coffee and tells wicked funny knock-knock jokes in a low voice. I like him.)

He’s at the top of today’s post, because my guest this morning, author/illustrator Deborah Freedman, illustrated her responses to the Pivot Questionnaire, which makes me happy. Yes, illustrated! (There is always Chris Raschka’s set of Pivot responses, answered in photographs, which I also loved, but these illustrated responses are a first for 7-Imp.) Since I blew up Deborah’s Pivot image at the close of this interview to be as large as possible in the blog’s template, Alfred didn’t quite fit down there, so he’s up top with me now to introduce Deborah. Don’t worry. He’s not as surly as he looks.

There aren’t a whole lot of author/illustrators who can say that their second published book got a good deal of Caldecott buzz. But Deborah can. Those who pay attention to picture-book chatter know that her newest title, Blue Chicken, released by Viking in September (and sparked by William Carlos Williams’s “The Red Wheelbarrow,” as Deborah notes here), has been mentioned by many in the same sentence as that prestigious award (all in the name of ALA awards-predictions, which get hot and heavy this time of year). The book tells the story of a painted chicken who lets loose on an artist’s canvas. She just wants to help, yet spills blue paint everywhere. Then, things get very 3-d, as other animals in the painting emerge from the canvas onto the meta-landscape to watch while the chicken tries to “undo the blue” by toppling over the artist’s glass of water.

Read the rest of this entry �

In all the many breakfast interviews I’ve conducted here in my own corner of cyberspace, I’m fairly certain I have never had an interviewee dish out two breakfasts at my 7-Imp cyber-table. But oh gracious, what a treat! Illustrator Shadra Strickland is here, and she has the following to say about what we’ll eat during our breakfast chat this morning:

I recently moved to Maryland, so my new breakfast of choice is crab cake benedict (poached eggs atop crab cakes over fried green tomatoes with hollandaise sauce) with coffee. My absolute favorite breakfast is fried cheese grits with biscuits at Enid’s.

And here are our choices: Read the rest of this entry �

This morning over at Kirkus I shine the spotlight on Norton Juster’s new picture book, Neville, illustrated by G. Brian Karas. The link is here.

Over at last week’s column, I asked writer, researcher, teacher, editor, producer/film-maker, and poet Steven Withrow in an abbreviated Q & A all about his new project, Poetry Advocates for Children & Young Adults, or PACYA. (As I noted at Kirkus last week, in the name of full disclosure I’m one of PACYA’s advisory board members, a follow-my-bliss, labor-of-love type of activity for sure. I’m happy to be a small part of the many efforts on this project.) The full interview is below. Enjoy.

Read the rest of this entry �

I do these breakfast interviews a lot—today’s guest has brought, as you can see here, her plain Kefir with Cinnamon Life cereal and blueberries—and my favorite question is the simplest one: “Are you an illustrator or author/illustrator?” The answers I’ve gotten over the years, which are surprisingly varied, tell me a lot about the interviewee. I’m not surprised that today’s visitor, author/illustrator Laura Ljungkvist, opts to call herself a “visual problem-solver.”

And that’s because Laura, also an editorial illustrator, creates picture books that are often picture puzzles, relying mostly on what one reviewer once called “acrobatic lines” (I love that description) to tell her tales. Her Follow the Line books (there are four total thus far, the most recent one released this past summer), as well as her debut picture book, feature one continuous line, beginning on the cover, running through the entire book to create shapes and tell and name and designate and identify, and ending on the back of the book. The lines zoom, circle, zigzag, twist, turn, and dance, encouraging reader participation and lots of examination for curious eyes. (In this recent blog post of hers, one can see she was destined to make books like this.)

This June 7-Imp post featured some of Laura’s editorial art, including her “Tables for Two” illustration for The New Yorker, which was clearly a predecessor to her Follow the Line books for children. It’s interesting to note how her editorial art informs her children’s book illustration — or perhaps vice versa. “It’s natural,” she told me around the time of that post, “for an editorial illustrator to write and illustrate their own books. After ‘solving your clients’ visual problems’ comes a time when you want to ‘solve your own problem.’ It’s the same process; only now you’re the boss!”

I thank Laura for visiting this morning. I’ll get the coffee brewing and get the basics from her while we set the table for seven questions over breakfast. Read the rest of this entry �

Who ever said that glitter on the cover of contemporary picture books is all bad? If it’s glittererized French pastries from Caldecott Honor artist Betsy Lewin, I’m all for it. And in the case of Leslie Muir’s Little Bitty Bakery, released in August by Hyperion, it is.

Both Betsy and Leslie are visiting me for breakfast this morning, and I’m hoping they brought along some of the pastries from the chef pictured above, ’cause that would mean I’d be chompin’ down on some éclairs, chocolate macaroons, and crème brûlée, seeing as how this pastry chef specializes in French delights. Mmm. In this rhymed tale, we learn that she’s worked all day on her birthday, not even stopping to make her own birthday cake, and—leaving her rolling pins laying quiet—she climbs into bed. But the mice in her bakery, for whom she often leaves out cheesecake, have a most delicious surprise planned for her, so all is not lost. Read the rest of this entry �

I had the pleasure in early September of talking via phone with author/illustrator Brian Selznick about his latest title, Wonderstruck (Scholastic, September 2011), as well as a bit about the 2008 Caldecott winner The Invention of Hugo Cabret (Scholastic, 2007); his hybrid style, if you will, of picture book, novel, and graphic novel; and the upcoming film adaptation of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, titled simply Hugo, by Martin Scorsese.

7-Imp readers know that my interviews, particularly with illustrators, tend to consist of the same set of questions I send to everyone — and interviews I can conduct via email, too. If, in Bizarro World, 7-Imp’ing were a full-time venture, everyone would get questions customized specifically to them, but having a standard set of questions for all the folks with whom I conduct Q&As is the only way I can find time to post any interviews at all, since blogging comes after things like children and work.

However, with Selznick I had the opportunity to do a phone interview right at the release of Wonderstruck and didn’t want to pass it up. But it took a while to post, since after the interview’s completion, I had to find a transcriber to make it so that I could post it online for my readers. Finally, nearly two months later, here it is.

In a former professional life, I was a sign language interpreter. My Bachelor’s degree is actually in that very subject, and I spent years studying American Sign Language and Deaf Studies and worked in the field for a good while in East Tennessee. For that reason, several of the questions below—and a good deal of my conversation with Brian—is about his research into Wonderstruck and the deafness aspect of the novel, which I wrote about over in a September Kirkus column. That link is here.

Also, I should quickly note two things: First, my landline phone, during our conversation, decided it’d had enough of me, and when I called Brian back on my cell, he and his editor ever-so kindly recorded the latter part of the conversation on their end. This meant that my final questions and comments were not recorded, but as you can see below, I was able to piece together what I had asked him. Secondly, the transcriber did edit out things like “um”s—my own and Brian’s—but we generally left intact the casual, conversational tone that was this phone interview.

I thank Brian for his time. Fellow illustration junkies will note that I’ve laced the interview with a bit of art, with thanks to Brian and Scholastic. Enjoy. Read the rest of this entry �

This is the spellbinding opening of Chapter 4 in author/illustrator Rosalyn Schanzer’s Witches! The Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in Salem, published by National Geographic Children’s Books in September of this year. Two terrified men think they see a beast fly up into the air and turn into the spirits of three witches, while the three accused “witches” are in jail at the time.

The Society of Illustrator’s 2011 Original Art Opening Reception and Awards Presentation will be next Thursday, October 27th, in New York City, and you can bet Rosalyn will be there, as she was awarded the Gold Medal for the aforementioned nonfiction title. Though I was a jury member this year, I can’t make it to the reception, but the least I can do is feature Rosalyn here at 7-Imp right before her big night. (To be fair, I should point out that the two Silver Medal winners, Kadir Nelson and Lane Smith, have previously visited 7-Imp — here and here, respectively.)

Read the rest of this entry �

I admit, given today’s post, that I’m feeling rather sentimental and nostalgic, if one can be nostalgic after blogging for just a little over five short years.

You see, when 7-Imp was first born and back when I was blogging with my best bud forever, Eisha Prather, our interview with author/illustrator Jarrett J. Krosoczka (back when our images were disturbingly and fearfully small) was really one of our first interviews. Eisha and I were—and still are—fans of Jarrett’s books (especially Punk Farm — I’m sorry, but does it get any cooler than that book?). And, ever since then, he’s been a friend to 7-Imp and has visited on many occasions, which always makes all the little imps here at 7-Imp happy. (Okay, it’s just me, but I can pretend there are little imps at blaine.org that drive the action, can’t I?) I’m happy to say he’s visiting again today.

And Jarrett’s got a brand-new book out—Ollie the Purple Elephant, to be released tomorrow by Knopf—and I immediately fell for the friendly purple protagonist, as well as the serious Scooby-Doo vibe the plot is sportin’. Ollie, a lone purple elephant, finds himself living with the loving McLaughlin family. But when Ginger, the family cat, conspires with the downstairs neighbor, Mr. Puddlebottom—Ollie puts a crimp in their style for different reasons—he finds himself travelling with the circus and wondering if he’ll ever see his beloved new family again. Throw in some crime-fighting, and you’ve got one boisterous tale. “With bright, friendly acrylic art that recalls Krosoczka’s earlier work,” writes Publishers Weeky, “…the author offers a fast-paced and surreal tale with twists aplenty.”

Jarrett’s here to talk about Ollie and how, truly, it is a special book for him in more ways than one, but first, I must note that he has a few other reasons to be extra-jubilant these days: Read the rest of this entry �

This morning over at Kirkus, I’m shining a spotlight on Nursery Rhyme Comics from First Second Books. The link is here.

Last week’s column was an abbreviated Q & A with author Catherynne M. Valente, the author of this year’s much talked-about children’s novel, first published online, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, released by Feiwel and Friends in May. Here today at 7-Imp I bring you the interview in its entirety, peppered with lots of beguiling illustrations from the book, created by the one and only Ana Juan. Two friends and fellow children’s-list aficionados joined me on this interview: Kate Pritchard, Associate Editor at BookPage, and Shannon Stanton, a Librarian/Media Specialist here in the Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools. I thank them very much for joining forces with me and for the good questions they contributed.

And I thank Cat for visiting. {NOTE: This interview is spoiler-tastic. Just sayin’ as a warning—for those who haven’t read the novel yet—that there are plot spoilers below.} Read the rest of this entry �