Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

 
A zippy-quick post (because I’m in the final stages of packing a home this week)! Have you seen Jon Agee’s newest picture book, Lion Lessons (Dial, July 2016)? Here’s a story filled with Agee goodness — his understated humor, solid storytelling, and soft, no-nonsense palette. This one is about a boy who takes up lion lessons, just as the title tells you. His teacher, a great lion with (if you pay attention to the book’s details) a degree from the Harvard School of Claw, takes the boy under his wing, teaching him Looking Fierce, Roaring, Choosing What to Eat, Prowling Around, Sprinting, Pouncing, and Looking Out for Your Friends (all kicked off with some stretching). The boy isn’t exactly a star student, but there’s a lot of humor along the way — especially, as mentioned, in the details of the spreads. The boy succeeds in the end, complete with a Lion Diploma and the adoring creatures pictured above. (A lionhearted pounce, after all, can also go hand in hand with looking out for a friend.)

Here’s a bit of art from the book so that you can see more for yourself.

Enjoy!

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Today’s post is a bit of a sneak peek at an upcoming picture book from Groundwood Books. Geraldo Valério’s Turn on the Night will be out this September, but I’ve got a few spreads from it today.

This is the wordless tale of a girl, at night, who’s fallen asleep, book in hand. This book looks very similar to Valério’s very story. Suddenly, the creature in the pages of the book leaps out through the window, and the girl is nowhere to be seen. Readers realize she has become the wolf-like creature who has leaped out of the house. The following pages show her as the wolf having a night-time adventure with the rooster just outside of her home, as well as a deer they meet. They fly to a star, the rooster grabs it, and the wolf returns to her home, lighting up the stringed lights around the headboard on the girl’s bed — really, he lights up her entire room. There, suddenly, is the girl again, sleeping happily.

It’s a simple, but magical, plot with Valério’s rich colors; the palette is dominated by deep blues and lush greens. He captures with a seeming ease the euphoria of dreams of flight, as well as the cryptic nature of dreams, even ones that leave you with a smile on your face. The Publishers Weekly review writes that there is a “giddy sense of possibility” in this story. Indeed.

Here are a couple more spreads. Enjoy!

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“A boy sheep is a ram. He has horns. The horns do not come off.”
(Click to enlarge spread)

 
I’ve got a review here over at BookPage of Jeanne Birdsall’s My Favorite Pets: By Gus W. for Ms. Smolinksi’s Class, released by Knopf this month. Here at 7-Imp today, I’m featuring some of the books spreads from Harry Bliss.

Enjoy!

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This morning over at Kirkus, I’ve got story time on the mind. That link is here.

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Last week, I wrote here about Dan Richards’ Can One Balloon Make an Elephant Fly?, illustrated by Jeff Newman (coming to shelves in August from Simon & Schuster). Today, I have a few spreads from the book, but Jeff also shares some preliminary images.

You’ll see below some early sketches, as well as some (the ones broken into four grids) that represent an early version of the story in which Evan and his mother spent most of the story at their apartment. (In the final version, they stay at the zoo.) You’ll also see some finishes from, as Jeff puts it, “a more stylized, scrapped version of the book (before we took it in a slightly more realistic direction).”

I thank Jeff for sharing.

Enjoy!

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Pictured above is, according to illustrator Isabel Roxas, one of many cover designs from Minh Lê’s debut picture book, Let Me Finish!, released by Disney/Hyperion last month. This is the story of a young boy trying to read, trying to reach the end of a book and experience the surprises in store, yet all around are his animal friends, revealing spoilers at every turn. At each spoiler, the boy picks up a new book, only to have its ending revealed as well. Lê paces the story well, building tension as the story progresses (and as the boy attempts to steal away and find a successful, interruption-free reading spot), giving readers a mammoth-sized surprise of his own at the end. (But I won’t ruin it for you.)

Roxas has illustrated many books in the Philippines but currently lives in the U.S. and is here to talk about creating the illustrations for this one. I thank her for sharing. Let’s get to it.

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I’ve got a review over at BookPage of Antoinette Portis’s entertaining new picture book, Best Frints in the Whole Universe (Neal Porter/Roaring Brook Press, July 2016).

The review is here. Now, normally I’d share some spreads from the book here, but Antoinette actually already shared some spreads from this one here at 7-Imp. When she visited in August of last year to talk about Wait, she talked about Best Frints and shared a handful of spreads. So, if you want to check those out, they are here in this post — towards the bottom.

It was fun to give you all a sneak-peek of Best Frints last year, but it’s even better to see it on shelves now.

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— From Salina Yoon’s Duck, Duck, Porcupine!

 

“Cat is sleepy. He wants to nap.
Kitten is curious. She wants to play …”
— From Toni Yuly’s Cat Nap
(Click to enlarge)

 

— From Greg Pizzoli’s What’s an Apple?

 
Today over at Kirkus, I look at Can One Balloon Make an Elephant Fly? (coming to shelves in August from Simon & Schuster) in which Dan Richards and Jeff Newman explore what it looks like to a child when a parent stares into a cell phone. But mostly they tell an entertaining story. With floating elephants.

That is here.

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Last week I wrote here about Salina Yoon’s Duck, Duck, Porcupine! (Bloomsbury, May 2016); Toni Yuly’s Cat Nap (Feiwel & Friends, January 2016); and Marilyn Singer’s What’s an Apple? and What’s a Banana?, both illustrated by Greg Pizzoli and coming to shelves in August from Abrams.

I’ve got art from each book below, and Greg also shares some early character sketches and such.

Enjoy!

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“I was lucky enough to have Raymond Briggs as one of my tutors at Art College. I think he has inspired me more than anyone. As a tutor, he was always very positive and encouraging. Initially, I had a very small and clichéd idea of what a children’s picture book should be. Raymond’s work made me realize the potential of a picture book — that its boundaries and possibilities are wide and exciting and, mostly, that I’m only limited by my imagination.”

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Over at Kirkus today, I talk to Australian author-illustrator Jeannie Baker, pictured here, about her newest picture book, Circle (Candlewick, May 2016).

That is here this morning. Next week at 7-Imp, I’ll follow up with some art from the book.

Until tomorrow …

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Photo of Jeannie used by permission of Candlewick Press.

 

“Long, long ago, like a pearl around a grain of sand, the fertile Kingdom of Morocco formed near the edge of the great, dry Sahara. It had fountains of cool, delicious water to quench the dangerous thirst of the desert,
and storytellers to bring the people together.”
(Click to enlarge spread)

 
This is supposed to be Seven Questions Over Breakfast with Evan Turk but it’s lunch instead, since I’m slow in getting started today. That’s okay, because Evan says he’s not a breakfast-eater anyway. He is, however, a fan of coffee, which we can have any time of day. Of course.

Evan has illustrated what I think is one of the year’s most beautiful picture books, The Storyteller (Atheneum, June 2016), which is the first book he’s both written and illustrated. (The book’s opening spread is pictured above.) It’s a story within a story within a story, and it’s a visual tour de force. In August, we’ll see his illustrations for the follow-up to Bethany Hegedus’ and Arun Gandhi’s Grandfather Gandhi, which was released in 2014 and was the book that first introduced readers to his artwork. In Be The Change: A Grandfather Gandhi Story, Bethany and Arun examine how wastefulness can lead to violence.

Evan is here today to share lots of art from each book, as well as preliminary images of all sorts (boy howdy, does this guy do his research — and what beautiful research it is), and he talks a bit about what’s next for him. I thank him for visiting and, especially, for sharing so much art.

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It’s the first Sunday of the month, when I typically feature student or newly-graduated illustrators. I actually featured a student last week (just because), and today I’m doing something slightly different.

Back in September of 2014 (here), I featured the work of Esmé Shapiro, who had just graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with her BFA in Illustration. Esmé is now seeing the publication of her debut picture book, Ooko (Tundra Books, July 2016), so I thought it’d be fun to have her back. Pictured above is the cover.

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