Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Here’s a post for illustration lovers: Illustrator Daniel Salmieri is visiting to share some character sketches and dummy sketches (and final art) from Big Bad Bubble (Clarion, May 2014), the newest picture book from him and author Adam Rubin. Remember Dragons Love Tacos (2012), which I posted about here? That was a Rubin-Salmieri collaboration (and there have been others), which I still think is one of the funniest picture books you’ll ever read. Rubin and Salmieri have a distinctive sense of humor, and I was going to say something sweeping about how glad I am that they make picture books today, when I just read this from Publishers Weekly: “Rubin and Salmieri are two of the weirdest, funniest guys working in kids’ lit today.” Yep. That. I agree.

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Hi, dear Imps. I’m going to be brief today. I’m actually typing this on Thursday night, since I’m heading out of town to a) see my nephew graduate from high school (I’m already teary-eyed about this, and I’m not even at the ceremony yet), and b) someone I used to babysit is all grown-up and I’m heading to her wedding. (Ditto on the tears.)

So, I’ll be skipping my kicks, though I always enjoy reading yours, so please do share. I do, however, have some art for you.

I’ve previously featured the work of Canadian author-illustrator Marianne Dubuc at 7-Imp — here and here. Her newest book, The Lion and the Bird (Enchanted Lion, May 2014), is a tender and moving story of friendship, first published in French in 2013 and translated by Claudia Z. Bedrick (intrepid leader of Enchanted Lion and possessor of exquisite taste). Maria Popova over at Brain Pickings writes that this book is an “ode to life’s moments between the words.” Oh, how I love that and wish I’d written it. That captures the book well. (You can read her entire post, also art-filled, about the book here, if you’re so inclined. She describes the book so wonderfully.)

The story is about a lion, who lives alone and one day finds a wounded bird. After nursing the bird lovingly, they become friends, and the bird stays on. Their friendship grows, but when Spring comes, Lion knows the bird must fly away. Lion adjusts to his loneliness, and then the following Winter, the bird returns.

But, as Popova notes in her piece, there’s so much to discover in the book’s artwork and the expert pacing of the story. I remember reading once in a theatre text in college that a play is interrupted silence. (I think it was a quote from a French playwright? I really should look this up.) Well, this story is interrupted silence. Dubuc does wonders here, not rushing the story, letting it breathe, inviting in child readers to be with Lion as he adjusts to his loneliness and melancholy after Bird leaves, as time marches on. A lot of the gentle pacing comes from Dubuc’s use of white space. (“White space—sometimes whole pages—speaks its own language of loss and hope,” writes the Kirkus review.) For instance, here’s very simply how we know that Bird has returned:

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This morning over at Kirkus, I write about two picture books that caught my eye — LeUyen Pham’s A Piece of Cake (Balzer + Bray, May 2014) and Phyllis Rowand’s It Is Night (Greenwillow Books, April 2014), illustrated by Laura Dronzek.

That link is here.

Last week, I wrote about Chris Raschka’s new picture book biography, The Cosmobiography of Sun Ra: The Sound of Joy Is Enlightening (Candlewick, May 2014). That link is here, and I’m following up with a bit of art today.

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“These paintings were done in watercolor and gouache, and let me tell you gouache can be really frustrating. It was really temperamental, and to be honest, when I handed in the book, I swore I’d never use it again. Of course, for my next book I pulled out the gouache and used it again.”

Over at Kirkus today, I talk to Jason Chin, pictured here, about his newest picture book, Gravity (Neal Porter/Roaring Brook, April 2014). That link is here.

Next week, I’ll have some art from the book, as well as some of the rejected endings that Jason talks about in the piece.

Until tomorrow …

Photo of Jason Chin by Deirdre Gill and used with permission.

The beginning of my week has been busier than usual, which means I’m stragglin’ here, folks, so I’ll be brief today.

I have some art this morning from James Kochalka’s The Glorkian Warrior Delivers a Pizza (First Second, March 2014). It features a rather dim-witted, three-eyed pink alien with three teeth; his companion, Super Backpack; and their dangerous journey to deliver a pizza. Throw in a Magic Robot, a Gonk that likes to bonk, a Glorkian supercar, some Glorkian kung fu, some self-directed punching in the face, some space and time disruptions, and lots of banter and bright colors, sure to please lovers of both comics and graphic novels — especially fans of the absurd. The Kirkus review calls it “vibrantly weird and wonderful,” and School Library Journal calls it “interestingly subversive.” Ah, you had me at subversive. (And weird.)

I’ve heard/read discussions lately about the intense, heavy subject matter of many books for children today. For one, I’m currently reading this with own daughters. This is a conversation that never seems to go away. Swings like a pendulum, that one. Rest assured, there are no, say, deceased parents, natural disasters, or crippling class issues in The Glorkian Warrior Delivers a Pizza. Yes, we need all kinds of books (and, thus far, my girls are riveted by Lamana’s book), but sometimes you just need the straight-up madcap ones, the ones good for a hearty laugh.

Did I mention my eyes are crossing from fatigue today? That’s all I’ve got, and let’s hope I was mildly to moderately articulate. Here’s some more art (the first four pages of the book, actually).

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This morning over at Kirkus, I write about Chris Raschka’s new picture book biography, The Cosmobiography of Sun Ra: The Sound of Joy Is Enlightening (Candlewick, May 2014). That link is here.

Last week, I wrote (here) about two new picture books that make me laugh (with them, not at them) — Katy Beebe’s Brother Hugo and the Bear, illustrated by S. D. Schindler, and Dominique Roques’ Sleep Tight, Anna Banana!, illustrated by Alexis Dormal (originally published in 2012 as Ana Ana Douce Nuit).

Below is some art from each book.

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Mark Pett, that is.

I like saying “Pett.” I like to imagine that when Mark Pett walks into a bar, his friends yell, “PETT”, à la Norm Peterson.

Anyway. Last week at Kirkus, I wrote about Mark’s newest picture book, The Girl and the Bicycle (Simon & Schuster, April 2014). That is here.

I like to read reviews. I read one reviewer refer to the “Capra-esque” worlds of Pett’s books. I like that. Capra-esque could be entirely too much, depending on the illustrator, but Mark Pett does it just right.

Here are some more spreads from the book.

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Speaking of BookPage, as I did just yesterday, my review of Shaun Tan’s The Rules of Summer (Scholastic, April 2014) happens to be up. It is here. And I’m not even going to do a follow-up post with art, because the fine folks at BookPage included some spreads in the review. I love it when they do that.

You’ll also notice that they have chosen the book as a Children’s Top Pick.

Until tomorrow …

(NOTE: My post title is because Shaun Tan’s new book is full of rules, most beginning with “never,” and I just read an email from author-illustrator Zachariah OHora, in which I told him that, sadly, I will not be at next weekend’s wonderful children’s book festival in Knoxville, which I attend annually but I have a wedding and a graduation to go to this year instead, and he will be there and I will miss meeting him in person and he responded with “WHAT THE HENKES?” and then my coffee nearly got snorted up my nose from laughing ’cause I guess I’m easily amused when it comes to children’s lit jokes and I wasn’t sure what to name this post so I went with that and this is the longest run-on sentence ever in the history of the blog, I bet, and I’m waaaay off the point. Read Shaun Tan’s book. It’s rather brilliant.)

The basics of reproduction before I’ve even had my coffee yet? That’s a 7-Imp first.

Over at BookPage, my review of Sophie Blackall’s The Baby Tree (Nancy Paulsen Books, May 2014) has been posted. If you wanna read all about it, head over to their always informative and entertaining site. The review is here.

I follow up today with a visit from Sophie and some art from the book.

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It’s also the first Sunday of the month, so today I welcome a student illustrator. Her name is Elizabeth Lilly, and she’s here to tell us all about her work, as well as share some of her art.

So, without further ado …

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