Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Last week at Kirkus, I chatted briefly with the very talented Barbara McClintock about her illustrations for Ellen Bryan Obed’s Twelve Kinds of Ice (Houghton Mifflin, November 2012), as well as her artwork for Leave Your Sleep, a selection of classic children’s poetry first adapted to music in 2010 by Natalie Merchant. (This, I must add, is a CD my children and I have enjoyed immensely. To say that Merchant’s meticulously-researched adaptations of these poems to music are impressive would be 2010’s biggest understatement.) This beautiful new picture book collection was released by Frances Foster Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux earlier this month.

Today, I follow up with some artwork and images from Barbara, mostly from Leave Your Sleep. Barbara shares here her inspirations for some of the artwork, as well as some sketches and even some home and studio shots. I thank her for sharing.

I hope all my American blog readers have a great Thanksgiving … Eat nine kinds of pie. Read the rest of this entry �

Who has read James & Joseph Bruchac’s Rabbit’s Snow Dance, illustrated by Jeff Newman and released early this month by Dial? Raise your hands, please. If not, may I boldly recommend tonight that you find a copy and experience it? There. I just did.

This picture book, sub-titled A Traditional Iroquois Story, is a read-aloud treat. Telling the story, a traditional Native American fable (ever-so perfect for winter), of why Rabbit’s once long, beautiful tail is now stubby-short, the Bruchacs (father and son, both storytellers) incorporate engaging chants and rhythms into the text (“I will make it snow, AZIKANAPO! I will make it snow, AZIKANAPO!” and “EE-OOO! Thump! Thump! EE-OOO! Thump! Thump! YO, YO, YO! YO, YO, YO!”), daring you not to tap your foot as you read. I don’t want to give away the story here, but there’s a lot of humor here, especially given our protagonist’s excessive pride.

The artwork here is by Jeff Newman, who visited for breakfast in 2010. I always like to see what Newman is up to. There are some final spreads at the bottom of this post, as well as some sketches, storyboards, and dummy images, so you can get a good sense of Newman’s style with this one. Check this out, too, something I wish so super bad I’d written: The Publishers Weekly review of Rabbit’s Snow Dance wrote, “Newman’s influences are comparatively modern—think Mary Blair with a touch of Hanna-Barbera.” Right? RIGHT. That fits. That works. It totally and entirely does. You can see this below in the images he shares.

[Note: As for the three different storyboard versions below, Jeff writes: “… Storyboards 2 and 3 are evolutions of the same approach, which ended up in the final book. However, the first storyboard shows an entirely different version of the book, which would have essentially been the same scene repeated throughout the book. So, rather than the scene changing, we’d see the animals moving over the landscape, and how the weather changes it.”]

Enjoy the art, and I thank Jeff for sharing today. Read the rest of this entry �

The best thing that came out of writing about Elin Kelsey’s You Are Stardust, illustrated by Soyeon Kim, which I did here at 7-Imp in September, was that I met Jayme McGowan. (Well, I cyber-met her, though I wish I could say we had actual coffee together.) She contacted me after reading that post to tell me she also works in cut paper/3D art, and then I visited her site and knew I’d want to feature her at 7-Imp some day very soon.

Today’s the day!

I’m going to give it over to Jayme now, since she tells us all about herself and her work below, as well as her most exciting news — that her debut picture book is to-come soon. I thank her for visiting 7-Imp today … Read the rest of this entry �

Today at Kirkus, I write about Schwartz & Wade Books’ new I Have a Dream with the exquisite oil paintings of Kadir Nelson.

That link is here.

Until Sunday …

…today at the Kirkus Book Blog Network, I chat with her about her illustrations for Ellen Bryan Obed’s Twelve Kinds of Ice, as well as the new picture book adaptation of Natalie Merchant’s CD Project, Leave Your Sleep.

The Q&A is here, and next week at 7-Imp I’ll have more art from McClintock.

Enjoy.

Last week over at Kirkus, I wrote about Amy Hest’s newest picture book, The Reader, illustrated by Lauren Castillo. If you missed it and want to know more about this beautiful book, you can head on over to that link. Today, I’m following up with some art from the book, as well as early sketches and studies from Lauren.

Enjoy. Read the rest of this entry �

That’s author/illustrator Oliver Jeffers pictured below (sans one of his usual great moustaches). He joined me here for a breakfast interview in 2010 and, if you’ll just indulge my inner fifth-grader, his response to the Pivot curse-word question still remains my favorite of all time, given the tantalizing mystery that it is. (I’m sorry, but I love a good, creative curse, so I’ve been thinking about that one for over two years now.)

I’m taking a moment today to briefly share a bit of art from Jeffers’ newest picture book, released last week from Philomel, This Moose Belongs to Me. And that’s because I think he’s one of the best author/illustrators at work today, and I find his books consistently good. (Did you all note that his The Hueys in The New Sweater, released in May of this year from Philomel, was chosen as a New York Times Best Illustrated Book of 2012?)

See that boy up above? That’s Wilfred. He owns a moose. “He hadn’t always owned a moose. The moose came to him a while ago and he knew, just KNEW that it was meant to be his.” He names him Marcel.

Wilfred might be cute, but he can be pretty demanding. He’s generally a good pet-owner, to be sure, but he also has many rules for pet ownership (which are laid out in Jeffers’ distinctive handwriting, a break from the book’s font). These are pretty funny, things such as: “Not making too much noise while Wilfred plays his record collection”; “Maintaining a certain proximity to home,” which is actually a subsection of Rule 7; and “Knocking down things that are out of Wilfred’s reach.” Pictured above we see Marcel blatantly disregarding Rule 7 itself: “Going whichever way Wilfred wants to go.”

Problem is, not only does Marcel sometimes deviate from the rules, but he may not actually be Wilfred’s to begin with. Read the rest of this entry �

Ciao, dear Imps.

In the early 1960s, a picture book about books was released, which evidently was selected as one of the best fifty books of the year by the American Institute of Graphic Arts. You can see a page from it above. Written by Murray McCain and illustrated by American graphic designer and illustrator John Alcorn (who, I just read, designed the opening titles for several Federico Fellini films), Books! has been re-released this year by an independent publishing house in Italy, called Topipittori, after the University of Milan acquired Alcorn’s drawings and materials. Here’s the low-down, and below is the same page you see at the top of this post, but in the new Italian edition: Read the rest of this entry �

This morning over at the Kirkus Book Blog Network, I write about the newest picture book from Amy Hest, The Reader, illustrated by Lauren Castillo. That link is here.

Last week, I wrote about Mary Logue’s Sleep Like a Tiger, illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski, and that link is here.

Today, I’ve got more art from the book from Ms. Zagarenski. I’ll start with a set of sketches that she sent, as well as some final spreads from the book, but Pamela also sent details from her elaborate spreads, what she told me are “some understudies from the book … the back-up crew… I love them just as much.” Pamela added:

I chose to send you mostly enlarged details from the paintings inside — subtle things one might not see, like the four-leaf clover, just for the viewer who finds it, in the paws of the tiger, “gaining his strength” …

Note: Pamela’s website is here, and here is another one of her artistic adventures.

Enjoy the art today. Read the rest of this entry �

Last week at the Kirkus Book Blog Network, I chatted briefly with author/illustrator Matthew Cordell, pictured above, about his latest picture book, hello! hello! (Hyperion, October 2012). I’ve got the interview in its entirety today, and Matt’s also here to share some early jacket covers, studies, early illustrations, and a bit of final art.

If you read 7-Imp at all or even occasionally just visit, you know that I fell hard for this book this past summer, when I was lucky enough to see an early copy. I still love it fiercely. What I wrote at Kirkus last week is this:

This is picture book-making at its best. Using masterful pacing, economical yet robust lines, and a satisfying explosion of color, Cordell tells a story that could be the story of most 21st-century American families, frequently plugged into the online world no matter their socioeconomic stratum. A young girl, trying to connect with family members more connected to their hand-held, electronic devices, heads outside and gets rapturously lost in nature and the world of her imagination. Cordell pulls it off with delicacy, a sophisticated restraint and a satisfying elegance. Oh, and humor to boot.

By all means, if you haven’t seen a copy yet, I highly recommend it. (And if you really do want to read it, I should add, you can even get free art from Matt right now. You can head over to this post at his blog to find out more. Signed bookplates! Signed postcards! Signed proofs! And signed prints! Can’t get much better than that.)

Here’s the full interview with Matt, along with lots of images. I thank him for visiting
7-Imp again … Read the rest of this entry �