Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

I’ve got sidekicks on the mind this week and started a short picture book round-up yesterday with Mighty Max and his sidekick, Power Pinky. Here are a couple more . . .

Move over, Harold. Meet Lucy, who also has the power to create a world of her own by simply drawing it. This is one of the best picture books I’ve seen this year — not to mention the celebration-of-books that this title is makes it a perfect book to highlight during this, Children’s Book Week. What we have here is a young girl who simply can’t get to sleep: “She could not, would not, did not want to go to bed.” Deciding she wants to draw, she creates a monster with an oval body, square head, rectangle legs, circle eyes, and extra added triangular spiky scales on his back. And power to Lucy: What does she immediately say to her new creation? “You don’t scare me . . . Let’s play!” So, the playing ensues: building castles, flying airplanes (which frightens our new monster a wee bit), marching in a parade, skipping, jumping, crawling, you-name-it — which all, of course, tires Lucy out. Turning the tables on the child/caregiver relationship and the usual bedtime struggles, Wing has Lucy try every tactic she can think of to get Monster to bed and to fulfill his needs: She draws him a bed, but he refuses to go to sleep; when he screams that he’s hungry, she draws him a mountain of meatballs; and when he yells “Potty,” she draws a bathroom. Read the rest of this entry �

Ah, sidekicks. So under-appreciated. So underpaid. I’ve got a stack ‘o’ picture books I’ve been wanting to talk about for a while (I’m in catch-up mode now, so here go some picture book posts, starting today and as often as I can) that in one way or another feature a sidekick or an, uh, sidekick-esque character. And we just have to start things off with the most sidekick-y one of all, the new Max and Pinky title from Maxwell Eaton III, The Adventures of Max and Pinky: Superheroes (Knopf Books for Young Readers; October 2007; review copy).

I reviewed the first Max and Pinky title here in March of this year. This was our introduction to the duo — the bald-headed, Charlie-Brown-esque Max who loves to hang out with his best bud, Pinky, a piglet who lives for marshmallows. They love adventure, and they’re tight, y’all. As I mentioned in that review, Kirkus Reviews nailed the book’s charm: “a warm affirmation of budship.” And Eaton’s style is spare, rendered economically and with bold colors (mostly blues and greens) and thick black outlines, all colored digitally. Spare but humorous. There are lots of laughs — mostly in the form of their bubble-speak asides — in that title.

And in this new one. Read the rest of this entry �

Hi. No blogger interview this week, ’cause next week will be the Winter Blog Blast Tour in which we here at 7-Imp will feature five interviews with some children’s and YA authors whom we respect and admire a great deal, so WAHOO! But we gotta prep for those interviews, so no blogger feature today. Sorry. And none next week, since we’ll be interviewing authors each and every day, but the week after that . . . well, we will feature none author than Andrea or Mark (whoever sends responses first!) of Just One More Book!! Excellent.

Today’s post is a quick one to show you the book cover images, title info, and a bit of an excerpt from each review for the eight picture books I covered this week at ForeWord Magazine in their “Shelf Space” column. I mentioned this last Friday, but I gotsta gotsta gotsta see my book cover images, especially when we’re talking picture books (and the Shelf Space column doesn’t include book covers), so here they are in case you’re interested in reading about them. My write-up this week is called “Size Matters — And So Do Your Friends and Neighbors,” and if you’re wondering what I mean and which book goes where (size? friends and neighbors?), why, you’ll just have to go read.

Read the rest of this entry �

Eisha and I are about to complete our month-long guest-blogging gig for ForeWord Magazine. This week, I wrote a picture book round-up and it’s entitled, “Size Matters -– And So Do Your Friends and Neighbors” (and we’ll be writing for them next week as well). Lately, I’ve had my mind on picture books whose illustrators, in one way or another, play around with the notions of size and perspective, as well as the abundant number of books out and about now which focus on one’s community and circle of friends. So, I chose eight of them to review. It’s posted this morning over at “Shelf Space,” ForeWord’s column where we are guest-blogging until the end of this month (I’ll have to plan on a Monday post with all the great book cover images).

One of the books I reviewed is the fabulous Monster Hug! by David Ezra Stein, whose snowflake is also being featured today at HipWriterMama’s site. I began my review of that book thusly: “I think an up-and-coming picture book illustrator we all can get most excited about this year, other than the obscenely talented Jonathan Bean, is David Ezra Stein.” Yes, my love for Stein’s art work is strong (and fortunately for us and all our readers, he agreed to let us feature some of his illustrations on a Sunday in November. Swoon! Swoon!).

And for this Poetry Friday, since my mind is on monsters and it’s nearly Halloween and since Eisha and I have been doing some writing for the Poetry Foundation and playing around in their archive of children’s poems, I am going to share this Halloween monster poem by Kenn Nesbitt:

When the musical contest for monsters convened,
the Wolfman was howling and played like a fiend.
Then Dracula jammed, but flew into a rage
when Frankenstein’s torch singing lit up the stage.

The Mummy, he rapped with the aid of a band,
but stopped when The Blob ate his microphone stand.
The Blob, by the way, also swallowed The Fly.
(I don’t know why he swallowed The Fly.)

Heh. You can read the rest here. And for another laugh, here’s another Nesbitt poem, “Halloween Party,” at the aforementioned Poetry Foundation site.

Don’t you just want to read those aloud to some late elementary/early middle school students? Enjoy. And happy Poetry Friday (and almost-Halloween)!

eisha: OMIGOD OMIGOD OMIGOD!!! I cannot believe we are ABOUT TO MEET PUNK FARM IN PERSON!!! Jules, how’s my hair? Do I have anything in my teeth?

Jules: You’re fine. I am, like, shaking, though, I’m so flippin’ nervous! God, what if I throw up? What if I throw up ON THE BAND???

eisha: You will not throw up. You can’t throw up, because then they’ll leave, and we won’t score this interview, and this interview is the coolest thing we’ve ever done on our little blog. Honestly, how many people can say they’ve interviewed a fictional farm animal band? With a TOTALLY HOT BASS PLAYER? This is my chance to… I mean, this could totally make our careers. Or whatever.

Dude, is this even happening? Maybe I’m dreaming it. Hey, pinch me?

Jules: . . .

eisha: OW!!! I didn’t say draw blood… Whoa, do you hear that? Geez, ever heard of a muffler, people?

Jules: (looking out the window) That’s their van! They’re here!! THEY’RE HERE!!!

Jules & eisha: (jumping up and down in that annoying fangirl way) SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jules: Okayokayokay… be cool… breathe…

eisha: Here they come… Okay, we can handle this… We’re professionals… whew…

Okay.

You ready?

Jules: Oh yeah.

Let’s rock this interview.

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Back in May of this year, I decided that — instead of simply listing our seven kicks each week here at 7-Imp, a little tradition we began in March — we could feature an illustrator each Sunday as well (our 7-Imp art gallery, if you will, featuring the illustrators who have graced our site each Sunday thus far, is here). In mid-August, one of those illustrators who agreed to send us some art work was none other than author/illustrator G. Brian Karas, whose work we here at 7-Imp have adored over many years. To boot, he sent us a spread from Today and Today, an anthology of haiku by Kobayashi Issa, which Karas illustrated. It was released this March by Scholastic and reviewed here by Yours Truly (and the spread he sent was one I had specifically requested, as it is my favorite from the book, so . . . well, as a Southerner, I suppose I’m required to say bless his heart. Really, I was so grateful. You can see the spread below in the interview. It’s gorgeous).

If you haven’t experienced Today and Today yet, go treat yourself. Karas selected twenty-two of his favorite Issa poems to tell the story of a year in the life of a family — a year in which they will experience the loss of their beloved grandfather but also the renewal that comes from healing after loss. Dividing the entries into seasons, it’s a comforting and poignant look at life’s many cycles — and the little miracles in our day-to-day lives. Booklist wrote in their starred review, “Karas uses the haiku of the eighteenth-century Japanese poet Issa to limn a gentle, understated tale of one family over a year. The translations, from several different but fairly recent sources, do not always hew to the traditional syllabic format of haiku, but they are simply and clearly crafted . . . In a note, Karas explains that like Issa’s haiku, he tries to ‘convey the precise feeling of each moment.’ He succeeds beautifully.”

So, after we featured his art work in mid-August at that kicks list, I was itchin’ to ask for an interview; I simply could not sign off without asking if he would be interested. I was a little bit intimidated, ’cause it’s G. Brian Karas. Extremely talented. Very prolific. Did I mention we’re fans? I’m very happy and relieved that he agreed to the interview. Read the rest of this entry �

Start trying to analyze the humor in a book — or even sometimes why you think it succeeds to make you laugh in the first place — and you’ll, likely, bore the pants off your blog readers. Suffice it to say, then, that Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith’s latest creation, Cowboy & Octopus, has the type of extremely droll humor that makes me laugh with an annoying, unrestrained glee. And will seven-year-olds do the same? Hoo boy, you betcha they will. These seven very short stories of an unforgettable duo really nail that rather elusive, dry humor of both early- and late-elementary students (dang, as Cowboy might say, even early middle schoolers).

On the title page spread, we see right away why it is that the stances, body language, and facial expressions of both Cowboy and Octopus never change throughout the book: There lies a pair of child’s scissors; a bound collection of paper-doll cut-outs, entitled Western Heroes Vol II; and a comic book, sitting open, with a panel of an octopus, exclaiming “AHOY!!” . . . but that octopus has been removed from the book with those scissors, too. Our heroic duo have been plucked from their respective paper homes and have been made the characters in their own adventures, at the hands of a scissors-happy child (whom you never see), ready to storytell. Even the fact that their stances never change, particularly Cowboy’s, makes me laugh (there he is, all stiff-legged on a seesaw in his cowboy hat and fringed cowboy shirt and handkerchief-’round-his-neck, with his hand extended, saying “YEE-HAW!” with that static smile — but there he is doing the same thing on every other page. Visit the duo’s blog to see what I mean). This book is just funny as hell. Read the rest of this entry �

What is “Bradbury Day”?, you ask. Well, Colleen Mondor at Chasing Ray suggested that — in honor of the upcoming trick-or-treating holiday, which is all things spooky — we consider a favorite creepy-esque, Halloween-esque, scary-esque novel or story or picture book or etcetera (for any age readers) and write about it. Anything that celebrates the idea of The October Country, Ray Bradbury’s 1955 collection of twenty macabre short stories (and why that? ‘Cause Colleen is a hugely huge Bradbury fan, as she made clear in our May interview with her). And if you visit her site today, she’ll have a list of other bloggers who are highlighting their favorite spooky books on this Bradbury Day 2007.

You may remember that we recently interviewed Adam Rex, and we’ve made it very clear repeatedly that we’re big ‘ol honkin’ fans of his books. So, it may be no surprise that for Bradbury Day we want to re-visit and highlight Adam’s fabulous anthology of original poems, published last year by Harcourt, entitled Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich: and Other Stories You’re Sure to Like, Because They’re All About Monsters, And Some of Them Are Also About Food. You Like Food, Don’t You? Well, All Right Then. And Adam gave us permission to use Frankenwaiter up there to help us celebrate this book.

And then, even better yet, he gave us a sneak peek at the first poem of the new book he’s working on, and it’s entitled . . . Read the rest of this entry �

Do you know how. very. long I’ve been sitting on this post? Oh my, perhaps months now. We’ve been busy here at 7-Imp. Better late than never, though. And there are oh-so, EVER-SO many more picture books I want to talk about (who can add about five more hours to my day? Anyone? Anyone? Email me pronto!), but let’s take it one day at a time, shall we? Onwards then . . .

The grown-up Horse, Sheep, and Pig want to dance the night away — some bouncing, some jigging, some leaping — while their young ‘uns sleep . . . or so they think. Those wee ones are, indeed, watching all the cavorting from their hay beds. Who can sleep on such a gorgeous night anyway? But eventually the adults hang it up to hit the hay, so to speak, since nothing seems to go as planned: Horse is such a dancin’ fool that she sets the straw on fire; Sheep jumps and leaps so high that she gets stuck on a beam high above; and Pig jigs so hard that she falls down. After they fall asleep, the young ones head out to dance by the light of the moon and stay until the sun rises in the sky. Hutchins’ sparkly, bright gouache illustrations are eye-catching, especially with her dark, beautiful night-time palette, brightened with those splashes of cheery pinks and crimsons which you see on the cover there. The Horn Book review called this one “a pleasant romp, a natural for dramatic play.” It is, indeed. And what I really love is that depiction of the parents’ urges to get out already and live it up a little while the children sleep — as well as the latter’s awareness of it and secret joy in watching it all unfold. A good story-time read-aloud choice. And I’ll line up for a Pat Hutchins title any day. Read the rest of this entry �

Jules: ARE YOU READY TO ROCK, Y’ALL?!!! Okay, that was nerdy, but we’ve already established I’m a punk-hole. Moving right along then . . .

We’re ready to rock here at 7-Imp, because author/illustrator Jarrett J. Krosoczka has stopped by for our kicks this week, and he brought along some illustrations from his new book. You may have seen our co-review from this week of the Punk Farm sequel, Punk Farm on Tour (to be released in October by Knopf Books for Young Readers). In that co-review we also announced Jarrett’s creation of the new Punk Farm Space site, which you must go see if you’re also a Punk Farm fan.

Eisha and I have made it clear many times before here at 7-Imp (such as here, here, here, here, here, and here — whew) that we’re fans of Punk Farm and Krosoczka’s other books as well, so needless to say, we’re excited and it’s been rather like Punk Farm Week here at our site.

The illustration at the top is Punk Farm backstage at their recent concert in Maine (Sheep has just figured out what song to perform first for the eager crowd, having been inspired by their tour van), and the illustration below it is right after the show. The gang’s ready to roll and head out to their next gig in Florida, but Pig asks them to hold up just a bit. (Fame is getting to Pig just a bit in this new title). There are two more illustrations from the book at our co-review. Here’s what Jarrett had to say about the illustrations and the new book: Read the rest of this entry �