Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

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Over at Tennessee’s Chapter 16, I’ve a Q&A with author Rita Lorraine Hubbard about her picture book biography, The Oldest Student: How Mary Walker Learned to Read (Schwartz & Wade, January 2020), illustrated by Oge Mora.

That Q&A is here.

And here at 7-Imp today, I’m including some of Mora’s illustrations from the book.

Enjoy!

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Happy new year, Imps!

The Horn Book has posted my review of Jon Agee’s I Want a Dog (Dial). Did any of you see this one back in September? Agee, I think, is a picture book master.

That review is here, if you’d like to read more about the book.

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Happy winter, everyone! It hardly feels like it here in Tennessee — it is rather depressingly warm here (depressing, if you look forward to winter and hope for snow, as I do) — but maybe our temps will drop soon. To celebrate winter, I’m sharing this image today from Phoebe Wahl. It was 2013 in this post that she came and visited as an “up-and-coming” illustrator, and since then she’s created some beautiful books. She’s one of my favorite illustrators.

This piece of art is called Lady Winter, and I believe Phoebe made it for a wall calendar back in 2015. I thank her for allowing me to share it here today.

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Happy holidays to all from 7-Imp! This image was created by author-illustrator Robert Neubecker.

May your holiday season be a peaceful and relaxed one.

See you Sunday!

 
Did you all know that children’s book illustrator Floyd Cooper did a Kwanzaa stamp for the U.S. Postal Service? I did not.

This is not brand-new. It was a stamp released in October of last year, but it’s new to me. I missed this last year but saw it this week. Happy surprise. So, I’m sharing it here today.

Here’s more information about the stamp.

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Early sketch and final art: “All the long echoes sing the same delight /
This shortest day / As promise wakens in the sleeping land.”
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At the risk of appearing super lazy, I’m doing today what I did on Thursday — I’m sending you over to another blog to read something. Megan Dowd Lambert has a post up over at Calling Caldecott today about Susan Cooper’s The Shortest Day, illustrated by Carson Ellis. The post is, of course, focused on the book’s illustrations. I love the deep dive that Megan takes into this book.

That post is here.

Here at 7-Imp, I’ve got some spreads from the book, and Carson also sent along some early sketches.

Enjoy!

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“Upstairs, alone in his suite, surrounded by rough drafts and scribbled notes on yellow legal pads, Martin saw Rosa, Fannie Lou, Emmett, Medgar, the children of Birmingham, and so many others — their faces forever seared into his memory.”
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I’m sending you over to the Horn Book’s Calling Caldecott today to read Martha V. Parravano’s superb post on Barry Wittenstein’s A Place to Land: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Speech That Inspired a Nation (Neal Porter/Holiday House, August 2019), illustrated by Jerry Pinkney. There is so much to love about this book, and Martha captures a lot of it (with regard to the illustrations) in that post. It is here. Happy reading.

Below are a couple more spreads from the book. …

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Hello, imps! I don’t have a picture book for you today, but I do have this lovely piece of art from author-illustrator Dasha Tolstikova. She made this in honor of St. Lucia’s Day, a Scandinavian holiday celebrated this past Friday.

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“‘Hi,’ he said, greeting the snowball with his nose.”

 
Little Mole’s Wish (Schwartz & Wade, November 2019), originally published in South Korea, is the U.S. debut for author-illustrator Sang-Keun Kim, who lives in Seoul. (I’m not precisely sure what this book’s relationship is to Little Mole’s Worry, evidently named the Best Picture Book of the Year in 2015 in Korea.) I’ve got some spreads here today from this gentle winter story (which Kirkus named one of their Best Picture Books of 2019), translated by Chi-Young Kim.

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Power-hungry, tyrannical Doctor X-Ray, complete with an X-ray blaster and an indestructible battle suit, descends upon a busy shopping mall. He’s a mwahaha-villain of the dastardliest sort. Everyone flees in terror, except one little girl, who asks …

“Why?”

And repeatedly asks “why?” As young children are wont to do.

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