Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

“We don’t get to keep everyone we love who has ever lived.”
— From Death Is Stupid

 

“It’s in your nature to want to know. …”
— From Tell Me About Sex, Grandma
(Click to enlarge spread)

 
This morning over at Kirkus, I’ve got marching and protesting (and children’s books, of course) on the mind. That is here.

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Last week, I wrote here about two books in Anastasia Higginbotham’s Ordinary Terrible Things series — Death Is Stupid, released last year, and Tell Me About Sex, Grandma, coming to shelves in April of this year. (Both books are from Feminist Press.)

I’m following up with some spreads from each book today.

Until Sunday …

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“Carrie Harrison lived at the White House when electric lights were first installed there—and she was scared she’d get zapped by the switches. …”

 
Last week at Kirkus, I talked here to both author Ruby Shamir and illustrator Matt Faulkner about What’s the Big Deal About First Ladies, released this month by Philomel. Today, I’m following up with some spreads from the book.

Enjoy!

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“But every night I go abroad
Afar into the land of Nod.”
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A classic children’s poem by Robert Louis Stevenson is given new life in this picture book adaptation, illustrated by London-based illustrator Robert Frank Hunter.

The Land of Nod (Flying Eye Books) will arrive on shelves next month. In the illustrations, Hunter gives a young boy, the one who nightly visits the dream-world of Nod, a leg cast and set of crutches. The boy looks longingly out the window at children playing, but since he can’t join them, he retreats into the world of his imagination at night. His dreamscape is populated by the items in his bedroom and the rest of his home, all of them mammoth in size and the playground of his adventures. In one spread showing his entrance into the Land of Nod, he leaps across so many spectral items in his home — a chair, books, a piece of furniture, a vase. They form an otherwordly bridge of sorts, one awash in the cool blues of night. The toys on his bed join him on his surreal adventure. The mundane becomes the fantastical here. Read the rest of this entry �

Illustration by Shadra Strickland: “Son, it is all too easy to let /
this world’s bullies puncture your / pride …”
(Click to enlarge)

 
This morning over at Kirkus, I’ve got two new picture books that aren’t afraid to speak frankly to children. That is here.

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Last week, I wrote here about Nikki Grimes’s One Last Word: Wisdom from the Harlem Renaissance (Bloomsbury, January 2017). Here today at 7-Imp, I’ve got a selection of illustrations from the book.

Enjoy!

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I’ve got an interview over at Kirkus today with Ruby Shamir and Matt Faulkner, the author and illustrator of What’s the Big Deal About First Ladies, released this month by Philomel. We talk about leaving the book’s final page empty until the election results came in, what surprising things they learned in their research, and much more.

That is here. I’ll have more art from the book here at 7-Imp next week.

Until tomorrow …

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WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL ABOUT FIRST LADIES. Copyright © 2017 by Ruby Shamir. Illustrations © 2017 by Matt Faulkner and reproduced by permission of the publisher, Philomel Books, New York.

— Some acorn coffee from Kaya Doi’s Chirri & Chirra

 

— A dusky dolphin says hello to a southern right whale dolphin in
Martin Brown’s Lesser Spotted Animals: The Coolest Creatures You’ve Never Heard Of

 

— From Alessandro Sanna’s Pinocchio: The Origin Story

 

That post title was going to be “Some Art That Fell Through the Cracks of the Holidays,” but something about that sounds a bit obscene.

About four weeks ago, I guess it was, I wrote here over at Kirkus about My Children’s Book Ghost File, or a handful of books I wish I had written about last year during their time of publication. Better late than never, right?

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This morning over at Kirkus, I’ve got Nikki Grimes’ excellent new poetry collection. That is here.

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Today here at 7-Imp, I’ve got some of Brian Pinkney’s illustrations from Patricia C. McKissack’s Let’s Clap, Jump, Sing & Shout; Dance, Spin & Turn It Out! Games, Songs & Stories from an African American Childhood (Schwartz & Wade, January 2016) — as a follow-up to last week’s column.

Enjoy! Read the rest of this entry �

 
As a follow-up to my chat with author-illustrator Greg Pizzoli at Kirkus last week (where I learned what Rubylith is), I’ve got a bit more of his process images from Margaret Wise Brown’s North, South, East, West, coming to shelves this month from Harper.

Enjoy!

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Coming in early February from Jonah Winter and Jeanette Winter is a picture book for young children about the team of people who worked under cover to bring the world the atomic bomb, The Secret Project (Beach Lane Books).

I wonder: Have we seen this topic covered in picture books before? There’s Umberto Eco’s The Bomb and the General, published in 1966 and illustrated by Eugenio Carmi, but that’s fiction and hardly close. There’s Toshi Maruki’s Hiroshima No Pika, published in 1982, but that’s about the bombing itself and the destruction it caused. Right about now is when I wish my fingers had access to the kind of powerful database—that is, the kind I used to have when working in a library—that could do this search for me, a search beyond a Web search, to see what informational picture books may be out there. Still, I imagine any that may exist are geared at slightly older readers—such as books like Clive A. Lawton’s Hiroshima (2004), clearly aimed at middle-schoolers—while the Winters’ collaboration is squarely aimed at kindergarten to third-graders (at least according to the publisher). Read the rest of this entry �

 
Dear Imps, I know it’s 2017 and all that, but let’s look back one more time to 2016 and the publication (in March) of author-illustrator Anne Hunter’s Cricket Song (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). It’s a lovely book, and it need not go by unblogged about.

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