Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

It’s the first Sunday of the month, when I typically feature student illustrators or those brand-new to illustration, but I’m breaking the rules today.

And that’s ’cause, earlier this week, I was chatting with author-illustrator Carin Berger about how she turned in the art for her upcoming book, Finding Spring (Greenwillow Books), which is about a bear who doesn’t want to hibernate and, instead, goes in search of Spring. The art is what Carin describes as “somewhat 3D”—like her most recent illustrated children’s book, Jack Prelutsky’s Stardines Swim High Across the Sky: And Other Poems (Greenwillow Books, February 2013)—but “more like tiny toy theaters or Victorian raree shows.”

I haven’t seen an early copy of this book, which won’t be on shelves for a while, but I always enjoy reading about Carin and how she creates her artwork. In fact, Carin and I did this back in January of last year, way before Stardines came out. She visited back then to share images of her dioramas, her three-dimensional art from that book. Hmm. Maybe I can just make it a 7-Imp tradition to check in with Carin at the first (or nearly first) of every year. I’m a fan of her artwork. That’d make me happy anyway.

So, without further ado, here’s Carin, and I thank her for sharing. Read the rest of this entry �

Those of you who follow the wonderful blog Calling Caldecott over at the Horn Book site will recognize today’s book, since they recently posted about it. In fact, I first read about it over there and felt inspired to feature it here.

Written by Susan L. Roth and Cindy Trumbore and illustrated by Roth, Parrots Over Puerto Rico (LEE & LOW, September 2013) is an unusual book in that it serves as both a history of the island of Puerto Rico, as well as a history of the Puerto Rican parrot. This vertically-oriented book—and that’s the cover above, text-less and all—tells how they “lived on this island for millions of years, and then they nearly vanished from the earth forever.” The authors go back as far as 5000 BCE to document the first people on the island and those people, the Taínos in 800 CE, who named the parrrots iguaca after the cries the creatures make. As the authors continue to lay out with great clarity the history of the island and those who came to settle there, they highlight the threats the birds have faced over the years, including red-tailed hawks, black rats from settlers’ ships, honeybees, deforestation, hunters and trappers, birds called pearly-eyed thrashers, and more. By 1967, well after the island became a territory of the United States, only twenty-four parrots lived in El Yunque, a national forest in northeastern Puerto Rico:

Puerto Ricans looked up and saw that their iguacas were almost gone. People had nearly caused the parrots to become extinct. Now people started to help the parrots stay alive.

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“…Who set their misfit table / For a feast that never ends.”
– Sketches and final art
(Click each to enlarge)

 
Mmm. I want some of what they’re having for breakfast.

Hi, all. I’m doing one of those BookPage numbers today. What I mean is: I reviewed a new picture book over at BookPage, and I could just leave it at that. But you all know I get kind of twitchy when I don’t share art from the books about which I write, so I always follow up those BookPage reviews (and my weekly Kirkus columns) with art and (if I’m lucky) sketches from the books — over here at 7-Imp, that is. It’s just an extra, Art-Fan step for me—no one asks me to do it, but I just can’t help it—so humor me.

The book I reviewed is Emily Winfield Martin’s Dream Animals, published by Random House in October. So, to read all about it, head over here to BookPage’s wonderful site.

And then come back here, if you’re so inclined, to take in the sketches Emily’s sharing, as well as some final art from the book.

Enjoy! Read the rest of this entry �

“DJ Kool Herc noticed that dancers danced crazy hard during the breaks in the song when the lyrics ended and the music bumped and thumped. Herc knew that’s what dancers wanted so he plugged in two turntables instead of one. He put the same record on both turntables. He set it up so that when once record ended its break, he could flip over to the other turntable and play it again. Doing this over and over, he made a ten-second break last for ten, fifteen, even twenty minutes or more.”
(Click to enlarge spread)

Today I’ve got the artwork of illustrator Theodore Taylor III. Taylor is an artist, designer, and photographer, who lives in Washington, D.C., and this is his picture book debut. It’s Laban Carrick Hill’s biography of Clive Campbell, When the Beat Was Born (Roaring Brook, August 2013). Campbell was also known as DJ Kool Herc and is the DJ (born in Jamaica but raised in the Bronx) considered the creator of hip hop.

Hill opens the biography with Clive as a young, music-loving child, dancing around the house to vinyl records. His childhood hero was a DJ, named King George, who threw large neighborhood house parties. Though Clive—who desperately wanted to be a DJ—was too young to attend, he’d watch King George set up for the parties. (“Clive had never seen so many records.”)

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Good morning to all. I’m doing something similar this week (to what I did last week). I wrote a review for the fine folks at BookPage of Joan Holub’s Little Red Writing (Chronicle Books, September 2013), illustrated by Melissa Sweet. And since that review is up over at their site, I thought I’d link to it and share some art from the book. Melissa even sent some early sketches from the book, also posted below.

So, to read about this very fun book (special heads-up to teachers of writing in the elementary grades), head on over here. And the images are below.

I thank Melissa for sharing the art and sketches today.

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I’ve got some art from Eric Carle to brighten your Sunday morning.

Recently, my review of Eric’s newest picture book, Friends (Philomel), was posted at BookPage. As I understand it, it’s slated for a November release. The review—and more about the book—is here, and I’m following up today with some illustrations from it.

Enjoy the art. The two spreads below (mountain and forest spreads) are definitely worth clicking-to-enlarge.

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“The Tiny King ate alone at a big, big table.
A huge feast of delicious food was laid out every day.
But the Tiny King was just one tiny person.
He could never finish so much food all by himself.”
(Click to enlarge spread)

 
“Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there was a Tiny King.”

That’s the opening to Taro Miura’s The Tiny King, originally published in Japan in 2010 but released here in the States by Candlewick just last week. This is the story of how one very diminutive ruler lived alone in a huge castle, save his “army of big soldiers with long spears and stern faces.” As you can see above, he eats alone at a big, big table — and, in fact, he does just about everything alone.

Things like giant bathtubs are no fun, if you’re splishing and splashing by yourself (even if there are water fountains). A big white horse might be some company, but not if you’re so tiny that you fall off every time you try to ride it.

You get the idea. Read the rest of this entry �

“It’s raining outside, but not too much. Just as much as it needs to, thinks the big one as he watches the little one run ahead of him toward the water. The big one thinks just how much he loves this little one, with his funny ideas and his funny boots. He can’t remember if he also had these kinds of ideas in his head when he was still little.”
(Click to enlarge spread)

 
Happy Sunday, all.

Have you all been following the picture book coverage at the New York Times? There is a new children’s book editor over there, Sarah Harrison Smith, and I like her taste in picture books.

Case-in-point: Just this week she wrote here about the book I’m featuring today. The book is Sylvie Neeman’s Something Big, illustrated by Ingrid Godon (Enchanted Lion, September 2013), an import originally published in 2012 as Quelque Chose de Grand. Neeman is Swiss, and Godon was born in Belgium. This one was translated by Claudia Zoe Bedrick.

This is the story of an adult and child (“the big one” and “the little one”) and an intimate snapshot of their day. The big one is clearly a caretaker of some sort; I assume it is the boy’s father, but it could be a grandfather or uncle. The young boy is troubled, because he wants to “do something big.” As the boy attempts to explain what he means, he gets increasingly frustrated, as he finds it difficult to nail what he means with just the right words. For instance, when he says that maybe “it looks a little like a lighthouse by the ocean,” since “it has the ocean all around it and there’s light at night,” the adult suggests that what the boy wants is to build a lighthouse by the ocean. Nope. As adults are wont to do, he’d misunderstood altogether, but he’s really only trying to help the boy suss out what he means. Read the rest of this entry �

Early sketch

Final art: “…into the night. The moon rises. Wherever the train goes, the moon follows. When the train stops, the moon stops. When the train starts, the moon starts. Sometimes it hides behind a ridge. Then—hello friend—reappears. The train rests in small towns. Passengers off, passengers on. Stars blink in the cold air, lights blink on the horizon, and the Overnight Train pushes into the deep hours of the night…”
(Click to enlarge spread. No, really. You must.)

 
Anyone else seen Elisha Cooper’s newest picture book, Train (Orchard Books, September 2013)? It’s really something, and it’s been met with a whole heapin’ handful of starred reviews. (Too many to keep up. Just trust me on this.) This is one for the senses, Cooper’s depiction of the sights and sounds and smells of the experience of riding a modern-day train. Readers start out with a red-striped Commuter Train, end with a High-Speed Train, and experience a bright blue Passenger Train, an orange Freight Train, and a dark green Overnight Train in between. We stop at small stations, sit in the cab of an engine, pass valleys of fields, witness the outskirts of a midwestern city, step inside Grand Central Station, head across the Great Plains, enjoy a dining car, watch the moon follow the train, and much more. We see the sights, smell the biscuits (and “grease and rust and burnt toast”), and hear the sounds of the train (“it sounds like the da dum da dum of a beating heart”).

There’s no shortage of children’s books about trains, but this one is exceptional for its lyricism and Cooper’s signature artistic style: Impressionistic, gestural, graceful. He segues from one train to the next without a hiccough. The book’s horizontal format is perfectly suited to the subject matter, and his spot-on pacing and very fluid sense of movement (as well as a text that flows beautifully) make these page turns compelling. As they should be in a book about a train’s forward journey.

And what breathtaking landscapes we’re treated to in this one, as only Cooper can show us. The night-time spread, pictured above, is particularly striking. Best of all, he captures the wonder of trains — and travel in general. It’s a child-like wonder that never for a second talks down to children—Cooper would never do such a thing—making this a book for all ages. But I’ll stop there, ’cause he’s visiting this morning to talk a little bit about that. The wonder, that is.

I thank him for stopping by and sharing artwork and sketches — or, in his words, “mainly paintings as they were happening.” (I have a kind of addiction to seeing Elisha-Cooper sketches.) Read the rest of this entry �

“We stood there in front of him. He seemed neither pleased nor disappointed to see us. … ‘I think,’ said my mother, placing a quieting and comforting hand on Ogdon,
‘he is waiting for something to eat.’ My mother is a very practical woman.”

That was just really fun to say: “Featuring Edward Gorey.”

As if he’s here, visiting 7-Imp.

(Oh, pictured left is Ogdon, who is four years old. He is shouting, “He is waiting for me-e-e!” More on that in a minute.)

I’m doing something different today. I have a hard and fast rule here at 7-Imp (a land without very many rules at all, honestly) about always featuring new children’s books. Or, you know, new adaptations or re-tellings or re-releases with new illustrations. You get the idea.

Last Fall, the New York Review Children’s Collection re-released Rhoda Levine’s He Was There From the Day We Moved In, illustrated by Gorey, which was originally published in 1968. When they re-released it, I got a bit of art from the publisher so that I could blog about it.

Yes, last Fall.

Sometimes I’m just really slow.

I never got around to blogging about it in 2012 and so sort of gave up on the idea. But today I’m feeling contrary (breakin’ the law, BREAKIN’ THE LAW!), and I’m going to blog about it, even though this lovely re-release was nearly one year ago.

And I mean, hey. It’s Edward Gorey, dear friends. It’s always fun to post about Edward Gorey.

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