Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

 
I’ve three glorious spreads below from Dianne White’s Green on Green (Beach Lane, March 2020), illustrated by Felicita Sala. In a spare and eloquent rhythmic text, White takes readers through the seasons of a year — from spring to winter. “Yellow the flower,” the book begins. “Yellow the seed. Yellow and black the buzzing bee.”

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Today’s art is from illustrator Susanna Chapman — who, lucky me, is local to me. (She lives in Nashville.) She recently shared this drawing on Instagram — I love the idea of deferred hugs — and I secured her permission to share it here. She also has a time-lapse video of the drawing to heighten, as she puts it, the time-based hug experience. Susanna says the time-lapse video is more meaningful to her, since she misses the time element of hugging people. So, here it is, the drawing in action:

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It wasn’t that long ago that I was telling you all about a new picture book from Anne Hunter (in this February post). I do love her work, and she has illustrated another new book. This one, The Nest That Wren Built (Candlewick, March 2020), is by Randi Sonenshine. I reviewed it for BookPage, so if you’d like to read more about it, that is here.

And here at 7-Imp today are a few spreads from the book.

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I read just this morning about a well-reviewed book about sex, aimed at children and written by a sex educator, causing all kinds of controversy at a Massachusetts school. To be clear, I haven’t read that particular book, but generally speaking these kinds of stories bum me out. Children deserve, for many reasons, straight-up talk about their changing bodies, sex, and gender identity, and at least here in the South, I find that many adults would just like to pretend students don’t have curiosity about these things all. (What passes for sex education here is pretty dismal.)

That’s one reason I was happy to read Tell Me: What Children Really Want to Know about Bodies, Sex and Emotions (Gecko), a German import (originally published in 2014 and translated by Shelley Tanaka) now on shelves here in the U.S. It is written by Katharina von der Gathen and illustrated by Anke Kuhl. And it is a breath of fresh air. Read the rest of this entry �

It’s the first Sunday of the month (happy March!), which means it’s time to feature a student or debut illustrator here at 7-Imp. Today, I welcome Hanna Cha, whose debut picture book — Tiny Feet Between the Mountains (Simon & Schuster) — was released last Fall. (Pictured above is the book’s title page illustration.)

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If you are a fan of Edward Gorey’s books, you may be interested in Lori Mortensen’s new picture book biography, Nonsense! The Curious Story of Edward Gorey (Versify), illustrated by Chloe Bristol and coming to shelves in March. Evidently, Gorey would have turned 95 this year.

Mortensen writes in a chummy tone — “Greetings, Dear Reader!” the book opens — with hints of (and tributes to) Gorey’s writing style throughout. She kicks things off in 1925 with Gorey as a child, a “dandy boy who looked out his window, drew sausage-shaped pictures of city-bound trains, and taught himself to read.” She marks his introduction to the books that would eventually change his life — such “quaint and curious” and “dark and disturbing” books as Dracula and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

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Say hello to illustrator Noa Denmon. (That’s her self-portrait above.)

I read a just-released YA novel last week (which, by the way, I highly recommend) — Echo Brown’s Black Girl Unlimited: The Remarkable Story of a Teenage Wizard (Henry Holt, January 2020). I was really taken by the book’s cover art, and when I saw that it was by Noa Denmon, I visited her site and then emailed to see if I could secure her permission to share some of her art. Lucky for me, she said yes. So, today I’ve got a bit of her artwork. Here — isn’t it beautiful? — is the dustjacket of the novel I read:

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“Suffragists didn’t / Give up on the fight,
And the Nineteenth Amendment / Gave women the right.”

 
Today, illustrator Magdalena Mora visits to talk a bit about creating the illustrations for Equality’s Call: The Story of Voting Rights in America (Beach Lane, February 2020), written by Deborah Diesen, as well as share some early sketches and final art. This is Mora’s debut as a picture book illustrator.

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It’s the first Sunday of the month, which means I have the work of a student or otherwise debut illustrator. Today, I welcome Dani Choi. Dani is an illustrator based in New York, who graduated with a BFA in Communication Design from Washington University in St. Louis and is now getting her MFA in Illustration as Visual Essay at the School of Visual Arts. I thank her for sharing art today, and I’m going to turn 7-Imp over to her so that we can learn more about her and her work.

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I’ve a feature over at BookPage that includes some new picture book selections for Black History Month, which is just around the bend. These are also books to be read and shared all year, ones that pay tribute to the lives of African Americans who have contributed to the arts, sciences, and the written word.

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