Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

 
It may be 2020, but here’s one more 2019 picture book, this one released back in September — Beth Waters’s Child of St Kilda (Child’s Play). This is the detailed, 64-page story of a “lost way of life,” a book that took Waters over two years of research and was nominated for the 2020 Kate Greenaway Medal.

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Know one reason I appreciate the picture books in this BookPage picture book round-up I wrote? They are books about snow, and at this point, snow is something I can only dream of here in Tennessee. (It’s a record-breaking 70 degrees outside as I type.) Okay, we did have some flurries before the holidays. Just a bit. For that, I’m grateful. I hope we see some more.

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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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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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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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“That’s when Truman saw something he’d never seen before …”

 
Jean Reidy’s Truman (Atheneum), illustrated by Lucy Ruth Cummins, was released back in July. I reviewed this one for the Horn Book, and I see that the author has posted the review here online. So, if you’re curious to read more about this picture book (which I recommend, as it’s such a good book), you can head there to read that.

This is a book that has been met with a whole host of (well-deserved) glowing reviews. Many people, myself included, seem to have fallen in love with Truman and Sarah this year. It’s a book that respects the courage necessary for children on the first day of school. And tortoises too.

I’ve some of Lucy’s spreads from the book to share here at 7-Imp today. Enjoy!

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This is actually week #666 of kicking, dear kickers, but (call me crazy) I couldn’t bring myself to assign such a grouchy number to this inviting image by author-illustrator Julie Paschkis. So, I muddled with the math.

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Today I’ve got some spreads from one of my very favorite 2019 books — Ashley Bryan’s Infinite Hope: A Black Artist’s Journey from World War II to Peace (Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books, October 2019). This is a 112-page picture book memoir that chronicles the award-winning author-illustrator’s (often harrowing) experiences in the segregated army of World War II (he was drafted in 1943 while an art student at Cooper Union) and, essentially, how his love of art got him through. This is the first time Bryan writes publicly of his war experiences and shares them with the wider world.

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“‘I feel so foolish,’ she said. ‘I jumped to conclusions.'”
(Click to enlarge spread and read text in its entirety)

 
I reviewed the newest picture book, Wintercake (Greenwillow, October 2019), from author-illustrator (and Newbery Medalist) Lynne Rae Perkins for the Horn Book. If you’d like to read about the book, they included bits of that review in this round-up. (Scroll down to the bottom of that post.) And today here at 7-Imp I’ve a few illustrations from the book.

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