Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Author/illustrator Lori Nichols isn’t new to 7-Imp (she visited back in 2010), but at this 2013 visit she’s well on her way with an agent and a picture book scheduled to be released in February of next year by Nancy Paulsen Books. I’ve seen this book, called Maple, which Kirkus has already given a starred review. It’s charming, just like Kirkus says, and I hope to cover it here soon at 7-Imp when it hits bookshelves. So, more on that later (but the cover is pictured below).

Today, I’m sharing images which Lori created last Fall and which I really like. Lori is working on some ideas for Nancy Paulsen using some of these characters, but I secured her permission to share a small handful of them today.

I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

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“The crowds at the Hartford jail were even greater than those in New Haven.
Evidently Africans like ourselves were a novelty, and so people streamed into the jail, often traveling long distances, to see what we looked like.”
(Click image to see spread in its entirety, including the text)

 
Just the other day at Kirkus, I wrote about some 2013 Picture Books That Got Away — that is, those books that during the year I had planned to write about here at 7-Imp or over at Kirkus, yet for one reason or another I didn’t get to them.

One book I wanted to include in that list, yet I knew I’d be writing about it today, is Monica Edinger’s Africa Is My Home: A Child of the Amistad (Candlewick, October 2013), illustrated by Robert Byrd. This is a lengthier picture book, geared (if you heed such labels) at slightly older readers. (“10 to 14 years old” is how the publisher thinks of it.) This is the fictionalized story of the real-life child named Margru, who later became known as Sarah Kinson, taken from her home by slave traders in Mendeland, West Africa, “one of the greenest places on earth,” in 1839. At the age of nine, Margru’s father decided she would go as a pawn to work for the family of a man in her village. This would occur in exchange for rice, given that the village in which Margru and her family lived was suffering greatly from drought and famine. “At the next harvest,” her father told her, “I will return what I owe and you will come home.” Margru did as she was told, only to find soon after that she was “in a line of captives headed for the coast.” Slave traders transported Margru and many other West Africans, including three other children, to Cuba and later to the U.S. on the Spanish slave ship called the Amistad.

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I love to see a beautifully-crafted Mother Goose collection, and there’s a new one on shelves — David McPhail’s My Mother Goose: A Collection of Favorite Rhymes, Songs, and Concepts, released by Roaring Brook in October.

As the sub-title indicates, these are classic nursery rhymes—McPhail sticks to the most beloved ones and doesn’t throw any terribly obscure rhymes into the mix—but he also occasionally pauses to introduce concepts. In between, “Great A, little a, Bouncing B” and “London Bridge,” readers pause for an entertaining “My ABCs” spread. Later, readers look at how Henry the Bear gets around (covered wagon, unicycle, train, etc.). There are also numbers, shapes, colors, etc.

McPhail opens the book with a note about what nursery rhymes meant to him as a child, and he talks about memories of his own mother reciting them to him — and how he now recites them to his own grandchildren. The book closes with an index of first lines.

In November at the New York Times (here), Leonard Marcus wisely noted that McPhail’s characters in this collection, as you can see in the illustrations featured here, “are wistful daydreamers who bear a certain family resemblance to those first seen in children’s book art in the path-finding early illustration work of Maurice Sendak.” There are even moments that smack of Richard Scarry. These pen-and-ink watercolor illustrations invite us into a cozy, intimate world.

Here are some more illustrations from the book. Enjoy. Read the rest of this entry �

Sketch and final cover art
(Click each to enlarge)

Santa gets around any way he can, y’all.

And author-illustrator Brian Biggs proves this point in the newest entry in his Everything Goes series, called Everything Goes: Santa Goes Everywhere!, published by Balzer & Bray this September. This is actually a board book, and it’s good stuff. In fact, I did story time yesterday morning at Parnassus Books here in Nashville, and I brought this one along. The children there loved the book. There were many laughs, in particular, to see Santa on a speedboat. (And how much do I love the book’s cover? A whole heapin’ lot. Opening this post is the cover art.)

(By the way, that’s Brian pictured above and right. He painted himself into his new book about what goes on the sea, but more on that book below.)

I’ve posted before here at 7-Imp about this wonderful series (see this 2012 post in which I chat with Brian), which is perfect for the vehicle- and transportation-obsessed child in your life (or even growns-ups). I think it’d be unfortunate, though, to write about these books in such a way to imply they should be limited to only those who like moving vehicles of any sort. They’re such well-crafted books on many other levels, and they’re full of rewarding details. You will often hear Biggs compared to Richard Scarry when folks write about these books, and there’s a reason: They are spreads to pore over and take one’s time with, spreads full of many stories and running jokes and visual treats. Oh, and they’re educational too. Clearly. But, most importantly, they’re very fun. Read the rest of this entry �

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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