Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Well, dear Imps, it’s the first Sunday of the month, which means I invite to the breakfast table a student or recently-graduated illustrator.

This morning, it’s Kate Berube, who lives in Portland, Oregon. Pictured above is one of her pieces, called Lonely, which I very much like. (Maybe the end of the story-in-waiting in this illustration can be that the boy and the dog finally meet, you think?) Kate tells us below all about her work, and she also shares here a good handful of artwork, for which I thank her. (She also let me pick some favorites from her site and post those in addition to what she sent me.)

Let’s get right to it, shall we? Welcome to Kate … Read the rest of this entry �

Last week, I read Matt Phelan’s newest graphic novel, Bluffton (Candlewick, July 2013), and then turned right around and re-read it multiple times. ‘Cause it’s really good and worthy of the second (and third … and fourth …) looks.

I can promise you that you haven’t seen a book like this in a long while, nor will you see one like it any time soon. And I’m talking about the story. The format is nothing new: It’s Matt working in graphic novel format, once again, which he’s done before in very award-winning ways (2009’s The Storm in the Barn and 2011’s Around the World).

This is the story of a young boy named Henry Harrison. It’s the turn of the 20th century in the quiet, little town of Muskegon, Michigan, and it’s the launch of a summer that will change his life forever. Arriving by train in their sleepy town, where Henry helps his father at his family-owned hardware store, is a troupe of vaudeville actors, including young slapstick star Buster Keaton (legend-in-progress) and his family. Read the rest of this entry �

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Raise your hand if you’ve seen Deborah Heiligman’s new picture book biography of Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdös, who died in the mid-’90s but remains a cult figure in the world of mathematics. I knew nothing about Erdös till I read this book, and what a good picture book it is. It’s called The Boy Who Loved Math: The Improbable Life of Paul Erdös, and it’s illustrated by LeUyen Pham. (Pictured above are some of LeUyen’s sketches of Erdös throughout his life.)

I wrote about it very recently here at Kirkus, so today I’m following up with some art and sketches from LeUyen. Part of what I wrote in that column is that into her sharp, colorful illustrations for this book, LeUyen incorporates a good deal of math — from harmonic primes on Page 1, floating through the white space, as young Paul chases after them, to prime numbers on the final spread, part of the very fabric of the buildings, just waiting for observant eyes to discover them. In between, we see theorems, equations, graphs, and much more, all waiting to be found on nearly every spread. Pham explains all the math and all the art in a very lengthy and informative illustrator’s note at the close of the book.

Here are some final spreads and early sketches. Enjoy. Read the rest of this entry �

Final spread from Count the Monkeys
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I’m going to be ever-so brief in my explanation of these images today, only because I have already written about this book over in another location. I recently reviewed for BookPage Mac Barnett’s latest book, Count the Monkeys (Disney/Hyperion, June 2013), illustrated by Kevin Cornell. And I could just send you to my review and stop there, but you all know I start to get downright twitchy unless I also share picture book art, so today I’m following that review up with some art from Cornell, as well as some sketches he sent along.

Kevin Cornell is a UK illustrator (and unitasker). Don’t let the “mediocre” bit fool you.

So, at the risk of looking lazy today, here are my thoughts on the book (which will also give you a sense of what it’s about, of course), but today here in 7-Imp Land is some art — before my kicks, that is.

Enjoy. Read the rest of this entry �

Meet Big Baddy, pictured above.

He comes from Tim Miller, who is visiting 7-Imp today, since it’s the first Sunday of the month, when I like to feature student or newly-graduated illustrators. Tim doesn’t have a website up, but that won’t stop me from showing you all some of his artwork anyway.

Tim calls himself a “satirical illustrator who specializes in Picture Books.” He studied at the School of Visual Arts, where he earned his Bachelor’s in Cartooning and his Master’s in Art Education. He is currently based in New York City. Wait, this illustration tells you what you need to know: Read the rest of this entry �

“…and an A+ for creativity!”

Hello, one and all. I am at ALA Chicago this weekend, but I would never leave my dear kickers hanging without some illustrations on a Sunday. I don’t really have any kicks this morning—unless you want to consider my first ALA conference kicks one to seven—but I do have art.

I have been writing picture book reviews, as of a couple months ago, for BookPage. Recently, I reviewed Drew Daywalt’s The Day the Crayons Quit (Philomel, June 2013), illustrated by Oliver Jeffers.

So, I’ll send you to the always informative BookPage for my thoughts on the book, and here at 7-Imp today I include some art.

And now it’s back to conferencing for me, but do tell me your kicks this week, if you’re so inclined. I may not get back to you all till Monday or Tuesday, but I’ll be back, I promise.

Here are some more spreads from Jeffers. Enjoy … Read the rest of this entry �

“You see, Queen Apricotta (named after her mother’s favorite fruit) and King King (whose parents liked to keep things simple) were shunned by the very people whom they supposedly ruled. And Duncan’s teenage sisters—twins Marvis and Marvella—were no better off. Those two girls turned weirdness into an art form (dancing to imaginary music, walking pet crickets on leashes, constantly sniffing each other’s hair). Of course, Duncan was just as unpopular as the rest of his family, but he didn’t realize that, which is why, for the past several months, he’d turned down every one of their invitations to come visit the castle. But he couldn’t avoid his family forever.”

 
I’m doing something a bit different today in that I’m not featuring a picture book. Instead, I’ve got the interior art from two children’s novels that my daughters and I have been enjoying of late. And that’s putting it mildly. They’re pretty crazy about them, and I had the pleasure of reading the books outloud to them and enjoyed them a great deal, too.

I first read about The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom by Christopher Healy (who also writes here about “children’s pop culture from a grown-up perspective”), a book released in 2012 by Walden Pond Press, here at the Horn Book’s site. I thought it might be the kind of book my girls would like, and I wanted a good read-aloud. So, I found it at the library, and … well, we were done with it in days. It’s some mighty fine entertainment, this book.

The sequel, The Hero’s Guide to Storming the Castle (from which the art above comes), was released this past April, so we pre-ordered a copy from our favorite bookstore, and IF I HAD A DIME for every time the girls asked if the book was there yet … I tried to pace our reading of this second book, once it finally arrived, but a lot of good that did. It was equally entertaining, and we were done in no time flat.

The books contain cover and interior drawings from Todd Harris, who evidently works mostly in video game art and D&D. (I see he was interviewed here fairly recently and that we share a favorite character, whose name is Duncan.) Read the rest of this entry �

“The principal has no choice. He pulls Gus off the road. Gus is so sad that he hides in the gym and cries and cries. Just one of Gus’s tears could fill a bathtub.
Each one falls to the ground with a SPLAT!”
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Happy Father’s Day to all, and I apologize that I don’t have Father’s Day art. If only it were Ride Your Dinosaur to School Day … Hmm.

I’m shining the spotlight today on a book that will be released in early July, Julia Liu’s Gus, the Dinosaur Bus, illustrated by Bei Lynn (Houghton Mifflin). Both author and illustrator live in Taiwan. Lynn’s illustrations were rendered in watercolor and pencil.

“Who needs a bus stop when you have a dinosaur bus?” That’s right. Gus, the big green dinosaur, comes right to your door (or window, if you live in a tall apartment). Gus is careful not to step on cars, but he has big feet, so the city works around him. New road. Snacks lined up along the way (“two tons of french fries”). Road crews repair the holes he leaves behind.

Gus is a helpful creature, but eventually he’s pulled off the road for all the problems he causes. His friends are there to cheer him, though, and it turns out that his banishment ends up becoming a new thing—a new treat—for the children, but I won’t give it all away. (Oh, wait. The illustrations below give it all away, so look away if you want to be surprised when you read it for yourself.) Read the rest of this entry �

“That night they dreamed of being a horse.”
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I’m going to be short and sweet about today’s featured picture book, primarily because I’ve only got one spread from it. But, since it’s Quentin Blake, I’m hardly complaining.

This is the first U.S. edition of Russell Hoban’s Rosie’s Magic Horse (Candlewick, February 2013), illustrated by Blake. (It was originally released in the UK, I assume, in 2012.) This was evidently the last picture book from Hoban, who died in 2011. (“Hoban’s books asked big questions, and the answers were sometimes murky and mournful,” Publishers Weekly has written, “but this last one is a happy farewell salute.”)

And the story is wonderfully bizarre. It is about, of all things, a discarded ice-pop stick, who is picked up by a girl named Rosie. Rosie puts this stick in her ice-pop stick collection in a cigar box. Suddenly, readers are inside the box, listening to the popsicle sticks talk: “Without our ice-pops, we are nothing.” But the newest stick in the collection dreams of being a horse. (See above. All the sticks, it turns out, dream of being horses.) Read the rest of this entry �

Medusa
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Hello, dear Imps, to the beginning of June. June, I tell you! June already. Whoa.

Today, I welcome newly-graduated illustration student Seung-Hee Lee, since the first Sunday of every month is for illustration students or those brand-spankin’-new to the field. Seung-Hee comes to us by way of the Maryland Institute College of Art. She was born in Seoul, Korea, moved to the U.S. as a teen, and currently lives in California.

Let’s get right to it. She tells us a bit about her work below and shares some of her detailed, imaginative art. I thank her for sharing today. Read the rest of this entry �