Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Dog-lovers might be particularly happy this week to see that we have a visit from artist Wendy Wahman, who has mostly done editorial art in her career but is now venturing into the world of children’s books. Don’t Lick the Dog: Making Friends with Dogs, which will be released at the end of this month from Henry Holt, is—for all intents and purposes—a how-to manual for children about approaching and interacting with dogs, but it’s way more fun and funny and snazzy (or “jazzy,” in the words of Kirkus) and playful than your typical manual. I could have really used this as a kid and, actually, even now, as I found the tips helpful myself: Now I know what to do if a dog, for one, is grumbling at me and wearing that “ugly wrinkled frown” face.

I’ll let more of Wendy’s art work from the book speak for itself here. (You can click on each image to see it larger and in more detail.)…

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Jules: See those cars, in-and-outing? I’m one of those, on my way to East Tennessee for a Very Exciting Day, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

This morning, 7-Imp welcomes acclaimed Italian graphic artist Beppe Giacobbe. Well, I wish I were welcoming him, but I wasn’t able to get in touch with him to see if he’d like to stop by, to say hello (in either Italian or English), and to show us some other art work — though I tried. Bummer. Because I love his art work, which is new to me and which I first saw in the new picture book by the award-winning and quite prolific author (AND poet AND essayist AND reviewer AND even more), Robert Burleigh, entitled Clang! Clang! Beep! Beep!: Listen to the City, to be released in early May by Simon & Schuster (Paula Wiseman Books). I can at least show you two spreads from that today. Here’s the other:

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Jules: In a continued celebration of National Poetry Month, this morning 7-Imp welcomes author and poet Jane Yolen and freelance photographer Jason Stemple, who happens to be Jane’s son. Jason’s photography has illustrated over ten of Jane’s previous titles, and their latest artistic collaboration is the beautifully (and cleverly) designed, A Mirror to Nature: Poems About Reflection, released this month by Wordsong. The book features twelve poems, along with Jason’s nature photography, which reflect upon (excuse the bad pun) the doubled images and patterns created by the reflective nature of water. “The first mirror was water: puddles, pools, lakes, quiet rivers,” Jane writes in the opening author’s note.

Pictured here are some wood storks, the only stork species, the book notes, that breeds in North America, and a bird on the endangered species list. Below is Jane’s poem about the wood stork, followed by one more poem-photo pairing from the title, as well as the book’s cover image (a blue heron):

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Jules: Today is full of specialness.

Know how on the first Sunday of each month, 7-Imp usually features a student illustrator or an illustrator otherwise new to the field? Well, not today. We’re gonna shake things up this morning and celebrate National Poetry Month with a handful of visiting poets, as well as a bit of art. (OF COURSE. Gotta have art.) In fact, featured here is Julie Paschkis’ poetry-month poster, which you may have also seen at Jama’s wonderful blog this week. (And that’s because Jama and I are sometimes psychic brain twins.) Many thanks to Julie for sharing. If you missed her interview, posted about this time last year, by all means, go have a look. Her art makes me very happy.

And who are our visiting poets today, who are going to share some never-seen-before poetry here to help us celebrate a month of poems, poems, and more poems? Well, they are Douglas Florian (who will be stopping by this week for a breakfast interview), Sara Lewis Holmes, Julie Larios (whose new poem is featured above), Kelly Fineman, Elaine Magliaro, and Adam Rex. Let’s get right to it, and I thank them for celebrating with us this week, especially since several of these poems were written specifically for today’s celebration.

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Jules: I know it’s a bright Sunday morning, a new day, and not time to climb back into our beds, but I can’t help but open with this image, because I love the colors so much I just might want to marry them.

This comes from illustrator Julie Fortenberry. Julie has two blogs—one devoted solely to her art and one all about picture book illustration. And here’s the thing: I’ve always loved her children’s illustration blog, but I never quite made the connection that it was Julie Fortenberry who authored it. Sometimes I’m slow-on-the-draw like that.

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Jules: Today, 7-Imp welcomes photographer Jacquelynn Buck. Jacquelynn, who is actually formally trained in Public Health but who has a passion for photography and design, does portraits, weddings, travel and nature photography, and even design work (websites, posters, postcards, etc.) — and much more. I first heard about her from Sara Lewis Holmes, whose author photo was taken by Jacquelynn. In fact, I very first read about her here at Sara’s site in 2007. (Sara also interpreted some of Jacquelynn’s photos in this intriguing Poetry Friday post.)

Jacquelynn writes at her site, “I want to translate on paper that core that is each person, each city, that makes them who and what they are…There was a time in my life when I wanted to change the world. And maybe I still will. But today let me show you the world through my eyes. Know that not everything is as it seems. Discover again what you thought you already knew.” These are fitting words for Jacquelynn’s latest photography project, entitled Real Women. She tells us all about it below (and you can read about its origin at her site), but—to summarize—it’s to help women see themselves as beautiful, just as they are. To which I’m sure most of us would say, AMEN.

This post follows on the heels of author Sara Zarr’s post from this week about her experience during an author photo shoot, in which she specifically and repeatedly told the photographer that she didn’t want to be Photoshopped. Here’s part of what Sara wrote:

When I was setting up the appointment for the shoot, I told the photographer’s assistant that I just wanted to look like me. He asked if I required a makeup artist. No. Not my style. I sent him to my blog, I showed him recent photos of me that I liked. The day of the shoot, I spent over an hour with the photographer. And said again – I just want to look like me. As he shot me, we talked a little bit about women being photographed. How we all have our insecurities. How I’d come to accept mine and don’t want to turn down life opportunities because I think I should be thinner or prettier. At the end of the shoot, he said that he could work magic with Photoshop, and if I wanted to look like I’d been going to the gym every day for four months, he could do that. I said no. I said I wanted to look like me. I said that a large part of my audience is made up of teen girls and I didn’t want to perpetuate that whole “I’m not okay” thing.

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Jules: Author/Illustrator Selina Alko is visiting today, and I just have to open with her illustration of Tennessee from Sheila Keenan’s nonfiction title, Greetings from the 50 States (Scholastic). And that’s because Eisha and I are both from Tennessee (well, okay, I was really born in Kentucky but consider Tennessee home), even though I returned after a bit of time away from it but Eisha up and moved to Massachusetts and then settled in New York. (I think, however, that she’ll always be a Southern girl at heart, y’all. She can correct me if I’m wrong, but once you’ve lived in the shadow of those Great Smoky Mountains, as we both did for quite a while, the state quite firmly settles itself into a cozy corner of your heart. One with fiddles playing on the radio and a stash of MoonPies and Jack Daniel’s nearby.)

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Jules: Welcome to 7-Imp’s weekly meeting ground for taking some time to reflect on Seven(ish) Exceptionally Fabulous, Beautiful, Interesting, Hilarious, or Otherwise Positive Noteworthy Things from the past week, whether book-related or not, that happened to you.

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Jules: Can you believe it’s already the first Sunday in a new month? I can’t. But you know what it means when the first Sundays come along: We highlight a student of illustration or an illustrator otherwise new to the field in some way. This morning, 7-Imp welcomes Chantal Bennett, who . . . well, no introduction is necessary on my part, because when I asked if she’d like to say a few words to introduce herself, she ran with it and did a fine job, indeed, of giving us a bit of insight into her work and her plans. So, without further ado and with many thanks to Chantal for stopping by—especially for that enchanting opening image up there—here she is:

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Jules: Once upon a time, I wanted to interview the insanely talented collage illustrator and author Bryan Collier. Well, I shouldn’t say once upon a time, since I will always want to interview him. But last year—and, actually, the year before, too—I tried as hard as I could to snag an interview through both the publisher Henry Holt and all by myself with my own stubborn determination by my side. Hard as I and the nice Henry Holt publicist tried, it just didn’t pan out. Not that Collier isn’t also insanely nice: I met him once, and he is a very personable, friendly fellow. And if you read the “about” page of his site, you’ll see that he is all about going into classrooms to talk with teachers, librarians, and students about books and art. But, hey, blog interviews probably aren’t for everyone. Which is a-okay.

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