Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Jules: Welcome to our weekly meeting ground for listing 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 — as well as our meeting ground for featuring the work of illustrators.

This week, we’re happy that Shadra Strickland has stopped by to share art work from her upcoming illustrated title, Bird, written by Zetta Elliott. Bird will be published this October by Lee & Low Books. This Publishers Weekly link tells us that the book will tell the story of a boy who struggles with his brother’s drug addiction and death through the support of his family.

Just in case you can’t read the text in the image above, I’ve made it a bit bigger for you here, and below that are three more images from the book: Read the rest of this entry �

Jules: Well, this is a first. The illustrations we had planned to feature this week didn’t quite pan out. I hope that we can show them to you at a later date, but I have something to show you all anyway in the spirit of Mother’s Day.

So, there was this picture book released last year, entitled My Dog is as Smelly as Dirty Socks: And Other Funny Family Portraits, and it was created by Hanoch Piven (released by Schwartz & Wade Books in May of ’07). In an Author’s Note, Piven explains the idea behind the book: He had once spent three unforgettable days in the oncology department of a medical center in Israel, conducting a workshop, “Drawing With Objects,” with sick children and teens. The children “created self-portraits and portraits of their families using objects found in everyday life…” Piven used the experience to create this picture book, the story of a fictional girl who has to draw her family in her classroom — regular ‘ol pen on paper, you know. But, she tells us, “{t}here are so many things about {my dad} that you don’t see in this picture.” As a result, she decides to make portraits of her mother, father, brothers, dog, and herself with objects instead. And she goes on to describe each portrait and each family member. Her dad, for one: He’s as “jumpy as a SPRING and as playful as a SPINNING TOP. He is as fun as a PARTY FAVOR. But sometimes he’s as stubborn as a KNOT in a ROPE.” And, of course, she creates an image of him using these objects (the springs are eyebrows, the spinning top is his nose, the rope with the knot is his mouth . . . you get the picture).

It really is a neat book. Good concept. A great tool for having children create their own family portraits, using objects. You’ll see good reviews at PlanetEsme, Kids Lit, and Book Buds—just to name a few.

But . . . there was just one thing that bugged me: The portrait of the mother. “My mommy is as soft as the softest FLUFF and as bright as the brightest LIGHT. She is as tasty as the crunchiest COOKIE. No, TASTIER! She’s as delicious as a CROISSANT. That’s my yummy mommy! (Mommy, I’m going to eat you all up.)”

Soft? Sure. Bright? This is good. Tasty? Meh. And then to continue on about how edible this girl’s mother is when the girl could have found some more objects and described her mother with a bit more detail? With respect to Hanoch Piven, who really has created a playful, very fun book here, most mothers I know—including myself—are more complicated than that and . . . well, don’t want to be so easily consumed.

So, I’ve been meaning to make my own portrait ever since this book first came out, and I thought, why not on Mother’s Day? It’s pictured above. Here goes nuthin’ . . . Read the rest of this entry �

Jules: Bonjour, indeed! It’s that time of the month again. We’re featuring a student of illustration today, this time the one and only Kali Ciesemier, whose classes at the Maryland Institute College of Art end THIS FRIDAY — and she graduates on May 19th! We happen to think that featuring her art work now is great timing, though we certainly thank her for taking the time to do so during a crazybusy time in her life. Graduation and all that. Yeesh. She’s probably scurrying around right now, doing a million things. Wait, I know she is. She told me so. So, thanks to Kali for taking the time to visit us this morning and show us some of her art work.

Pictured below is one savagely cool, terrifically tough rollerblader, “Betty Beatdown of the Charm City Roller Girls,” and below that is a hello from Kali and a bit more about her and her plans.

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Jules: Eisha and I were almost left speechless when we saw the illustrations we’re featuring today, ones from Italian illustrator Nicoletta Ceccoli. But not speechless enough to tell you a bit about her visit this morning to 7-Imp.

Back at the beginning of March, I reviewed Kate Bernheimer’s The Girl in the Castle Inside the Museum (Schwartz & Wade, February ’08). That review is here. I was so taken with Ceccoli’s illustrations in this title—and then I visited her website and fell in love a bit more—that I took a chance on contacting her to see if we could feature her one Sunday. Lucky for me, she reads and speaks English, and she said yes! About the mermaids above, Nicoletta told us: This is a “sample proof I did for an upcoming book I’m illustrating for Houghton Mifflin, titled Dignity of Dragons . . . it will be all about mythological creatures . . . it is a very interesting theme for me. I also wanted to show you some work taken from a show I had last year in a Seattle gallery, Roq La Rue . . . these works (the tower and the angel) are not done for a story or a book.” Read the rest of this entry �

Jules: When Eisha and I co-reviewed the wonderful Kaline Klattermaster’s Tree House by Haven Kimmel this past February, we featured some of the book’s interior illustrations by Peter Brown, which made our long post way more entertaining to read. And I took that opportunity to ask Peter if he’d let us feature him one Sunday; lucky for us, he said yes. Peter is the creator of the Chowder books and also did cover and interior art for both Barkbelly and Snowbone by Cat Weatherill, which we’ve covered here and here at 7-Imp (the latter with Betsy Bird). Visiting Peter’s site (one of two, the other dedicated to Chowder himself), I also see that his first book is one I must find and read, seeing as how his description for it at his site begins with: “Have you ever been pooped on by a bird?” and is, apparently, about a penguin and what he does when “he feels the humiliating sting of goose poop on his favorite jacket.” (I say there’s nothing like a bit of scatalogical humor on your Sunday morning). That was in 2005 when Publishers Weekly called Peter “a promising new talent.” And writers might get a kick out of visiting here and clicking on “Books” and then “How I Work” to see Peter’s trenchant, illuminating commentary into this complicated process called writing.

Peter stopped by this morning to share these wonderful illustrations, to tantalize us with work from a forthcoming title, The Curious Garden, due to be published in Spring 2009. Here’s what Peter had to say about it:

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Jules: If you’re a regular reader of 7-Imp, you have seen illustrator Julie Paschkis’ name pop up a lot lately. And that would be because, with every new title she illustrates, I become more of a fan. Her colorful, patterned, and striking folk art gouache paintings are a feast for the eyes. I thought TadMack put it well at a recent post about Imaginary Menagerie, which Paschkis illustrated, when she said that seeing such lush gouache paintings “makes me want to roll around in paint.”

eisha: Well said, Jules and TadMack. I’m a big fan too – I particularly enjoyed her work in Twist: Yoga Poems by Janet Wong, which features colorfully-clad children in yoga poses surrounded by intricate Indian-inspired paisleys and floral patterns. And I was lucky enough to see her accept the Boston Globe Hornbook Honor in 2006 for Yellow Elephant: a Bright Bestiary, another collaboration with poet Julie Larios. That was a stunning book, too – I said at the time the illustrations reminded me of a cross between Russian miniature painting and Pueblo art, which worked perfectly with the fanciful poems. You’re so right, Jules. I think she just gets better and better with every book.

Jules: Lucky for us all, Julie stopped by today to share some of her art work with us. Pictured above is a new painting of hers, and Julie told us: “I was playing with words. This is a new painting that is going to be used as a poster by the King County Library for a program of that name (Playing with Words).” If you are also a fan of Paschkis’ work, then you might be happy to know that I’ve lined her up for one of our new illustrator interviews (the first seven-questions-over-breakfast interview being with Jeremy Tankard a couple weeks ago).

Here are the other gifts Julie is sharing with us today:

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It’s the first Sunday of the month (is anyone else astounded it’s already April?), and so it’s time again to feature an up-and-coming illustrator, someone new to the scene or a student of illustration. This week it’s freelance artist and art teacher, Courtney Pippin-Mathur, who grew up in Texas but now lives on the east coast with her family (and where she “now paints, teaches, loves the fall season and misses tex-mex.”) Featured above is “Jazz, Music for the Soul.” And, now, here comes trouble:

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Jules: What a pleasure it is to have Laura Nyman Montenegro here today to share some art work from her latest title with us! If you’re already familiar with some of Laura’s previous titles (here’s just one of my favorites), then you already know about her beautiful line-and-watercolor spreads and, as the above Just One More Book!! link put it well, her stories of “confidence, creativity and acceptance.” And here’s something not-to-be-missed: A Spring ’08 feature on Laura at The Prairie Wind (newsletter of the SCBWI-Illinois chapter), in which Laura talks about what a person’s bookshelf reveals about him or her — and elaborates on her own mother’s bookshelf, as she viewed it as a child:

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Jules: IT’S SPRING! And here are some poppies for you, courtesy of the very talented Kelly Murphy, an illustrator whose work Eisha and I adore. We’re so glad she’s stopped by today to share some new art work from some upcoming projects. This one, actually, is already featured on her site. Please do go see her re-vamped site. It’s seven kinds of awesome, people. Very beautiful. Anyway, Kelly gave us permission to pick which images we love the most — as well as sent us some new stuff, which we’ll get to in a minute — and it was very hard to pick, indeed. But here are two more:

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Jules: This is one of those Sundays in which we’re really featuring a book (as opposed to, say, an illustrator stopping by to share something new or not-seen-before), this one a (mostly) wordless picture book, entitled Jukebox, published by Kane/Miller this year (originally published in France in ’07), and created by French illustrator David Merveille — ahem, make that “illustrateur.” Having gotten these spreads from the publisher, since I think this book is awfully fun, I did email David to see if he wanted to send us some commentary about the book and perhaps talk about his creation of the art work therein, but alas! I had to send my email in l’Anglais, and I have no idea if he understood me (my high school French has receded into the far corners of my memory, and it is très mauvais — at least, I think that means very-bad-as-in-LOUSY).

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