Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

 
Would you like to take a look at an Argentinian import? Today, I’ve got some spreads from Yael Frankel’s The Elevator, originally published in 2019 in Argentina and translated from the Spanish by Kit Maude. It comes from Tapioca Stories, a New York-based publisher that brings readers Latin American children’s books, originally written in Spanish and Portuguese.

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Hey, everybody. A quick note to say (from a McDonald’s parking lot where I’m stealing some WiFi) that I can’t do my previously planned post today, because we have been without cell service and WiFi for a couple days now, due to that car bomb that went off in Nashville and wreaked havoc with AT&T’s servers. I hope to be back soon with art and words!

Do tell me your kicks anyway. I may not be able to read them for a while, but I’ll be glad to see them once I’m online again.

 
Today, let’s look at a book from a debut illustrator. I Want to Ride the Tap Tap, on shelves in late December (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), is written by Danielle Joseph and illustrated by Olivier Ganthier. Ganthier, known for his street art, was born and currently lives in Haiti, and this book captures daily life with a Black family there, Joseph even incorporating Haitian Creole words into the dialogue. I reviewed it for BookPage, and that is here — if you’re inclined to read more about it.

Below are some spreads.

Enjoy!

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“Big or small, the task would suit Nate either way ….”
(Click to enlarge spread and read text in its entirety)

 

Today, I’ve got some illustrations from The Hanukkah Magic of Nate Gadol (Candlewick, September 2020), a new picture book from Arthur A. Levine and Kevin Hawkes. This is what Levine describes as a pourquoi tale about the tradition of presents at Hanukkah. (You can read or listen here to a wonderful NPR interview with Levine about the book.)

Nate Gadol is Levine’s original mythical creation — a “great big spirit,” pictured above, who makes things stretch for families in need. He made a “tiny bit of oil last eight days and nights in the far-off long ago,” but he also will keep your flower fresh for longer, keep a dam strong in a storm, or even help you hold a long note while singing — if your life depended on it.

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Let’s take a look today at A Year of Everyday Wonders (Abrams, December 2020), written by Cheryl B. Klein and illustrated by Qin Leng. I reviewed this one over here at BookPage, if you’d like to read more about it. It’s a charmer.

Here today at 7-Imp are some of the book’s illustrations …

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Jason Chin’s newest picture book, Your Place in the Universe (Neal Porter Books/Holiday House, September 2020), is the kind of book that tiny-me would have looooooved. As a child, I’d sit and think about the immeasurable vastness of the universe and wonder what, if anything, was at the edges of it. Chin’s book is all about scale, size, and distance — on our own planet and in the universe as a whole. And he expertly, and beautifully, structures this small book about such a big cosmological subject — no small task, indeed.

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“Over, under, across, through. Around the world, construction crews build overpasses, underpasses, bridges, and tunnels — ways for people to get from one place to another. But what about the animals that live in these places?”

This is the opening of Katy S. Duffield’s splendid Crossings: Extraordinary Structures for Extraordinary Animals (Beach Lane, October 2020), illustrated by Mike Orodán. Readers see creatures of all stripes misplaced by human-made constructions for the purposes of transportation — animals fearfully traversing under giant bridges, freezing in a car’s headlights, hiding from construction equipment, and more. But we also read that around the world, “in search of solutions, animal lovers come together.”

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Let’s take a look at a picture book debut, shall we? Seou Lee is an author and animator, and thanks to Arthur Levine’s new imprint, Levine Querido, we get to see her try her hand at picture books. Bye, Penguin! (October, 2020), orginally published in Korea, is a (nearly) wordless adventure — a penguin’s inadvertent (but very thrilling) one.

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I don’t have illustrations for you today, dear Imps, as I normally do. But I want to take a moment to highlight a book that will be on shelves next week — This Is Your Time (Random House), written by civil rights activist and icon Ruby Bridges.

This is a short (64 pages) and small but powerful book. Ruby Bridges, as you know if you know your American history, was the first Black student—at the age of six—to desegregate an all-white elementary school. We’ve all seen the images of Ruby being escorted by four federal marshals on her first day at William Frantz Elementary in New Orleans on November 14, 1960. Ruby was the subject of the Norman Rockwell painting on this book’s cover.

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Today, author-illustrator Sarah Williamson visits to talk about creating Elevator Bird (Knopf), which will be on shelves in late November. I’ll let her tell you about the story below.

Sarah’s brightly colored illustrations are filled with the kinds of little offbeat details that make this a book that children will pore over. And fans of the Eloise books may be especially delighted, given the book’s posh hotel setting. Sarah shares some spreads below, as well as some early sketches from the book.

Let’s get to it, and I thank her for sharing.

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