Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Early this year, I did a 2008 7-Imp retrospective post — merely because, evidently, I’m crazy. (These things take a bit of time to compose.) I decided this week to write what you see here, yet another retrospective post — this one for 2009, of course.

I don’t know why I do this. I find it strangely beguiling is all I can say. Yes, I looked forward to drafting this post. I’m a sucker at the end of every year for those retrospective round-ups and best-of lists of all sorts that one sees everywhere—both online and in print—about entertainment and literature and politics and on and on. (And, now that it’s the end of a decade, my head’s about to explode with all the looking-back-on-the-naughts lists.)

{As but one example: Ooo! Ooo! This at 100 Scope Notes is fun.}

So, what can I say? It’s my warped idea of fun. It’s tidy fun.

This spiffy and sinister gentleman here, introducing this year’s retrospective, which highlights some of the folks who have visited 7-Imp this year, is Alfred. He came to life as a sketch at the hands of author/illustrator Matt Phelan. After I interviewed Matt in September of this year, he gave Alfred permission to pack his bags and take up permanent residence at 7-Imp and introduce the Pivot Questionnaire for each interview. It seemed only fitting that he’d usher us into this post. My, he’s serious about this retrospective, isn’t he?

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Welcome to 7-Imp’s 7 Kicks, a 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.

I think it’s been a while since I’ve showcased comics or graphic-novel art here at 7-Imp, so today I’m checking in with Neil Numberman and Aaron Reynolds, who have created Creepy Crawly Crime (Henry Holt, April 2009), the first title in a new series, called Joey Fly (Private Eye), which Kirkus calls an “auspicious series kick-off” and Publishers Weekly called in their starred review “a wowser of a debut.” Pictured here is Joey, about to begin his work-day. You can click on the image to enlarge and read the text.

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Dude. I have to say I’ve wanted to interview award-winning author/illustrator Tony DiTerlizzi for yeeeeears now. I like his books; I really like his art; and I like it pretty much whenever he speaks. (Really, have you explored yet the videos at his web site? Big fun.) So, I’m happy he’s made it by this morning for breakfast. He and his wife, Angela—who are pictured above (and whose glasses I covet somethin’ fierce)—have recently collaborated on a new series of titles for the wee’est of children, called Adventure of Meno. These books, which make me laugh (and whose series was launched this month by Simon & Schuster), are about none other than an elf. A toddler elf. A toddler SPACE elf. Whose best friend is a jellyfish. And who says things like “sunshine snack” for breakfast and “moo juice” for milk. (There’s even a “happy fun bowl” in Book Two, which brings to mind probably my VERY FAVORITE Saturday Night Live commercial parody EVER, but I seriously digress.)

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Jules: We’re here this morning with guest Adrienne Furness of What Adrienne Thinks About That to welcome authors Sara Lewis Holmes and Tanita S. Davis with some strong cyber-coffee before breakfast and Q&As about their new titles — Sara’s Operation Yes (Arthur A. Levine Books, September 2009) and Tanita’s Mare’s War (Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers, June 2009). Sara’s novel is about a group of middle-school students on a North Carolina Air Force base and their inspiring teacher, Mrs. Loupe, who brings them together with improv theatre, only to find that Mrs. Loupe will need their support in turn after her brother is reported missing in Afghanistan. Tanita’s novel, told in alternating chapters, tells the present-day story of two girls on a road trip with their eccentric grandmother and the grandmother’s own tales of having joined the African American battalion of the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) during World War II.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted about a novel—that didn’t have illustrations in it—but when two friends write really great books, you find yourself wanting to crow about them. Right, Adrienne?

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Last year, I started this seven-questions-over-breakfast author/illustrator interview series, all because there were a handful of new illustrators, in particular, with whom I really wanted to chat, whose careers I was following with interest, and whose art I was hankerin’ to showcase. Matt Phelan was one of those folks. And it’s taken me this long to feature him here, but I finally have. I welcome him for a cyber-breakfast; Matt says he’ll take “your classic eggs (style depending on whim), bacon, toast (with home-made jam), and home fries. And strong coffee, please. Of course, I don’t have this every day… except for the coffee. That is non-negotiable.” Why, here’s a coffee-drinker after my own heart. Strong and MUST-HAVE: The two ways I like coffee best. And the rest of his breakfast is nothing to sneeze at either. He might have to come over more often.

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“Suddenly they were in a small room, surrounded by stacks and stacks of money. Neither Henry nor Sam was willing to take his hand from the wall, but Sam reached down and groped in a bag at his feet. When he drew out his hand, his fingers were wrapped tightly around a bundle of old-fashioned-looking money. He cackled, ‘Now, this is fun! I could loot all day! At last I understand why my mean old papa ran back to the sea and the ships and the suckers!'”

That’s Sam. He’s the son of Blackbeard, the scourge of the seas. The little boy with him, Henry, and his little sister and his best friend and his best friend’s big sister have discovered a wall—a magic wishing wall in the middle of a cornfield, no less—that will take them where ever they’d like to go in Laurel Snyder’s briskly-paced adventure novel, Any Which Wall, illustrated by LeUyen Pham and released by Random House in May. Young Henry, very curious to meet a pirate, asks the wall if he and his time- and space-travelling crew can be tranported to a pirate house, where they can all meet “a really bad pirate, the worst pirate in the world!” Arrrgh! Well, Henry gets a nice little lesson in semantics when he meets, indeed, a very bad—as in, lousy—pirate: Blackbeard’s son “did not look like a pirate in the least. He was clean-shaven and neat as a pin, as well washed as Merlin had been filthy.” (Yup, the gang got to meet Merlin earlier in the book. Score. Emma also meets Guinevere, pictured below, a passionless “flat-voiced queen who breaks butterflies and cries without tears…”)

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This is one of many beautiful photographs taken by award-winning author and photographer Jan Reynolds, pictured below. Jan’s work has appeared in publications such as National Geographic, The New York Times, and Outside magazine.

But she’s also the author of many nonfiction books for children, including the Vanishing Cultures series, photo-essays for children about cultural diversity. The books in the series have been recognized as Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People and selected for the Kids’ Pick of the List by the American Bookseller’s Association. Jan is also a skier, mountain climber, and all-around fearless adventurer. She holds the world record for women’s high-altitude skiing, was part of the first expedition to circumnavigate Mount Everest, and performed a solo crossing of the Himalaya. And that’s just scratching the surface of her world adventures.

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Right around the time that Grace Lin did a blog tour for her new illustrated novel, the already well-acclaimed Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, I was picking up my library copy of the book. Once I started it, I couldn’t put it down. Remember how I mentioned on Monday that I’m probably far into Overdues Territory with my copy of Brian Floca’s Moonshot? Well, that is keeping company with Grace’s novel, too. I just had to hold on to it a while longer to soak it all in some more, as well as enjoy the illustrations as long as I could. (Yes, I’m a huge supporter of my local library, funding services with my delinquent due-date fees. Noble me. I do what I can to help out.)

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Jules: Eisha, holy guacamole! One of our favorite children’s book creators is here today, Jarrett J. Krosoczka. And it’s for such a very fun reason. He is going to tell us the story behind how he came to write his new graphic novel series, debuting this summer from Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers, called Lunch Lady.

In Book 1, Lunch Lady and the Cyborg Substitute (to be published at the end of this month), we find out that Lunch Lady, bedecked in her yellow suction-cupped rubber gloves, fights crime — but secretly so. The Breakfast Bunch at Thompson Brook School—Hector, Dee, and Terrence—do wonder what she does when she’s not a lunch lady and dishing out shepherd’s pie (“I bet she has a like a hundred cats!” Dee says). But little do they know she’s got the backs of the students, meeting up with Betty (her sidekick and herself a lunch lady) in the Boiler Room, to keep an eye on the school and any, ahem, robot substitutes who might be planning very evil plots. Well, little do they know until they decide to follow her one afternoon; Hector, after all, does wonder aloud one day if perhaps she’s “some sort of super secret-agent spy or something.”

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Jules: This is how happy we are that the month of May has arrived. See? We’re swoony and floating.

It’s the first of the month again, and that’s when 7-Imp features a student illustrator or someone otherwise new to the field of children’s books. The art today comes from first-time author for young readers, Eric Wight. Here we have an illustration from his debut graphic novel, My Dead Girlfriend, which was listed among the 2008 Great Graphic Novels for Teens by YALSA. So, yeah, Jenny Wraith here is swoony and floating, but she’s also very much not alive.

As you can see, Eric’s not new to illustration, but this May he will be debuting a new chapter book/graphic novel hybrid series for younger readers, called Frankie Pickle. Frankie Pickle and the Closet of Doom, published by Simon & Schuster, will be released this week. “The Frankie Pickle series,” Eric told me, “is about a typical boy with an anything but typical imagination. Whenever faced with a challenge, Frankie becomes lost in fantasy -– which sometimes causes bigger trouble than what he started with. But, in the end, creative problem-solving always triumphs. The aspects of the chapter book that take place within Frankie’s imagination are told with sequential panels, while the parts of reality are prose. My intention for creating a hybrid was to seamlessly integrate words and illustrations in order to entice even the most reluctant of young readers. A father of two small children myself, I also set out to write a book that parents would find equally entertaining as they read it to their kids.”

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