What: Celebrate the Life of One of Children’s Literature’s Luminaries: A Peter Sieruta Event
When: Friday, June 28th, 4:30 p.m.
Where: The Lake Erie Room at the Hilton Chicago

How did you best know Peter Sieruta? Was it through his remarkable blog, Collecting Children’s Books (a go-to site for wit and historical tidbits)? Was it from his countless Horn Book articles or his work on the Horn Book Guide? Maybe you met Peter in a bookstore or you were a close personal friend.

Whatever the case, come, mix, and mingle with other friends and fans of the often urbane, always scintillating fellow. This event will be held as a celebration of Peter and his book (co-written with myself and Betsy Bird), Wild Things: Acts of Mischief in Children’s Literature, slated to hit bookstore shelves in spring 2014.

Please RSVP to Fusenumber8 [at] gmail.com if you would like to attend this gathering.

Note: The above photo is an older one of Peter and is used with permission of John Sieruta.

Last week at Kirkus, I chatted with picture book author Linda Ashman (that link is here) and follow up today with some art from her two most recent picture books, Rain! (Houghton Mifflin, March 2013), illustrated by Christian Robinson, and Peace, Baby! (Chronicle, April 2013), illustrated by Joanne Lew-Vriethoff.

Two things I didn’t have room for in the column last week: For those interested in writing picture books, Linda has some advice on the “For Writers” tab of her website. (Incidentally, Linda starting teaching picture book classes in Denver before she and her family moved, and now she’s turning those classes and other workshops into a “how to” guide.)

Secondly, in our Q&A last week, Linda talked about whittling Rain! down to its 78 words. Both manuscript and storyboard are available on the Rain! page of her website, if anyone’s interested.

Enjoy the art, and I thank Christian, who is also sharing some early development images for his illustrations in Rain!

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(You can click on most of these images to enlarge them, though they’re a bit blurry in spots.)

Enjoy the images and artwork. (more…)

Philadelphia-based illustrator and designer Rita Carroll just officially became an illustrator and designer. She graduated last week from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, as you’ll read below, so I think it’s a great time to feature some of her artwork. This is something I typically do on the first Sunday of each month—feature, that is, a student illustrator or new-to-the-field illustrator—but she just earned that degree, so I think it’d be fun to do it now.

Here she is to tell us a bit about herself and share some of her artwork … I thank her for visiting. (more…)

My Imp readers will have to forgive me today: I don’t have illustrations to share this morning, as I always do on Sundays, but I was out of town this weekend for Knoxville’s 2013 Children’s Festival of Reading. Knoxville does these festivals up right, and they’re always good fun.

This year (as I did last year) I moderated a picture book panel. 2013’s visitors included—as pictured left to right above—author Deborah Diesen, author/illustrator Bob Shea, author/illustrator Jarrett J. Krosoczka (had never met him in person before, but I feel like he’s an old friend, so that was particularly fun), author Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen, and author Marc Tyler Nobleman (do you all know about his pop culture research projects? … I love that).

So, that’s what I offer you today — a photo of people having just finished discussing picture books, which is always a kick. (Best question was from a child, and it was along the lines of “you’re grown-ups, so how do you relate to kids?” Or maybe it was “…so, how do you write for children?” Either way, it was a pretty profound question.) (more…)

I’ve always wanted to chat with picture book author Linda Ashman. Today, I get to. That link is here today.

Legend has it that Tom Jones—I’m sorry, but I just gotta post his picture now—passed out in the studio when hitting the final, dramatic note of “Thunderball” for the 1965 James Bond film of the same name. I sort of imagine author/illustrator Brian Floca similarly falling to the ground after having finished the artwork for Locomotive (coming from Atheneum this Fall), because it’s rather masterpiece’y. (That’s professional speak.) I won’t be at BEA this year, but I wrote about the book for Kirkus’ special BEA supplement (page 42!) in their current issue, and I chatted briefly with Brian about it. I’ll chat with him even longer in August and share some art then, too, from this beautiful piece of nonfiction.

Finally: Yesterday, I chatted with author Matthew Olshan and illustrator Sophie Blackall about The Mighty Lalouche, released by Schwartz & Wade this month. That Q&A is here, and next week I’ll have some of Sophie’s artwork, some sketches, and some of her research images.

Until later …

So, we three misfits sit here at the 7-Imp cyber-breakfast table. (Odd ducks RULE.)

I’m going to turn it over to them, while I pour the coffee and listen, and I thank them for visiting.

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Either way, I’d hate to see today’s featured picture book, Ben Rides On (Neal Porter/Roaring Brook), merely get lumped into the category of Books About Bullies, if only because then people might tend to disregard it. This isn’t a picture book trying desperately to force its way into a publishing trend. It’s a genuinely poignant, yet never saccharine-sweet, tale about kindness — one that Kirkus in their starred review calls “[g]reat amusement for the bold and timid alike.” And it comes to readers by way of Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Matt Davies. This is his first children’s book, and I believe it’s scheduled to be released next week.

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As I’ve made clear before here at 7-Imp, I’m a fan of the illustration work of Komako Sakai (who even visited for a brief interview last year). So, I was happy to see that she’s illustrated a new book, this one written by Hatsue Nakawaki. It’s called Wait! Wait!, and it’s for very young children. It will be released by Enchanted Lion Books in June, but I’ve got a sneak-peek of it today.

In a story mirroring the staccato rhythms of a toddler, we meet a young child dressed in overalls, ever-curious about the natural world. The child spots a butterfly—”Wait! Wait!”—and watches it flutter away. With each animal seen, the child reaches out to touch and learn, yet the creature flees — flying in the air, wiggling away. In the end, an adult (whom we assume is the parent) picks up the child, saying “Wait! Wait” in the same manner in which the child was trying to secure and hold other creatures. He then places the child on his shoulders, saying “Here we go!”

Sakai’s delicately-colored acrylic and oil pencil illustrations are beautiful. Her tight focus in these spreads puts us right with the toddler, exploring and reaching. She also includes pretty much the essentials here — the child and the creatures with which he or she (this could easily be either a male or female child) is fascinated, with the addition of a few supporting details, barely outlined in some cases, and generous white space. It really works. And I’m taken with her flying pigeons, as you can see below, and the compelling sense of movement here. (more…)

This morning at Kirkus, I write about Cecil Castellucci’s and Sara Varon’s Odd Duck, because we should all celebrate our inner (and outer) super freak — as well as, for that matter, the introverts of the world. That link is here, and next week Cecil and Sara will visit to chat.

Last week at Kirkus, if you missed it and are so inclined to read it, I had this on my mind and wrote about it, partially prompted by a picture book from Japanese author/illustrator Yoko Shima, who goes by Yokococo, called Matilda and Hans: Selma G. Lanes once wrote, “If you would truly teach young children through the books they listen to or read themselves, give them a hero who is an unregenerately bad example, a rotter through and through.”

Matilda and Hans was originally published in 2012, but this is the first U.S. edition. Above is a spread from the book.

Till Sunday …

MATILDA AND HANS. Copyright © 2012 by Yokococo Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA.