Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Harry Bliss hardly needs an introduction to parents and the teachers and librarians of elementary-aged children. His first illustrated title, A Fine, Fine School, written by Sharon Creech and published by HarperCollins in 2001, became a New York Times bestseller, and he has gone on to illustrate many other best-selling titles, including the popular Diary of a Worm (2003), Diary of a Spider (2005), and Diary of a Fly (2007), all written by Doreen Cronin. His most recent illustrated title was last year’s Louise, The Adventures of a Chicken, written by Kate DiCamillo, the tale of an intrepid chicken, longing for adventure, who leaves her comfortable nest and goes to sea. Harry’s forthcoming title—as in, on shelves this month—is Luke on the Loose, a TOON Book from Raw Junior, which Harry both wrote and illustrated.

But many people will also recognize Harry’s cartoon work: He is a cartoonist and cover artist for The New Yorker. In fact, his collection of New Yorker covers can be viewed at his web site, as well as many cartoons and peeks into his illustrated children’s titles. Harry also signed on with Tribune Media Services to create a self-titled strip, featuring his single-panel gag cartoons, Bliss. (The Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, and the Chicago Tribune are a few of the newspapers which run it.) The Bliss collection can also be seen at Harry’s site.

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This is a quick note today to share some of the most very excellent kidlitosphere events going on this month, most of them having to do with National Poetry Month. I mean, really, the kidlitosphere ROCKS. If it were an animal, it would be a rocknocerous. If it were a store, it’d be Rock-Mart. If it were a small village in the distant hinterlands of the British Isles somewhere, it’d be Rockingham. Its rockositude is, quite frankly, off the charts. Here’s proof:

Wait. Who is this guy? Oh yeah, okay. It’s Gregory Pincus over at GottaBook. Who up and shaved on us.

In case you missed it, Greg will be celebrating National Poetry Month in a big ol’ way with 30 Poets/30 Days. Read all about it here, including his all-star poet line-up, but bottom line is that he’ll be posting a previously unpublished poem by a different poet for each day in April. You gotta love that. Jack Prelunsky launches Greg’s event today with “A Little Poem For Poetry Month.”

The honorable Tricia Stohr-Hunt of The Miss Rumphius Effect features Poetry Makers, in which she’ll be interviewing thirty-six rock-star poets during the month of April. The schedule’s here. How fabulous is that? Very, I say.

The multi-faceted Farida Dowler of Saints and Spinners and Minh Le of bottom shelf books (whose response to the curse-word Pivot question back in August 2007 remains my all-time favorite one and which is not appropros to this post, so I apologize) are hosting—starting today!—a children’s-book-sequels contest that calls upon the abundant creativity of their readers. It is entitled, not surprisingly, Unnecessary Children’s Book Sequels That Never Were. (What? You’ve never heard of the doomed, downright DISASTROUS sequel to Wanda Gág’s Millions of Cats, the recently discovered Millions of Rats? Well, head on over to Farida’s site to read about it today.)

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