Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

 


 
Early next year, Denene Millner’s imprint at Simon & Schuster will publish Alice Faye Duncan’s Just Like a Mama, a picture book about a young girl (Carol Olivia Clementine) whose caretaker (Mama Rose) is someone, as the book description notes, whose blood is not her blood — but who loves the girl as fiercely and lovingly as a biological mother.

The book’s illustrator is Charnelle Pinkney Barlow, a debut artist. If her middle name sounds a wee bit familiar, well … she explains that below. Charnelle visits 7-Imp today to share some of her vivid artwork and to talk a bit about her work. I thank her for visiting.

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I had different plans for today, dear Imps, but some unexpected events in my Saturday ate up my day — and kept me from formatting the post I wanted to format. I’ll have that later this week at 7-Imp, but what I do have for you today is a reminder that over at the Horn Book’s Calling Caldecott, we are taking deep dives into some of the most outstanding picture books of the year — including, thus far, the ones pictured above. So, if you love picture books, you can head over there to see some of what our talented guest posters have had to say this year.

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I’ve some spreads today from Mac Barnett’s Just Because (Candlewick, September 2019), illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault. Isabelle also shares some early sketches from this book, describing what she shares here today as a “bit of a melting pot” and adding that she tried many different approaches before starting the final illustrations for the book.

I love that the phrase that is the title of this book never actually appears in the book. Any child anywhere that communicates their curiosity about the world in the form of “why?” queries (“but why?” is the repeated refrain of any three- or four-year-old) has likely heard “just because” muttered by an adult. In this book, a young girl, tucked into bed at night, has a series of “why?” questions for her father. I don’t know that she’s even necessarily delaying bedtime; she just has a lot of questions swirling around in her brain. (I mean, check out that face above. The gears are turning.) Read the rest of this entry �

 

Over at the Horn Book’s Calling Caldecott today, we pay tribute to author-illustrator Mordicai Gerstein, whose death we learned about this week.

That is here.

I think I’ll find my copy of Applesauce Season — my favorite book for autumn, which he illustrated for Eden Ross Lipson — and spend some time with it. Not to mention the exquisite The Man Who Walked Between the Towers. Gerstein’s legacy is a very tall stack of lovingly crafted picture books.

My condolences to Gerstein’s family.

 
As I’ve made clear before here at 7-Imp, I’m a fan of Abby Hanlon’s Dory Fantasmagory books. I think Abby taps into something real (and often quite poignant) with these books; in the hands of a lesser author, Dory’s antics would be altogether cloying. But Abby seems to know how to write about childhood in a way I think is authentic. She depicts children as they are — in all their glorious weirdness, that is — and not in ways that an adult thinks they should be. (We see a lot of the latter in children’s books.) It’s hard to get books for this age right, and I think Abby gets it just right.

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See that guy on the right? That’s Reuben of Troop 73, and he’s not the most self-aware dude. He is, in fact, the king of false accusations. He’s peed his pants, blames it on everyone else, and never really comes to understand that it’s his own doing. In fact, in the end he blames his pants. (“Thanks for nothing, leaky broken pants! Making me blame all my super great friends.”)

This is the story of Bob Shea’s Who Wet My Pants? (Little, Brown, September 2019), illustrated by Zachariah OHora. Child readers looooove to be one-up on the protagonist in a story. They’ll recognize that Reuben has — heaven bless him, it happens to the best of us — had an accident yet can’t accept it. He’d rather play the blame game, which … hey, it’s a tempting thing for even the non-narcissistic among us. Read the rest of this entry �

“People in glass houses should not throw stones.”
(Click to enlarge)

 
I always like to see what author-illustrator JooHee Yoon is up to. (Remember when she first visited 7-Imp back in 2011?) Coming to shelves in early October (from Enchanted Lion Books) is Up Down Inside Out, in which Yoon takes a string of idioms and depicts them literally.

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(Click to enlarge spread)

 
I’m sending you to BookPage today for my review of Patricia MacLachlan’s The Hundred-Year Barn (Katherine Tegen Books, September 2019), illustrated by Kenard Pak. That is here, and then if you want to come back here to 7-Imp Land, I’ve some spreads from the book today.

Enjoy!

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Those of you who follow picture books closely may remember this 2015 publication, The Only Child. Named one of the New York Time’s Best Illustrated Children’s Books for that year, it was created by author-illustrator Guojing. She’s back with a new wordless book (Schwartz & Wade, September 2019), called Stormy, the story of a stray dog who finds a new home.

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Hello! For just a moment anyway.

I’m sending you to the Horn Book’s site today for a review I wrote of Raina Telgemeier’s newest graphic novel for children, Guts (Graphix, September 2019). The review is here, and the book? It’s good stuff.

Until Sunday . . .