Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

 



 

I love to see the work of author-illustrator Marie-Louise Gay. At BookPage, I have a review of I’m Not Sydney! (Groundwood, February 2022). That is here.

Also, did you all see the winners of the 2022 Ezra Jack Keats Awards? Paul Harbridge has won the Writer Award, and Gracey Zhang has won the Illustrator Award. You can read more about the awards here as well as take a peek at the Honor books.

 

Now’s a fitting time to point readers back to this 7-Imp post, “‘Rondo Concerns Everyone’: A Guest Post by Oksana Lushchevska.” Back in 2015 at 7-Imp, Oksana Lushchevska — a doctoral student (at that time) in Reading, Writing, Children’s Literature, and Digital Literacy, who was born in Ukraine — reached out to me to see if she could write at 7-Imp about Ukrainian picture books. She contributed several posts, and one of those was about this book, The War That Changed Rondo, which Enchanted Lion Books released in English last fall as How War Changed Rondo (which Oksana translated). In her post about Rondo, Oksana wrote about the book and talked to the creators, Romana Romanyshyn and Andriy Lesiv, who shared a story with Oksana about how “Rondo concerns everyone.”

School Library Journal also shared this post this week at The Classroom Bookshelf.

As I’ve said at every social media platform I use (in order to get her attention), I’m having trouble reaching Oksana to check in on her. I hope she and her familiy are safe.

(Click spread to enlarge)

 
The endpapers of It’s So Difficult (Eerdmans, March 2022) — written and illustrated by Raúl Nieto Guridi (also known as Guridi), originally released in Spain in 2020, and translated by Lawrence Schimel — depict a ledger filled with rows and rows of numbers. And that’s because the story’s protagonist, a child, finds it relaxing to count things or calculate numbers. And those attempts at relaxation are necessary, because …

When I leave the house, everything is difficult for me. I feel a prickling that won’t go away, and every step I take is a triumph.

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“WE WILL demand that everything we buy has a label that details its impact on Nature, People, and Planet. That way, we can choose to buy products
that help Nature, not hurt it.”
(Click image, illustrated by Musa Omusi, to enlarge)

 
Dear Imps, I’m typing this on Thursday, because my Friday and my weekend will be largely consumed with the 14th IBBY Regional 2022 conference in Nashville. IBBY is the Interational Board on Books for Young People, and I’m looking forward to the (masked and vaxxed!) gathering of people coming to this conference. (You can read more about it here.) I’m also looking forward to moderating Saturday’s panel discussion about international children’s books, a conversation with Angus Killick of Red Comet Press; Christopher Lloyd of What on Earth Books; John Mackey of the Publishing Task Force of the Italian Trade Agency; and Emma Radditz of Elsewhere Editions.

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“It wasn’t her father,
who was always bringing home surprises from the outside world.”
(Click image to enlarge and see spread in its entirety)

 
I’ve a review over at the Horn Book of Matthew Forsythe’s Mina (Paula Wiseman Books, February 2022).

That is here, and below are some of the book’s glorious spreads.

Enjoy!

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In Ammi-Joan Paquette’s All from a Walnut (Abrams, March 2022), illustrated by Felicita Sala, Emilia wakes one day to see a nut on her nightstand. It’s walnut season, and this little gift means that Grandpa has a story for her.

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