What I’m Up To at Kirkus This Week, Plus What I Did Last Week, Featuring Yokococo (Or: Here’s to the Super Freaks and Rotters Through and Through)

h1 May 10th, 2013 by jules


“There once was a good little cat named Matilda …
and a naughty little cat named Hans. They were SO diffferent!”

(Click to enlarge)

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.





One comment to “What I’m Up To at Kirkus This Week, Plus What I Did Last Week, Featuring Yokococo (Or: Here’s to the Super Freaks and Rotters Through and Through)”

  1. A new Sara Varon!!! I have to see that one, stat.


Leave a Comment


Should you have trouble posting, please contact sevenimp_blaine@blaine.org. Thanks.