Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

 

Hi, dear Imps. Is everyone staying warm? I hope so.

Want to see some art that might warm you up? Over at BookPage, I’ve got a review of Amy Gibson’s Catching Kisses, illustrated by Maria van Lieshout and released by Feiwel and Friends on the very last day of last year.

That review is here, but I also asked Maria if she’d like to share some art from it, so I have that here today at 7-Imp.

And … since Maria has written and illustrated a second Hopper and Wilson book—Hopper and Wilson Fetch a Star, coming in April from Philomel—I asked if she could possibly share some spreads from that, too. (There are Hopper and Wilson, up left there, getting their plane ready for takeoff.) Do you remember 2011’s Hopper and Wilson, which I posted about here? (Now it’s evidently available in board book format, too.) Well, they’re back, and I’ve got an F&G of the book. This time the two best friends head way (and I mean, way) out to grab a star for a night-light (or a “lantern for nighttime adventures”). I won’t give the whole story away and ruin your reading adventures, but once they get near to a star they’d like to snag for their own, Wilson manages to get lost and in the end, when he’s found his friend, they decide to leave the star right where it is. Best let Mother Nature be, after all. (Plus, who needs a ginormous, burning ball of gas when you have Hopper? That’s what I say anyway.)

Maria created the art for Hopper and Wilson Fetch a Star with watercolors, ink, collage, colored pencil, crayons, a bit of acrylics, and “some technology to pull it all together.” The art for Catching Kisses is evidently all Adobe Illustrator, and again, you can read my thoughts on that book at the BookPage review.

Maria even sent along (without me asking) my favorite spread from Hopper and Wilson Fetch a Star — the nearly pitch-black one below, which constitutes Wilson’s darkest moment. I remember sometimes feeling like that as a child, especially if I thought of the vastness of outer space.

Enjoy the art.

 

CATCHING KISSES. Copyright © 2013 by Amy Gibson. Illustrations copyright © 2013 by Maria van Lieshout. Published by Feiwel and Friends, New York. Images reproduced by permission of Maria van Lieshout.

HOPPER AND WILSON FETCH A STAR. Copyright © 2014 by Maria van Lieshout. Published by Philomel Books, New York. Images reproduced by permission of Maria van Lieshout.