Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Jules here. Eisha’s blog vacation has officially begun, as she makes her Big Move to New York. Best of luck to her. I’m here this week, and next week when Eisha returns, I’ll take a bit of a break myself. I don’t have a Big Move planned, but boy howdy does my wrist need a break from too much typing, and my to-be-read piles are about to smother me (not a bad problem to have, though). So, I’ll enjoy having time to get caught up.

Now for today’s post: Emily at …whimsy… has taken the bull by its horns and created her very own important day, entitled Tell-An-Author-You-Care Day (go read that post, because it involves the interesting story behind what gave Emily this idea to begin with). Hmm, not a bad idea, huh? Here’s what Emily suggests we do (any or all of the following) on this day:

“1). Write a letter or email to a favorite author. I think JK Rowling and Stephenie Meyer receive plenty of fan letters. Think of an author you love that may need a little boost.

2). Write a positive review on Amazon and, if you want to, link to it in your blog.

3). Buy a book by a favorite author and give it to someone who will enjoy it.

4). Profile an author in your blog. I’m not talking just another review. Tell us a little about the author and mention at least one of his/her books that you love.”

I’m choosing an author/illustrator, the creator of my favorite picture book thus far this year, Jeremy Tankard, O Bringer To Us of Grumpy Bird. Yes, even though this year we’ve seen:

• Janice N. Harrington and Shelley Jackson’s Chicken-Chasing Queen of Lamar County (reviewed here in the same post in which I reviewed Grumpy Bird);
• new Emily Gravett titles;
• Cressida Cowell and Neal Layton’s That Rabbit Belongs to Emily Brown (reviewed here);
• a handful of excellent children’s poetry anthologies, including Jane Yolen, Andrew Fusek Peters, and Polly Dunbar’s Here’s a Little Poem: A Very First Book of Poetry (reviewed here); Joyce Sidman and Pamela Zagarenski’s This is Just to Say: Poems of Apology and Forgiveness (reviewed here); Deborah Ruddell and Joan Rankin’s Today at the Bluebird Cafe: A Branchful of Birds (reviewed here); and G. Brian Karas’ illustrated Today and Today (review to come soon), haiku by Kobayashi Issa;
• Rachel Isadora’s Yo, Jo! (review to come soon);
• Kevin Henkes’ A Good Day (reviewed here);
• David LaRochelle and Richard Egielski’s The End (reviewed here);
• Laura Vaccaro Seeger’s Dog and Bear: Two Friends, Three Stories (reviewed here);
• and Taeeun Yoo’s The Little Red Fish (reviewed here) . . .

. . . (whew!) Grumpy Bird still remains my favorite picture book thus far in 2007. Yes, there have been some great picture books this year. Those I mentioned are ones I love dearly, but Grumpy Bird takes up the largest space in my heart, because it’s spot-on funny and manages to have a real heart to it, because the illustrations are wonderfully psychedelic and like none I’ve seen before, and many other reasons — primarily, because of the “comic perfection of Bird’s face as he marches along in a fury,” as The Wall Street Journal review put it.

Here’s what I’m going to do to celebrate Tankard’s picture book talents:

1. I’m going to re-direct you to my Grumpy Bird review, ’cause if you haven’t read the book yet, there is a Huge Hole In Your Life.
2. I’ve never done this (I’m sure it’s easy), but I’m going to figure out how to post my review of that picture book to Grumpy Bird’s cyber-spot at Amazon as a user review. (I’d like to post all my reviews here at 7-Imp to Amazon, for the record . . . but, well, there are only so many hours in the day).
3. I’m going to direct you to his bio at his web site. Whoa, I had no idea he once lived in Knoxville, as Eisha and I both did at one point (she and her now-husband and Yours Truly all went to college in Maryville, Tennessee, just outside of Knoxville, and all lived and worked in both Maryville and Knoxville for many years. And I met my husband there and got married there and had my first daughter there and all that fun stuff). Tankard was born in South Africa, his bio says, and even lived in Hazard, Kentucky (which I also once frequented for sign language interpreting assignments, back when that was my full-time work). Small world. Anyway, now he lives in Canada.
4. I’m going to direct you to Tankard’s blog, especially this post, in which you can see Grumpy Bird as presented at a school presentation — and also a collage presentation of Beaver and one of Rabbit, both characters from the picture book. Best of all, there’s this news about Boo Hoo Bird, the sequel to Grumpy Bird.
5. I’m going to re-direct you to this 7 Kicks list from June of this year, in which Tankard contributed an image of Grumpy Bird that he did for the cover of a French children’s book catalog. Thanks again, Jeremy! (I put the image at the top of this post, too, and I hope he doesn’t mind that we used it one more time for one more post).
6. And I suppose I’ll email him this post as a way to say thanks from one reader. I feel a bit awkward about that, as if perhaps he doesn’t really need my thanks, and I don’t know if he needs a “little boost,” as Emily put it. Grumpy Bird has been well-received. But I’ll also thank him on behalf of my daughters (ages 3 and almost-2), who really dug Grumpy Bird and the picture book as a whole.
7. Last, but certainly not least, the next time I see the book in a bookstore, I’ll purchase it for my entire family, since the copy I had recently was a library copy. And, if there are two copies, I’ll purchase one for Eisha, my blog partner-in-crime. Wait, if there’s just one copy, I’ll buy it for her and then order a copy for myself at a later date. That’s better. Hey, by this point, she will have already moved and gotten settled into their new home, so she won’t have to actually pack this book.

Here’s to Grumpy Bird . . . and the mind and artistic talents of Jeremy Tankard (and Grumpy Bird’s sneakers, which make me laugh).