Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Back in April of this year, I received the James Marshall Fellowship from The University of Connecticut’s Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center. I spent a week looking through the James Marshall Papers there. (It was wonderful, and I still miss the very smell of the boxes.)

Today, I have a blog post up at the University’s site, all about my research there. If you’re a fan of James Marshall’s work, you might like to see the rare images up at the post (three of approximately 800 photos I took!).

That blog post is here.

Until tomorrow …

Good morning, dear Imps!

I’ve got a review over at BookPage of Lynne Rae Perkins’s Frank and Lucky Get Schooled (Greenwillow, June 2016), which is such an excellent picture book. Normally, I like to link to these reviews from here at 7-Imp so that I can also show you some art from the book. But today, I don’t have art; I’m going to just link you to the review. And that’s because BookPage chose the book as a Children’s Top Pick for this month. This means they included two spreads from the book in their review, to which I enthusiastically say (because I’ve already had my coffee this morning and am capable of enthusiasm by this point), YAY!

So, you can head over here to read all about it and see that bit of art, which I highly recommend, because—as I’ve already noted and as I say in the review—it’s such a well-crafted book. And, if you love picture books as much as I do, you don’t want to miss it.

[Fun Fact, speaking of Ms. Perkins: Home Lovely is one of my favorite picture books of all time.]

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“… but I’m sweet and sour, not a little flower!”
— From Yasmeen Ismail’s I’m a Girl!
(Click to enlarge spread)

 

“‘One of my dads is tall and one is short. They both give good hugs.'”
— From Sara O’Leary’s A Family Is a Family Is a Family, illustrated by Qin Leng
(Click to enlarge spread)

 

Today over at Kirkus, I’ve got two new picture books that play with shape, line, color, and space in smart ways. That link is here.

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Last week, since I wrote here about Yasmeen Ismail’s I’m a Girl! (Bloomsbury, June 2016) and Sara O’Leary’s A Family Is a Family Is a Family (Groundwood, September 2016), illustrated by Qin Leng, I’m following up with art from each book today.

Enjoy!

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“Over pie and coffee, I pitched Sophie a couple ideas. One was nothing more than a setting—a small city in southern Italy I had visited a dozen years earlier. The thing about Benevento is that it was totally infested with witches of all kinds, and for generations kids had to learn strategies on how to avoid them just to get through their day.”

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Over at Kirkus today, I talk to author-illustrator John Bemelmans Marciano, pictured here, about The Witches of Benevento, his new chapter book series illustrated by Sophie Blackall.

That is here this morning. Next week at 7-Imp, I’ll follow up with some art from the series.

Until tomorrow …

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Photo of John used by his permission.

 

 

I joined a few other children’s lit colleagues over at Slate Magazine to discuss children’s books that celebrate fatherhood. Click on the image above to see the gallery of titles.

Until tomorrow …

“Inside the airport you stand in lines.
You stand in lines to get your ticket. You stand in lines to check your bags.
There are lines for the restrooms. There are lines to go through security.”
(Click to enlarge spread)

 
Arriving just last month (is it already June?) on bookshelves was Lisa Brown’s newest picture book, The Airport Book (A Neal Porter Book/Roaring Brook Press). Have you seen it, dear Imps? It follows a family of four on a trip, who make their way through an airport. And it is, as the title tells you, all about the airport experience itself.

This makes me happy, because have I ever said that I love to people-watch in airports? I do. (The tearful goodbyes! The happy hellos! The relieved goodbyes! The resentful hellos!) And if you follow Lisa’s work, you know she does daily sketches, which are often of people. And I like her daily sketches very much. So, this book combines two very good things — that is, an airport with lots of Lisa Brown-rendered people in it.

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“We are ALL Americans,
Just the same.”
(Click to enlarge spread)

 
This morning at Kirkus, I have two new picture books (one will be on shelves in September) all about defying labels. That is here.

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Last week, I talked here with Faith Ringgold. I’m following up today with two spreads (one above) from her new book, We Came to America (Knopf, May 2016).

Enjoy!

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By now, you may have already read about The Rabbit hOle, the ambitious new project from the owners of Reading Reptile, a children’s bookstore in Kansas City, Missouri. The video above is a great introduction to the project, and not just for the reference to rye whiskey.

This Kansas City Star article from April of this year is a good way to get the low-down on the project. As noted there, what Deb and Pete are going for is “a huge immersive museum and attraction called The Rabbit hOle, an ever-changing celebration of children’s literature. They’ve deemed it the world’s first Explorastorium.” They also like to think of it as a National Center for the Children’s Book. You could also watch this:

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Here’s a quick post to show off the artwork of Dutch illustrator Martijn van der Linden, who illustrated Maranke Rinck’s The Other Rabbit (Lemniscaat). I believe this book was released here in the States last Fall (and it may have even been released in the Netherlands the same year, though I’m not sure about that), and I’m just slow in getting to it. Better late than never.

I like this enchanting import. It opens with two spreads that show a memory game in process. You know, like this. One card has been overturned, and it shows Rabbit. “Rabbit,” the text says, “is looking for the other rabbit.” On the next memory-game spread, we see that, instead of another rabbit, there is (on another overturned card) an airplane. Rabbit hops in the plane (the spread featured above) to find the other rabbit.

Along the way, he meets a whole host of animals, including birds who join him in the air. But, all in the name of pairing off, the birds meet some other birds and head off in another direction. Rabbit is alone again. When he lands on an island, he meets a king, a chicken, and a group of various creatures on the island. Each one of them pairs off. When Rabbit meets a dragon and asks if she has the other rabbit, the dragon tells Rabbit that, without the rabbit, she’ll be all alone. However, with the help of a beetle, Rabbit outsmarts the dragon — in the friendliest possible way. And I won’t give away the very end. Read the rest of this entry »

 
I’ve got some art today from author-illustrator Alexis Deacon’s first graphic novel, Geis: A Matter of Life & Death. (“Geis,” a Gaelic word for a taboo or curse, is pronounced gesh.) It will be on bookshelves in July from Nobrow Press. [Edited to Add, 5/30/16: Alexis has illustrated this graphic novel, though Geis is still the first he’s both written and illustrated.]

Let me back up a bit and say that I love to see Alexis’s work, and I was happy to see he’d done a graphic novel. (I just read this 2014 Guardian piece about him and very much enjoyed it, if anyone wants to learn a bit more about him.) This is what the publisher calls a supernatural historical fantasy and is the first in a trilogy. Readers are promised at the book’s close that “soon” we will be able to read Book Two, A Game Without Rules.

The book opens with the death of the great chief, Matarka. Her will declares that “there would be a contest. Fate would choose the one fit to take her place.” Calling upon the Gods, fifty souls are summoned at night — to the confusion of everyone. Thus begins the contest to see who will become the ruler of the island.

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