Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Just when I thought that, for once, I’d chosen a poem written for adults, I inadvertently chose one this week that, evidently, has been adopted by the children’s poetry world as well.

This comes from British poet Brian Patten. It was first published in Love Poems (Flamingo/HarperCollins, 1990) and intended for an adult readership, though Patten has written children’s poetry as well.

I love this short, outstretched hand of a poem. I don’t want to go on too much about what it means to me, as I think a great deal of its appeal is its ability to invite the reader in, leaving room for many interpretations. I called it an outstretched hand, but it can also be a dare. An accusation. A wink. And so much more. Enjoy.

“I’ve found a small dragon in the woodshed.
Think it must have come from deep inside a forest
because it’s damp and green and leaves
are still reflecting in its eyes.

I fed it on many things, tried grass,
the roots of stars, hazel-nut and dandelion,
but it stared up at me as if to say, I need
food you can’t provide…”

You can read the rest here.

Today’s Poetry Friday round-up is being hosted by Carol at Carol’s Corner.

Illustrator Pamela Zagarenski is here this morning for a breakfast chat. Together, she and poet Joyce Sidman created one of my favorite picture books thus far this year—if not my very favorite—Red Sings From Treetops, released by Houghton Mifflin in April. You can read a bit more about it here — in a short post I did early this month. Red Sings is a poetry collection that brilliantly, in more ways than one, celebrates colors as you’ve never quite seen them celebrated before.

Pamela’s delicate and inventive mixed-media illustrations have been seen in two previous poetry collections — Maxine Kumin’s Mites to Mastodons: A Book of Animal Poems from 2006, as well as 2007’s This is Just to Say: Poems of Apology and Forgiveness, also by Joyce Sidman (“her skill as a poet accessible to young people is unmatched,” wrote School Library Journal about Sidman), and both released by Houghton Mifflin.

Since Pamela sent over one hundred images for this interview (I never really counted the images in the Dave McKean interview, but this might rival it), I’m going to get right to it, and we can find out what’s next for her and why she talks to her paintings (which I get. I really do.) For breakfast this morning, she’s having lots and lots of tea. “I get up really early (4:30-5:00),” she told me, “to paint, sketch, work on my computer. I have one, two, and sometimes three really big cups of tea, preferably with lots and lots of almond milk. I just love tea — always have! I don’t get hungry until later in the morning, but when I do, I like fruit, nuts, and raisins and brown rice or quinoa.”

Let’s get the basics from Pamela while we wait for our tea to steep, and I thank her for stopping by. And ESPECIALLY for the whole heapin’ ton of beautiful art.

{Note: I’m not going to put titles under each illustration, for different reasons, but The Really Eager and Curious can right-click on the images themselves—and then go to “properties”—to at least see JPEG names, as basically sent to me by Pamela and which are often the illustration titles as well. Also note that some of these images are details of larger illustrations. Most of these illustrations are hyperlinked to larger versions, too, so click the image itself to see in more detail.}

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This illustration here, which I adore on many levels, comes from Philip Stead. Philip’s debut picture book, Creamed Tuna Fish and Peas on Toast, won’t be out until this September-ish. I haven’t seen an early copy either. But a little birdy told me about Phil’s site, I visited, and I liked what I saw. I invited him over for one of my Random Illustrator Features, and—fortunately—he was interested in a visit.

Philip’s about to tell us a bit about Creamed Tuna Fish, a book with the sort of collage illustrations (and funky title) I like to see. This above image, though, is from his current work-in-progress, Jonathan and the Big Blue Boat, which looks equally intriguing and which he also discusses below. So, here he is, and I thank him for stopping by.

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Jules: Welcome to our weekly meeting ground for taking some time to reflect on Seven(ish) Exceptionally Fabulous, Beautiful, Interesting, Hilarious, or Otherwise Positive Noteworthy Things from the past week, whether book-related or not, that happened to you. Say that seven times fast.

This week we have one illustrator, Mr. Henry Cole (who has worked on more than fifty books and whom Erica Perl calls “a national treasure,” and I’d have to agree), and two authors, Ms. Perl herself and Linda Urban, whose stories Henry has illustrated this year in Linda’s Mouse Was Mad (pictured above) and Erica’s Chicken Butt! Know what? Yeah, I said chicken butt.

If you haven’t seen these titles yet and especially if you live and/or work with preschool children, I’m here to say that if you manage to get yourself copies and take a gander, you won’t be disappointed. Erica (who penned this very funny picture book in 2006) brings us Chicken Butt!, released by Abrams in April. She’s adapted into picture book form the classic school-yard rhyme, turning it into a call-and-response between a frustrated father, just trying to read the newspaper on a lazy afternoon, and his son, who manages to let a tattooed chicken—with, yes, a butt—follow him home. Publishers Weekly describes Henry’s art work in this one as “wryly effervescent as ever,” and Kirkus calls the book’s romp “a powerful piece of cacophony.” As for Linda’s Mouse Was Mad, released by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in May and met with great reviews all-around, well…move over, Sophie. (Okay, so she doesn’t really have to move over. That’s a great book, too.) This is a tale of a wee, WEE—but determined—mouse who is literally hoppin’ mad and trying to find just the right way to vent his anger. Mouse is also painfully adorable, but—as Kelly Fineman’s already put it—don’t tell him, because “being told one is adorable when one is angry is cause for still more rage.” Linda is the author of 2007’s A Crooked Kind of Perfect, and this is her first picture book.

As you can see, I’ve got a bit of Henry-art today. I had wanted to include this in my posts last week (here and here), shining a light on cartoon illustrations, but I knew that Erica and Linda would be stopping by today to say hi. So, here they all are. Let’s get to it — before we go kickin’ . . .

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I love fairy tales. And I love fairy tale adaptations and allusions, especially when they don’t shy away from the darkness of those original stories.

That’s why I was so pleased to discover “Gretel in Darkness” by Louise Glück. It uses brilliant imagery to put a sobering spin on the classic tale by imagining what comes next — after the witch is killed, the mother is dead, and the kids are back at home, safe and sound. It’s not exactly “happily ever after” – and really, how could it be? What child could really make it through such a story (poverty, abandonment, kidnapping, slavery, cannibalism, and murder) emotionally unscathed? How does a girl grow up in a world where all the mother figures see infanticide as a reasonable means to fill one’s belly?

Poor Gretel. One suspects that she’ll never really find her way out of those woods.

Here’s an excerpt:

This is the world we wanted.
All who would have seen us dead
are dead. I hear the witch’s cry
break in the moonlight through a sheet
of sugar: God rewards.
Her tongue shrivels into gas. . . .

Click here for the rest. You’ll be glad you did.

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This week’s Poetry Friday Round-Up is being hosted by Brian Jung at his blog, Critique de Mr. Chompchomp. I’m serious. How great is that name?

I’m doing another Quick Art Stop, this week with a few illustrations from Giselle Potter. I interviewed her almost exactly one year ago and told her, as I often tell interviewees, to stop by again any ol’ time. I recently went knockin’ on her cyber door, in fact, to see if she could share some spreads from the latest Emily Jenkins’ title she illustrated, Sugar Would Not Eat It, released by Schwartz & Wade in May.

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First of all, I don’t want to embarrass him, but I’d like to take this interview with illustrator Edwin Fotheringham, pictured above, and use it as an example for all future interviewees of how to do a Q & A, my friends. As I tell folks when I do these seven-questions-over-breakfast interviews, I blog on the side. On the side, that is, of my work-work and spending time with my children. So, I send the same questions out to everyone. I wouldn’t be interviewing someone in the first place if I didn’t love his or her work and know a lot about it, but if I customized everyone’s questions all the time, I’d never have time to do any interviews at all. So, I always say: Take these general questions and run with them and show us who you are and what your work is about. And boy howdy, did Edwin (who also goes by “Ed”) do that. And for that I thank him.

Secondly—and I’ll keep this short so that we can get right to his interview—I’m very happy he stopped by for a breakfast chat, because I am really crazy in love with his art. He has illustrated two children’s titles thus far in his career, after doing a lot of really fabulous editorial work, which he’s been doing for over fifteen years. (If you visit his site, you will be rewarded with lots of art.) I have enthusiastically yammered about these two children’s titles here at the blog already. Since he talks about them below and I have some art from them, I’ll skip summarizing them, except to say: Ed has wowed the critics, wowed readers, and wowed me. As Betsy Bird put it this week in her halfway-mark Newbery and Caldecott predictions, “his fame has been steadily rising. His technique is superb. His style well-suited to the picture book genre.” (Right. That marks the seven-skerjllionth time I’ve quoted Fuse recently, but she really knows her picture books.) School Library Journal described his art work in his second illustrated title, Shana Corey’s Mermaid Queen, as “glorious.” Yeah. That, too.

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Last week, I read about the blog Terrible Yellow Eyes over at Fuse’s site. At this blog, which makes my eyeballs pop out of my head and fly straightaway across the room, various artists are contributing their own works, created in tribute to Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. Hey, wait. It just occurred to me: Tomorrow is Sendak’s birthday. This I know because of my excessively geeky Sendak fan-dom. I should be posting this tomorrow, but I’m not. Well, we’ll just wish him happy birthday one day in advance.

Anyway, back to the blog. It is run by one Cory Godbey, and—as one of my favorite blog-readers and bloggers, John E. Simpson, put it last week—this project possibly “smacks of blasphemy to some folks… but not to me.” I’m with John. I think the site is a beautiful thing. Here’s one of my favorites — by Adam Volker.

Here is what Terrible Yellow Eyes is all about, in Cory’s words:

Over the coming weeks and months I’ll display a growing collection of works created by invited contributing artists and myself.

We share a love and admiration for Sendak’s work and the pieces we present here are done as a tribute to his life and legacy.

Remember this feature I did on illustrator Bill Carman in April? Bill gave me his permission today to post his contribution to Terrible Yellow Eyes, Wild Ride, here at 7-Imp. Take a look.

And happy birthday—one day early—to The One and Only…

{Note: Speaking of Betsy Bird and Sendak, as I have in this post, did you all see James Preller’s interview with Betsy last month, in which she said that the book-creator she’s dying to meet is Sendak, yet “if I met him I’d just flap my gums for a while and be destroyed by his single withering glance.” Heh. That made me laugh outloud. I’m not going to pretend I’ve not dreamed of meeting—or even interviewing—him, too, but well…he’s SENDAK, people. So, right now it remains just a dream. A very lovely one.}

Have you all seen Sylvie yet? Here she is, the star (you can tell she doesn’t mind being in the spotlight) of Jennifer Sattler’s new title, Sylvie, published by Random House at the end of last month. Sylvie’s story has a lot in common with Petr Horáček’s Silly Suzy Goose (from ’06): Sylvie, the wee flamingo, looks at her family one morning, all very pink, and then takes a look at the rest of the very colorful world and wonders why she is pink. “Well, dear,” her Mama tells her, “we’re pink because the little shrimp we eat are pink.” Sylvie then takes it upon herself to change her hue by nibbling on palm leaves (thus turning green), some grapes (turning herself purple), some chocolate…You get the picture. Here she flies by a kite…

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Jules: Happy first-Sunday-of-the-month to one and all. First Sundays here at 7-Imp means a student illustrator or artist otherwise new to the field of children’s lit will get the spotlight. This morning we have illustrator, designer, and art instructor (inspiring children, thank goodness, to “think conceptually as well as independently”) Duane Smith, who studied at Pratt Insitute and currently lives in Brooklyn. This morning, I’ve got some of his art work from Janet Halfmann’s Seven Miles to Freedom: The Robert Smalls Story, published by Lee & Low Books last year. Janet is also here this morning to say a bit about the book.

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