Poetry Friday: Waking Sister Spring
March 20th, 2009 by jules
As quickly as he could, Robin grabbed the morning light
and headed back to the forest.”
* * * Debbie Ouellet, How Robin Saved Spring* * *
March 20th, 2009 by jules
Seven Questions Over Breakfast with Emily Gravett
March 18th, 2009 by jules
1.jpg "Emily Gravett; photo credit: Mark Hawdon")
One of my favorite contemporary illustrators is here today. And I mean one of my TOP-FIVE favorites. With my love of hyperbole aside, I say that British illustrator Emily Gravett is one of the most exciting writer-artists at work today who creates books for children. When she released Monkey and Me in the UK in ’07, The Sunday Times wrote that the title “marks out the exceptional from the mediocre.” I’d say that about all her books thus far. The Irish Times called her a magic-weaver. Her work is daring and one-of-a-kind and oh-so slightly subversive, some of my favorite elements in a picture book.
Remember when she hit the scene with the multimedia wonder that was Wolves (released by Simon & Schuster in the U.S.), the poster child for postmodern picture books of 2006? Turning a traditional narrative on its head, she told the imaginative, suspenseful tale (which also managed to be terrifically informative) of a rabbit with his nose firmly stuck in a nonfiction title about wolves, a book whose subject matter has stepped off the page with a snarl and an appetite, unbeknownst to the rabbit. And the alternate ending? Well, it vies for Best Picture Book Ending Ever. Truly. The book was not only critically-acclaimed, but it also made approximately seven bajillion kidlitosphere bloggers go berserk with glee. Wolves, which started out as a college project, also won Emily the 2005 Kate Greenaway Medal and a 2007 Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor.
Random Illustrator Feature: Matthew Cordell
March 16th, 2009 by jules
This is little Casey Jenkins. He’s the the worst player in the Delmar Dogs, the underdog Little League team of James Preller’s new picture book, Mighty Casey, a re-working of Ernest Thayer’s Casey at the Bat, illustrated by Matthew Cordell (Feiwel & Friends; March, 2009). “It’s unkind to speak ill / of a batter who can’t hit. / So, um, gee . . . that Casey . . . / he sure could chew and spit!” writes Preller. Not only does Casey’s every at-bat end “not with a bang, but a whiff,” but his teammates aren’t faring much better: Omar scrapes a knee, Ronald relieves himself over in left field, Ashanti takes a nap, Tommy Maney’s climbed a tree, Jamal got stung by a bee, and Johnny Reel refuses to run. Eventually, things turn around for the boys, and above we have Casey up to bat there, during a crucial moment. He strides to the plate, as you can see. He really is a true-blue geek—a lovable one at that—so I love the seriousness with which he taps his cleats there.
7-Imp’s 7 Kicks #106: Featuring Selina Alko
March 15th, 2009 by Eisha and Jules
Jules: Author/Illustrator Selina Alko is visiting today, and I just have to open with her illustration of Tennessee from Sheila Keenan’s nonfiction title, Greetings from the 50 States (Scholastic). And that’s because Eisha and I are both from Tennessee (well, okay, I was really born in Kentucky but consider Tennessee home), even though I returned after a bit of time away from it but Eisha up and moved to Massachusetts and then settled in New York. (I think, however, that she’ll always be a Southern girl at heart, y’all. She can correct me if I’m wrong, but once you’ve lived in the shadow of those Great Smoky Mountains, as we both did for quite a while, the state quite firmly settles itself into a cozy corner of your heart. One with fiddles playing on the radio and a stash of MoonPies and Jack Daniel’s nearby.)
Share a Story/Shape a Future, Day Four:
How to Make the Library Work for YOU
March 12th, 2009 by jules
Jules: As I mentioned yesterday here at 7-Imp, I’m happy to be involved in this week’s blog tour for and by the people who create and engage their readers: teachers, librarians, parents, and people passionate about literacy. Yes, a literacy blog tour: It’s a way to share ideas and celebrate everything reading has to offer our children. I love the idea, and I’m pleased to be one of the many voices this week in this literacy project. It’s called Share a Story — Shape a Future, and it’s the brainchild of Terry Doherty from The Reading Tub. Check out the project’s web site if you want to backtrack and read what you’ve missed this week and if you want to see what’s-to-come. Here’s a master schedule; Day One was devoted to “Raising Readers,” Day Two to “Selecting Reading Material,” and yesterday to “Reading Aloud — It’s Fun, It’s Easy.”
Today, Day Four of the tour, is a day devoted to “A Visit to the Library.” (Check the bottom of this post for today’s—and the rest of this week’s—schedule.) I am joined by public librarian Adrienne Furness. I already gushed yesterday about why I instantly thought of interviewing her for this literacy blog tour, so I’ll try not to make her blush today. Bottom line is that she’s an exemplary public librarian.
Adrienne is one of two Children & Family Services Librarians at the Webster Public Library in the Monroe Country Library System in Rochester, New York. She blogs at What Adrienne Thinks About That, as well as here at the Monroe County Library System and the wonderful Homeschooling and Libraries. She’s the author of Helping Homeschoolers in the Library, published by ALA Editions last year.
We’re here to talk about how patrons can best make the library work in their favor. Adrienne, isn’t it fun to be a part of this multi-blog project? I’m especially happy to be involved, since I am currently not working in a library, though I have the requisite degree and such. I’m working from home, part-time and in my jammies, yet I know from my previous experience as a librarian some of the misconceptions about library use. And I’m glad to play a part, I hope, in helping clear some of them up. (By the way, because I cannot stand to post without images, I’m going to throw in some book covers of titles about libraries. Just below is probably my very favorite one.)
Sharing Stories and Shaping Futures
March 11th, 2009 by jules
This week marks an unusual blog tour, Share a Story — Shape a Future, the brainchild of Terry Doherty from The Reading Tub. I meant to post about this earlier this week and was probably way remiss in not doing so, but I’m just coming up for air and uncrossing my eyes after the chock-full-‘o’-art Dave McKean interview.
We hear about blog tours all the time, but this is a unique—and wonderful—one, indeed. It’s a one-week literacy blog tour that is “for and by the people who create and engage their readers: teachers, librarians, parents, and people passionate about literacy.” You can head over to Terry’s blog to catch up on what’s been posted this week at all kinds of blogs, and you can also hit Jen Robinson’s site to take a gander. (That Jen with all her many passionate literacy efforts; I don’t know how she does it. She rocks, as the kids say. Terry, too, for that matter. Everyone behind this entire blog tour deserves a big ‘ol round of applause. I almost typed applesauce. Hey, let’s give ’em some applesauce, too.)
The project has its own site here, probably the very best spot in which to get caught up. (Here’s a master schedule; Day One was devoted to “Raising Readers,” Day Two to “Selecting Reading Material,” and today to “Reading Aloud — It’s Fun, It’s Easy.”) I’ll be involved in the tour tomorrow: I’ll be interviewing/chatting with public librarian extraordinnaire Adrienne Furness about how to make the library work for YOU — yes, YOU, the patron. Let me just say now—so that I don’t make her blush tomorrow—that one of the reasons I chose her to interview is that, seriously, don’t you wish all public librarians were as smart and friendly and fun and passionate about literature and library programming as she is? I made that “passionate about literature” irritatingly big, because I believe it’s fundamental to those who work with children and books. And Adrienne’s got it goin’ on something fierce.
I’m happy to be involved in such a unique blog tour. To celebrate, I’ve got my own pic up here of my wee’est one, reading one of her favorite books (Elisa Kleven’s The Apple Doll) in the sunlight (which is why the feline, Lyra, is also there).
See you tomorrow when I’ll have Adrienne over for coffee and one very possible discussion before breakfast . . .
Seven Impossible Interviews
Before Breakfast #81: Dave McKean
March 9th, 2009 by Eisha and Jules
Jules: Artist Dave McKean, whom 7-Imp welcomes this morning with a big, strong cup of coffee and all kinds of adoration and severely geeky fan-dom, is capable of way more than seven impossible things before breakfast, it’s safe to say. He’s an award-winning graphic novelist; author; photographer; designer; illustrator of hundreds of comic-book and book covers, as well as CDs; editorial illustrator; film designer; director; and jazz pianist, even co-founding the record label Feral Records with saxophonist and composer Iain Ballamy. I’m probably missing a whole slew of other things. Dave McKean is unceasingly inventive.
7-Imp’s 7 Kicks #105: Featuring Valeri Gorbachev
March 8th, 2009 by Eisha and Jules
“No,” they said, “but we will help you look.”
Jules: Welcome to 7-Imp’s 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.
Poetry Friday: An altar where no walls exist; or, Sticking it to da Man.
March 6th, 2009 by eisha
This is not a political blog. Or a current events blog. Or even a “here’s Jules and Eisha’s opinions on random stuff” blog. It’s supposed to be, as the byline says, a blog about books.
Okay. But.
Yesterday, as you may have heard, the Taliban bombed the shrine of Sufi poet Rahman Baba in Pakistan. They had warned the locals that the shrine would be destroyed if women continued to visit it, because doing so “promotes obscenity.”
I wanted to call attention to this evil by posting some of Rahman Baba’s poetry today. It turns out it’s hard to find much of his stuff translated into English online, and what I did find… well, honestly, it didn’t quite do it for me.
You Never Heard of Sandy Koufax?!
March 4th, 2009 by jules
See this fabulous spread? This is from a new picture book, entitled You Never Heard of Sandy Koufax?! (Schwartz & Wade; February, 2009) by Jonah Winter and illustrated by André Carrilho. And this title has the most exciting picture book art I’ve seen all year, I have to say.
