Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Well, my blogging plans for today were thwarted by some flu-like something or other that has rather inconveniently visited my home this week. But, lucky for us here at 7-Imp, the ever-so blog-friendly J. Patrick Lewis will occasionally stop by to share some new poetry, as he does at many other blogs. And how nice is it to get a random poem from one of children’s literature’s most talented and prolific poets and authors? Very. And the opportunity to share it? Even better.

So, yes, J. Patrick Lewis has made it easy for me today. I get to let him do the talkin’. In this case, it’s a Valentine’s Day poem, which will appear in COUNTDOWN TO SUMMER: A POEM FOR EVERY DAY OF THE SCHOOL YEAR, to be released by Little, Brown in June of this year. Did we have a Valentine’s Day poem? he asked me and Eisha. No, we didn’t, but now we do. And an adventurous, sea-faring one at that. And one involving amorous octopi sweethearts, three words which I never thought I’d put together. I even had to look up “bosun,” but now I’m in-the-know.

Thanks, Pat! Hope everyone enjoys this. If it doesn’t make you smile, then shiver me timbers! You need to stop and take a break.

Jules: How can we even begin to describe, as the big fans we are, how exciting it is to have renowned Caldecott medalist Ed Young stop by for a chat today? Young has brought us over eighty illustrated picture book titles — visually-delightful works of the imagination, as well as countless adaptations and re-tellings of the old folk tales and fables of our world, often rendered in paper-collage. If I were asked to name a contemporary illustrator whose works provide a truly exciting visual experience, no matter the book’s tone, Young would be the first to come to mind. Whether he’s using the bold, bright collage of a book like The Emperor and the Kite (written by Jane Yolen and published in 1967) or bringing us ethereal impressionistic paintings, such as in 1989’s Lon Po Po: A Red Riding Hood Story from China, it’s always dramatic. Always striking. Always infused with an elegance. You look at his illustrations, and you can see the poet in him.

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Jules: What a pleasure it is to feature Jeremy Hiebert today. Our frequent kicks-listers will recognize Jeremy as a Sunday regular. Lucky for us, he stumbled upon our blog during some point last year, I believe it was, while looking for some books for his children (one of our readers told me recently, “Y’all seem to have a gift for bringing in regular readers who’ve just wandered by and smelled the cinnamon buns baking,” which is probably my favorite blog compliment of all, as it involves dessert, for one thing.) And, since then, Jeremy’s been here just about every Sunday to share his weekly kicks — usually having to do with his beautiful family, photography, music, friends, and the other simple joys of life. As observant kickers know, on occasion Jeremy has shared some Flickr or blog links with us, pointing us in the direction of some of his photography — always quietly and modestly so, too. And I know I’m not the only one who’s noticed: These are humdingers, these photographs. Jeremy has an eye, as we photography laity say. His skill with the camera is impressive. He seems to be seeping with talent, whether it’s photos of his young children or horses or orchards or other nature shots.

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I’ve been wanting to do a quick post about nonfiction goddess April Pulley Sayre’s Trout Are Made of Trees, illustrated by Kate Endle, for a while now. It was released last year by Charlesbridge—way back in January, I believe—and sometimes I’m just slow.

It’s a good thing I waited a bit, though, since I was eventually able to chat a bit with Kate, the illustrator, who studied at The Columbus College of Art & Design, and convince her to share some of her other art work in one of these in-their-own-words random illustrator features I’m fond of doing these days.

Opening this post is one of Kate’s collages, not from that title, but more on that in a minute.

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This is probably my very favorite picture book illustration from all of 2008:

Yeah, I have a thing for sun images, but even with that affinity aside, isn’t that just stunning? I wish I could make it even bigger for you so that you could see the detailed collage work.

That would be the handiwork of award-winning designer, illustrator, and author Carin Berger, who joins me this morning for seven questions over breakfast. “I am a bit of a breakfast-skipper,” she told me. “But on a fine, leisurely late morning (say, a birthday or Mother’s Day), crepes with lemon and powdered sugar are a fave. And a swig or two of my husband’s very strong, but milky, coffee.” Let’s consider this a fine, leisurely late morning, I say, and we’ll have those crepes and coffee. It’s also a special morning, since I’m a huge fan of her collage work. And the very way her mind works, bringing us books like 2008’s The Little Yellow Leaf (Greenwillow Books), the book from which the opening illustration and the below illustrations come and which was named a New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Book of 2008. And one of my top-five favorite books from last year. Seriously, did you guys see the thing of beauty this book is?

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Jules: Jump back and slap the floor seven times! It’s our 100th kicks post. Now, I have to say, that just snuck right up on me. If I were more organized, perhaps we could have planned some big celebration, but I’m just now realizing this anniversary as I type. Just think: One hundred weeks of reflections on the beautiful things (starting way back here in March of 2007). I love it.

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My husband and I have finally made our way to season six, the final season, of The Sopranos. Today’s Poetry Friday entry is inspired by a poem one of the characters on the show reads to another character in one of the early episodes of this season, which we watched just the other night. I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone (though I know we’re slow in getting to the show and the rest of the country has seen it, I’m sure), so I won’t name names, but it may or may not have been during an existential crisis of sorts that one of the characters was having. In fact, this character was experiencing his own visions of life after death when the poem was being read.

Now, I am convinced that I think about life after death more than a person should (not in a morbid way, but in an enormously curious way) and that I’m, likely, terribly abnormal in this regard (as in, a total weirdo). But to me, it’s Life’s Greatest Mystery, and I think one reason I don’t mind aging at all in this wild life is that, each day, I’m one step closer to finding out the big answer. To say I claim to have no answers on the matter is a big ‘ol understatement, but I hope the atheists are wrong and that, in the words of Peter Pan, to die will be an awfully big adventure. All of that is to say that, well…you give me a book or a movie or a whatever that deals with the issue in an intelligent way, and I’m so hooked. This is one reason the poem really intrigued me. The character only reads the first two lines of the poem before the camera cuts away (to the other character’s ongoing journey through what you figure out is his own afterlife — not that he necessarily stays there, mind you), but my interest was piqued nonethless. (And the first show of this season opens with William Burroughs’ spoken word recording, Seven Souls, which was OH MY a TERRIFICALLY captivating way to open a season, but that’s a Poetry Friday entry for another day.)

Jacques Prévert—who wrote this poem, who is pictured here, who was born at the turn of the last century, and who is new to me—was a French poet and screenwriter. Evidently, he was an active participant in the Surrealist movement and also often wrote of sentimental love, even creating poems that were eventually set to music by the likes of not only many French vocalists, but also folks like Joan Baez.

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I finally just finished my library copy of Sonya Hartnett’s The Ghost’s Child, originally published in Australia in 2007, I believe, and published last year in the U.S. by Candlewick. Remember when Sonya stopped by in ’07 and said quite determinedly that she doesn’t like her books to be pinned down when it comes to labels (such as “YA”)? Well, she’s done it again (I see here in The Guardian that Linda Newbery wrote last year in her review, “{e}mphatically, The Ghost’s Child has the quirkiness and the sense of being true to itself that often marks out fiction not written with any particular readership in mind”). This time she’s crafted a contemporary fable of sorts—an ethereal, lilting, poetic one at that—about the very nature (and very complicated nature) of human love. Or it could be a modern-day fairy tale? I dunno; I’m still thinking about it. And there I go, trying to categorize, too. Anyway, I wasn’t so sure about this book at first, though I’m a huge Hartnett fan, but I have to say it suddenly endeared itself to me, invited itself right in and took a seat in my mind, refusing to catch a cab and head home. It made itself some coffee and settled in to stay.

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Devoted Readers of 7-Imp With Good Memories may recollect that, back in November of ’07, author Jack Gantos stopped by and sung the praises of author/illustrator Laurie Keller. Well, what a good reminder that was that I’d love to chat with her one day. Over one year later (hey, sometimes I’m just really slow) and after the birth of the handy-dandy seven-
questions-over-
breakfast illustrator interview, here we are.

Laurie’s here to join me for breakfast, and can I just tell you how fun it is to chat with her over a cyber-breakfast and how much I wish it were a REAL, in-person breakfast in her cottage in Michigan? Any hugely huge fan of Waiting for Guffman, a movie I’ve seen PRECISELY seven blajillion times and can probably quote to everyone’s great irritation, is a friend of mine. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

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Welcome, everyone, to this week’s Kicks post. And welcome to John Hendrix, our featured illustrator for this week. If you’ve been following the Cybils nominations, or if you just happen to like good picture books, you may have already encountered his work in Abe Lincoln Crosses a Creek: A Tall, Thin Tale (Introducing His Forgotten Frontier Friend) by Deborah Hopkinson (Schwartz & Wade Books, September 2008), which has made it into the list of finalists for the Fiction Picture Books category this year. If you haven’t read it, check out the image above and the two below for a sneak preview.

Doesn’t seeing young Lincoln up there, being all heroic and brave and stuff, make you feel a little patriotic? Doesn’t it fit in nicely with this week’s inauguration awesomeness? We thought so too.

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