Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Hi there. Jules here. And Alice. (Just for fun.)

Well, because I think I might possibly be crazy (not to mention all the free time I had during the holidays), I decided to offer our devoted readers the below post in which 7-Imp looks back at the many talented authors and illustrators who stopped by in 2008 for a chat, many with breakfast in tow. I pulled a quote from each interview, I compiled my favorite Pivot responses from the year into one singular questionnaire, and I pulled a handful of favorite illustrations from the year from the many artists who have stopped by for a visit (or whose publisher sent my favorite spreads from a title after I begged and pleaded). Many thanks are due to all the book-makers who have stopped by to chat with me and Eisha and the publishers who granted 7-Imp permission to share art.

And, yes, do I hear you saying this is the LONGEST POST IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD? Why, it is at that, but it’s oh-so skim-able — and mostly full of wonderful stuff at which to look. Sit back and enjoy. Pick your favorite interview and read a snippet. Find your favorite illustrator and kick back to soak in their skills. Choose your own adventure.

Many thanks to Bruce at wordswimmer, who inspired this post with his own retrospective, “Beacons of Light — 2008,” posted a couple weeks ago. His post is well-worth your time, and it got me thinking about how the mass media will turn Hollywood celebrities who turn to writing (often picture books) into bonafide stars, give them all the attention, etcetera etcetera and I know, I know, everyone likes to complain about that, but really. It happens. But the real literary celebrities are…well, many of who I think are the real rock stars stopped by this year, so take a look.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by to chat with 7-Imp and to share their passions and talent. Here’s to the conversations to come in ’09 . . .

Author David Almond (interviewed May 19, 2008): “I see young people all around the world who are fascinated by books, by stories, by language, and who ask serious and perceptive questions about my work. It encourages me in my belief that young people form a wonderful readership, and that the children’s book world offers writers all kinds of opportunities for exploration and experimentation. Children accept stories in all kinds of forms, often in forms that might be seen by adults as too difficult, too whacky, too strange. I love writing illustrated fiction, for instance. There are very few options for a writer to work in such a form in adult books.”

Author/Illustrator Elisha Cooper (interviewed September 22): “I’d like to take this random opportunity to throw-down and say that if you’re an actor or a celebrity, stay the hell out of our business. It’s a free country, fine. But here’s the deal: you can write children’s books as long as we can star in movies.”

Author/Illustrator Julie Paschkis (interviewed May 14), pictured below: “Every book has something about it that is hard for me -– there is always a moment when I am terrified that I can’t do it or there is some aspect that feels overwhelming. There is usually a turning point where I can turn that fear into creativity -– I can figure out how to approach the problem in a way that is interesting.”

Author Kerry Madden (interviewed May 29) on one thing most people don’t know about her: “Every time I start a book, I am terrified I won’t be able to pull it off.”

Author/Illustrator Mini Grey (interviewed October 8) on one thing most people don’t know about her: “I am programmed to self-destruct if I tell you.”

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Jules: Happy new year to all, and 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. (Absolutely anyone, of course, is welcome to list kicks — even if, or especially if, you’ve never done so before.)

Guess what, dear readers? It’s the one-year anniversary (thereabouts) of 7-Imp’s up-and-coming illustrator features, in which—on the first Sunday of each month—we feature someone currently studying illustration or someone newly-graduated from the field (or otherwise new to illustration). I have to say, this has been one of my favorite features; I always look forward to hearing from illustration students. I’m not gonna break into an overwrought Whitney Houston tune here (did I really just link to that? Blech), but I do think it’s fun to hear from the voices of the future of illustration. Some of my favorite student or brand-spankin’-new illustrators we featured last year include Ashley Smith, Chris Eliopoulos (a.k.a. “Elio”), Kali Ciesemier, James Hindle, Maris Wicks, and Lauren Minco. (Eric Orchard goes without saying, as we featured him just last month, but really, he rocks.) Remember any of those folks? I hope we see more of them, and I think it’d be fun to follow up and find out what they’re up to now, but, well…then someone would have to add some more hours to my day.

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Happy New Year to our devoted readers out there! I hope each and every one of you spent New Year’s Eve just as you wanted to spend it and with someone you love.

What better way to usher in the new year than with Naomi Shihab Nye, pictured here, a poet to whom I give my great adoration. I love what she captures in this poem I’m sharing below. Perhaps for some this would be a source of stress, the mass of Only the Things I Didn’t Do’s, as you look back on a year. To me, it’s very freeing. As one of my other favorite poets once wrote (well, singer/songwriter, but I’d argue she’s a poet, too): “The zero in my hand / is nothing to lose / it’s hard to confuse power with love / love with power / everything that I’m not is all that I’ve got.” Hey, you never know when you might need a zero (or simply a big sunny field). I say the first day of a new year is a good time for one. I love how its absence—and those sudden zeroes—shout and leave us a space, as Naomi puts it in “Burning the Old Year,” originally published in 1995’s Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (also mentioned before and once upon a time at 7-Imp). I’ll take those spaces—and what they offer us— over a list of resolutions any ‘ol day. And with gratitude.

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.

You can read the rest here.

Tomorrow’s Poetry Friday round-up will be handled by the dynamic duo over at A Year of Reading.

Here’s to beginning again with the smallest of numbers . . .

So, I’m hardly a saint for buying two books for Flying Horse Farms today, and I don’t need a round of applause for doing so. But this post is my attempt to try to convince you to do the same. Hey, if you’ve got a blog and a barbaric yawp for the world, you’ve got a rooftop on which to scream your yawp, so why not use it for something good?

Flying Horse Farms is a camp and year-round retreat center for children with serious illnesses and their families. It’s an Ohio-based 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization and working to become a member of Paul Newman’s Hole in the Wall Camps, the world’s largest family of camps for children with serious illnesses. I got that from this post at author Sara Lewis Holmes’ blog, Read Write Believe. In that post, she announced that she has started a library of camp- and horse-related books for the organization. Sara’s own niece has been battling cancer for two years now. Sara talked with the director of the camp, and they decided that it would be great to have books about horses (non-fiction and fiction-books-about-horses) available at several spots around the camp—the stables, the craft room, the main activity hall, the cabins, the dining hall, etc. Read the rest of this entry »

Jules: Hello? Anyone out there? I just swept away the cyber-cobwebs and am ready to post for the first time in a week. For the holidays, I took a blogging break in every way — no posting, not even reading my favorite book blogs (so, hey, if something big happened, please point it out to me and/or send me a link, since you can assume I’m way way behind on your blog). We here at 7-Imp hope everyone had a wonderful holiday — and a restful and peaceful one, as well.

It’s safe to say I’m flying solo today, since I know for a fact that Eisha’s not home. More on that in a minute . . . I’m also keeping things simple this week with just one lovely image from Lauren Castillo, whom I interviewed, you may remember, back in April, and whose illustration work I love. This is Lauren’s wintery holiday greeting, Fox in the Snow, which she is graciously allowing me to post here this Sunday. I’m digging it in a big way right now, since it was about, oh, sixty-five degrees in middle Tennessee yesterday.

I also have to throw in one more image, though. Remember when I featured my friend and former colleague, photographer Jeffrey Levi Palmer, last month? Well, he snapped this on his holiday travels, I believe it is (I failed to ask him exactly where), and he’s also allowing me to share today. I love this. I don’t know if someone decided to go vegetarian, or if he (or she) has a sweetie with a very colorful nickname. I love that somewhere there’s the object of someone’s great affection who answers to such a meaty moniker. I think a story needs to be written about this couple.

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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. Absolutely anyone is welcome to list kicks, even if (or especially if) you’ve never done so before.

And this week we’re kickin’ it holiday-style as 7-Imp’s greetings of the season and happiest-of-holidays wishes to you. The first image above, since Hanukkah this year begins at sundown today, is from artist Karla Gudeon, whose medium is dry-point engraving, a kind of hand-pulled printmaking (along with watercolor). Karla has stated that she uses “concepts culled from a lifetime of joyous Jewish experiences to create works that evoke warm responses and a familiar sense of shared human experience and common bonds.” The piece of art work opening the post, entitled To Life, as well as the ones pictured below—Sabbath Peace, The Whole Mishpochah (mishpochah being the Hebrew word for “family”), and Repairing the World—are courtesy of R. Michelson Galleries in Northampton, Massachusetts, owned by poet and children’s book author Richard Michelson.

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I want to share a very good Christmas poem with you guys – but I can’t. At least, I can’t transcribe part of it here and then tell you to “click here to read the rest.” It’s a shape poem (actually, a shape sonnet, if you can believe it) and in WordPress it’s just a pain in the ass to try to get the spacing right.

So… Please click here and read “Sonnet in the Shape of a Potted Christmas Tree” by George Starbuck. I’m sorry I’m forgoing the usual excerpt, but I’ll tell you that it has delicious words like “fury-bedecked” and “glitter-torn” and “bonbonbonanza.” Please take my word for it. It’s good. You’ll like it. Pinky-promise. And… Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Beautiful Solstice.

Laura is on Poetry Friday Round-Up detail at Author Amok. You’ll want to see what she’s got.

Here’s something new I learned: Illustrator Stacey Dressen-McQueen is, in the grand scheme of things, fairly new to children’s literature. As in, she has five books under her belt. I’m a fan of her work (in fact, I reviewed one of her illustrated titles at 7-Imp back here in ’07), but I had assumed, as I’m wont to do, that there existed a big long line of books she’s illustrated that I had never seen. Turns out I’ve seen most of them. And that’s lucky for me, because—as Publishers Weekly put it when reviewing Candace Fleming’s Boxes for Katje—Stacey’s illustrations resonate with joy and fellowship. Here is one of the illustrations from that title, Stacey’s first illustrated title from ’03, which tells the story of a young Dutch girl who writes to her new American friend in thanks for the care package sent after World War II:

I find Stacey’s stylized folk art to be mesmerizing. Her work is bold and expressive and the textures and patterns so vibrant that I want to reach out and touch the pages. Yet her illustrations never overwhelm the text. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m stopping in quickly this evening to share some art from what I think is one of this year’s most fascinating holiday reads, especially if you’re an illustration junkie, as I am: the re-discovered German tale of The Christmas Rose, written over eighty years ago by Sepp Bauer and illustrated by Else Wenz-Viëtor, who was born in 1882 and died in the early 1970s.

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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. Absolutely anyone is welcome to list kicks, even if (or especially if) you’ve never done so before.

Today we welcome illustrator Leslie Evans, whose linoleum block prints from Carole Gerber’s Winter Trees adorn our post today; thanks to Charlesbridge, who published this title this past June, we have some more spreads from this lovely book below. This book is all about the wonder of winter and its trees, as seen through the eyes of a young boy and his dog, taking a walk in the snow, exploring shapes and textures and colors and the life of the trees: “Trees that once had leaves are bare. / They’re dressed instead in lacy white. / Snow dusts their trunks / and coats their limbs / with flakes that outline them with light.” We see—through the boy’s eyes—the maple tree, the beech, birch, and oak, as well as the yellow poplar, evergreen, and more. The book even closes with a spread about how to identify trees in winter.

It’s a quiet, little wonder, this book. The verse is uncluttered and reverent, and Leslie’s brightly-colored block prints, decorated with watercolor and collage (with some digital enhancement, as well), are striking. Kirkus Reviews called it a “subtle, stylish wintry nature walk” and a “visually striking, cozy winter read,” and Booklist wrote, “{t}he blend of play, science, poetry, and art is beautiful.”

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