Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

NPR’s Melissa Block has excellent taste.

I’m so glad I caught this yesterday while cooking dinner. Do yourself a favor, and listen to it if you can. E.B. White reads excerpts from the novel, and evidently he did something like SEVENTEEN takes on reading the part about Charlotte’s death when recording it, what with getting choked up so much.

And I own and have read this, but I still learned stuff in this wonderful piece that I didn’t know.

Here’s to Charlotte, who always keeps her promises…

* {I cannot claim to speak for Eisha on that claim. It is mine and mine alone.}

If you read our blog regularly, you could probably guess that it would be difficult for me—should someone, say, have a gun to my head, absurdly enough—to name my top-ten favorite illustrators. It’d just be hard to narrow, my friends.

But Sophie Blackall would, without question, be on my list. There is a lightness and a brightness to her work that always makes me smile; at the same time, her Chinese inks and watercolors are capable of either great elegance or supreme goofiness and lots of humor, depending on the story she’s illustrating. For an example of the former, see 2007’s Red Butterfly: How a Princess Smuggled the Secret of Silk Out of China (Candlewick), written by Deborah Noyes, and for an example of the latter, YOU ABSOLUTELY CANNOT MISS this year’s deadpan Jumpy Jack & Googily (Henry Holt), written by Sophie’s bud and frequent picture-book-making partner, Meg Rosoff (not to mention the other picture book titles on which they’ve partnered, which are listed below):

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Jules: AUGUST 3rd?? IT’S AUGUST ALREADY? Mercy sakes.

Whew. Yes, it’s the first of the month. And that’s when we feature a student of illustration or a brand-spankin’-new illustrator here at our seven kicks list, our meeting ground for listing 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. And I can hardly believe it’s already…well, almost Fall. Sorta.

This week we’re featuring artist Eric Lamson, who studied illustration at Montserrat College of Art in Massachusetts. As Eric’s bio at his site—featuring his award-winning, Poe-esque “Gold Bug”—states, he works in pencil, acrylic, and oil. He also creates illustrations in relief, “using a unique method that he originated, utilizing: masking tape, cut illustration board, glue, joint compound and gesso.”

HOWEVER, that bio—and Eric’s site, for that matter, and the artwork on it—is dated 2006. And it just so happens, Eric told me, that he has been “kind of on a soul search. I’ve been struggling with finding the right way of working that best suits me…I’ve been kind of moving away from children’s illustration lately.” So, the opening image up there, “Shiva Monkey,” also a Montserrat award-winner, and these three below images—one from a fable of Aesop; one entitled “Introvert,” and the 1984 image—are examples of Eric’s earlier work as student of illustration:

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Jules and Eisha: Here’s our Poetry Friday entry for today, an old classic, if you’ll allow us to sing it to ourselves:

Happy birthday to us!
Happy birthday to us!
Happy birthday, 7-Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimp!
Happy birthday to us!

eisha: Is it possible?! We’re TWO! Two years old! And hey, we just had a little tantrum not too long ago, so I guess we’re developing right on schedule. Walking around, feeding ourselves, yelling “NO!” at the slightest provocation… my, how the time flies. J, can you believe it’s been two years already? And we’re still here?

Jules: Yes, we did throw a tantrum, but at least we tried to use words (is that something only mamas-of-toddlers get? I dunno.) Really, it’s just growing pains, I guess.

And we can look back on the year and consider the things we’ve done: Mainly, that I annoyed everyone, I have no doubt, experimenting with font sizes and colors and by putting to use—entirely too often—the marquee tag. But see my restraint here? I didn’t put “marquee tag” in marquee tags!

What was your favorite post this year, E? I think my own question is too hard to answer, but I will include here one of my favorite illustrations we posted this year — from up-and-coming illustrator, James Hindle. ‘Cause who doesn’t want a cupcake belt buckle? I ask you. And do you know: As a result of that post about James, someone contacted us and shared this actual cupcake belt buckle; she found it while looking for something to match her cupcake tattoo. For serious. And that would be Alison Alexander, Australian jewelry-maker, who—incidentally—has this fabulous autograph at her site. (My fan-dom for John Burningham knows no bounds. If we ever got an interview with him, well…I don’t know that it would actually ever get posted, ’cause I’d pass right out and wouldn’t be able to pick myself up.)

Anyway, um, I know we should probably try harder to highlight all the things we did this year, but, shoot….people have the archives. And I’m excited that we re-discovered our roots and are gonna post more of Whatever the Hell We Want Whenever We Want To. Would you say that’s an apt description, E? Read the rest of this entry »

When author/illustrator William Bee released his second book, And the Train Goes… (Candlewick, 2007), Kirkus Reviews described it as “{a} fresh, visually arresting read-aloud with a lovely old-time feel.” You could say that about William’s other two books as well—Whatever, released by Candlewick in 2005, and this year’s Beware of the Frog (also Candlewick)—but you’d be simplifying his books and his style a bit much by calling them old-timey. There is a modernity to his style as well, what with his ultra-stylized design sense — not to mention the demented, deadpan humor and spirit of at least two of his books thus far (the very Pierre-esque Whatever and the warped almost-fairy-tale world of Beware of the Frog). Kirkus even wrote about Beware of the Frog that it joins “the rapidly swelling ranks of seemingly innocuous tales for younglings in which main characters are suddenly killed off.” (If you’re thinking what in the what the?, you need look no further than Tadpole’s Promise or Ugly Fish as but two examples.)

There are actually many things about William’s style as an illustrator that appeal to me — not just this ability he has to veer from quite demented to totally traditional (as Publishers Weekly pointed out, And the Train Goes… is filled with what they called “English archetypes,” and have you used this book as read-aloud yet? Wonderful, I say). There’s also his web site in which you learn…well, nothing about his books but an awful lot about a few of his favorite things (staying home, giraffes, 1978, tape measures, London buses, Michael Caine, supersonic planes). Dare I say it? Dare I employ the so-overused-it-barely-registers-meaning-anymore “quirky”? Okay, he’s quirky. There. I said it.

So, yeah, my interest was piqued, and I snagged an over-breakfast interview with him. (William tells me we’ll be very disappointed with his breakfast-of-choice: “I usually have half a litre of water and a banana. On Sundays, I sometimes go mad and have two slices of toast with butter and Tiptree Jam, and a cup of tea — ‘Yorkshire’ tea with milk and two sugars.”) Read the rest of this entry »

For Knoxville and the members of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church after this tragic event last weekend:

{Taken from Honeybee: Poems & Short Prose, Greenwillow, 2008; posted with gracious permission from Naomi Shihab Nye.}

Seriously, people, do not even look below this line if you haven’t read the books but think you might someday. Spoilers abound, and we make no apology for it. How could we have a proper debate otherwise? Right? Anyway.

Since my abduction into the Twilight cult a couple of months ago by my friend Dana Koster, I have frequently commented here on the way this series of books has taken over my life. I know I’m not alone. As Dana put it at her blog, there’s something about “the characters and the intensity of the relationships between them” that makes for very compelling reading. Compelling in the same way that, say, crack is compelling to some people.

The particular relationship that elicits our obsession the most would have to be the complicated love triangle that has formed between our mortal heroine Bella, her vampire boyfriend Edward, and her werewolf best friend Jacob. When last we saw them [SEE, SPOILERS STARTING ALREADY. GET OUT WHILE YOU CAN, TWILIGHT VIRGINS], at the end of Eclipse, Bella and Edward were engaged, with Bella having convinced him to turn her vampy after the honeymoon. Jacob, having confessed his love MANY TIMES and been ultimately, but sorrowfully, spurned by a very conflicted Bella, was wolfing it off into the hills, contemplating a future gone feral.

The fourth, and (sorta maybe) final book of the series, Breaking Dawn, is due to be released in a very few days. Dana and I have already reserved our copies for the local big chain bookstore’s release party* (look, she even found thematically appropriate earrings!) and are looking forward to devouring it next weekend, and then finally getting our lives back. But in the meantime, we keep getting into discussions (arguments) about what we want to happen in BD and which man (ahem) Bella should end up with – she’s firmly in Jacob’s camp, while I’m an Edward girl. Since the second edition of Eclipse comes with iron-ons so that readers can publicly declare their loyalty to Team Edward or Team Jacob, we obviously aren’t the only ones discussing (obsessing over) this issue. I mean, look at the response Robin got when she asked about it. So, I suggested we bring it to the blog in the form of a public debate, and see what happens.

(*Apologies, but I tried to reserve it at the local indie and they didn’t seem to understand that I needed it precisely at midnight on its official release date. I ordered something less urgent from them to atone, okay?)

eisha (representing Team Edward): It seems almost superfluous for me to even have to state a position here, since Team Edward is SO OBVIOUSLY GOING TO WIN. I mean, hello, did you read New Moon? Bella CANNOT live without Edward. It has been scientifically proven, what with all her abdominal pain and needing to fall off motorcycles and cliffs to hear his disembodied voice in her head and all. It would be the highest of follies for Meyer to put us through reading about what losing Edward does to Bella, and then make us go through it again. Will not happen.

dana (representing Team Jacob): But that’s exactly the point! Love isn’t supposed to kill you and leave you broken, it’s supposed to raise you up and make you happy and not, you know, crush your identity. True Love is great and all, but is it really True Love when your boyfriend won’t let you see your friends? I mean, controlling much? At least with Jacob, Bella has an identity. She’s hurt, but she’s her own person. She has her own interests, she can see who she wants – she’s not a tiny moon orbiting Planet Edward, she’s just… her.

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Jules: Yes, that’s a clock. A beautiful clock. But I’ll get to that in a minute. First of all…

Happy Sunday to all! It’s a new week, and—as usual here at 7-Imp—we’re 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.

This week we’re celebrating with Rima Staines, U.K.-based illustrator, painter, maker of things, and teller of tales, “inspired most of all by stories and by the edge of things, strange and odd and dark yet familiar.” Rima told me, “I grew up in an artistic household and now scrape a happy living making {my} art.” Rima has always loved to combine words with her images and likes to play with language and rhyme. Her fledgling stories are aimed at child-adults and adult-children, and her paintings are reminiscent of an old medieval-coloured folktale world where things are not quite as they seem. She is living for the moment in the hills of Scotland, building a home on wheels with her boyfriend to live and travel and write stories in. At Rima’s site, The Hermitage, you can see many of her sketches, drawings, paintings (watercolors and oils on wood and paper), and prints (She’s also started experimenting with stop-motion animation and, for the near future, has plans for making a puppet show and at long last writing and illustrating the tales that have been stored in her head, as she put it.) And you can see clearly that, as her site’s bio puts it, she’s always “had one foot in Early Medieval Europe.” The rest of her bio sums up well what you get when your eyes take in one of her paintings or drawings:

“Rima’s curiosity leads her through the many worlds of words, languages and lettering, books and stories, puppetry, nature and interesting people, music, superstitions, folklore and fairy tales, and most of all the otherness that can be found on the periphery of our lives, the strange and grotesque, the absurd and unnerving…that topsy turvy in between place…”

As for that lovely clock pictured above…Rima has recently announced that her newest creative venture is clock-making—or making “unique original oil paintings on rustic chunks of wood” and making them tick, as her new site, Once Upon O’Clock, explains—since she has “a delight in Heath Robinson-like contraptions, automata and all things that clink and clonk, I love to paint folk tales in medieval hues, and make things from wood.” I cannot even BEGIN to tell you how much I want to start saving my pennies for a Rima-clock and how very much in love I am with the web site, because not only do I love the sound of a good, hearty clock ticking, but when you launch the site, there’s this wonderfully bizarre and discordant clock song of sorts that plays, which I’ve been listening to repeatedly as I type this. If you like a good clock like I do (which is an affinity that’s difficult to explain), you’ll enjoy it as well.

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The other night I was hanging out with The Poets Upstairs in their apartment. We were talking books and poetry (surprise!) and they asked if I’d heard of Phyllis Janowitz. “Nope,” I said. Well, they said, this will not do. She’s a professor of theirs at Cornell, and they feel very strongly that she is AWESOME and should be more widely known. Then Dana read the first part of this poem, “Veal,” to me, and my jaw dropped. “That IS awesome,” I said. They pushed me out the door with two of her books and some blueberry buckle. Or was it the lemon blueberry tart? I forget – they were both delicious. But the POEMS, people! Oh. My. God. I find myself in total agreement: we should all know who Phyllis Janowitz is.

See what you think:

I love to watch the butcher
wipe the sharp
blade on his
apron stained
with fresh blood. I’m
going to marry him

—-WHAM

the side of beef split open
he tenderly spreads
it like a woman’s legs
between smeared fingers
stroking the cold smoothness

from his fingertips
———–bloody red
drops on the floor spotting
the sawdust there fluffs of fat
lie covered decently
the meat is red and lean.

Want more? Here’s the rest. And spread the word.

(*I’m a vegetarian. I still like the poem. I’m pretty sure it’s not really about meat.)

Yay! Our sisters in two-girl-blogdom, Franki and Mary Lee, are hosting this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at A Year of Reading. Thanks, ladies!

Jules: So, Eisha, as you know, when we featured Laini Taylor’s lovely ladies this past Sunday, I ended up — long story how — at this artist’s blog, Diary of a Self-Portrait. (That, incidentally, is my favorite “about me” portion of anyone’s blog ever. It’s amazing how much we know about Jessie when she writes merely: “I paint. I write. I love strong coffee, being outside, my dogs, and snow. My dreams are vivid.”)

And, as you also know, Jessie — back in October of last year — launched a Be Brave project, based on this notion:

And all kinds of people joined her, prompting her in early July to do this again. She wrote:

And so I’ve come to the conclusion that it is time to revisit the Be Brave Project and to invite you, once again, to join me in doing so.

I will whole-heartedly return to this project on Monday, July 21st…And I will blog about my experience here, as often as I’m able to.

I want to make it very clear, however, that there is no beginning and no end to this project. If you decide to join in, there are no rules except for the ones you create for yourself…

MAKE YOUR OWN RULES.

Do this for yourself.

Make a commitment for the length of time that best suites YOUR needs–one day, one month, one year, one moment…it’s all up to you, and you alone. 😉

The “brave” or “scary” things that you choose to do can be as big or little as you want them to be. Sometimes it’s the little things that can be the most scary (and beneficial)!

(not to quote Nike, but…) Just do it.

Be on your own schedule. You don’t need to make a commitment until YOU are ready.

This is your unique journey–make it whatever you want it to be.

And that would be when I emailed you and said, hey, at the risk of sounding like Dr. Phil here, don’t you think this’d be fun? I have always loved that notion, that Roosevelt quote, and I’m tired of being a wussy-butt about some things. And, lucky for me, you said yes. Read the rest of this entry »