Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

I picked up this book based solely on that wonderful cover by Zachary Flagg Baldus (who, amusingly enough, describes the book in this manner at his site: “young gal gets popular FAST when she shows up at the dance looking HOT”). My late-afternoon request yesterday to feature the illustration sans text was a success, too; Zachary gave me permission to post it, and I’ve included it at the bottom of this review (go see his art-filled site, too. Prints for all that you see there are available, he tells me, but he can tell us more later. I found myself clicking on every image at his site, and I lined him up for a future Sunday feature). My infatuation with the cover art wouldn’t have lasted longer than that well-designed cover, whose dress plays prominently in the book, if it hadn’t been for Liz Gallagher’s ability to create memorable characters and a very real sense of place in this, her first novel, The Opposite of Invisible (Wendy Lamb Books; January ’08; review copy).

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In 2007, School Library Journal described author/illustrator Steve Jenkins as a “master illustrator,” and you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who didn’t agree with that. Steve — pictured here with his son on a summer road trip (“my mother said I look like a street person,” Steve told us. “My daughter granted, more kindly, that I could pass as a bohemian poet”) — has illustrated thirty nonfiction books for children, eighteen of them written by himself or co-authored with his wife, Robin Page. And the science teachers and librarians of the world are happy about this, because Steve’s books are titles that impart facts but do so in an enticing and entertaining way and with his signature eye-popping torn-and-cut paper collages.

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Jules: Welcome to our weekly 7 Kicks list, the 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.

Happy February to all! It’s the first Sunday of the month, which means we’re featuring another new grad or student of illustration. I’ve been looking forward to this. I think this feature is fun, if I may say so myself. If you missed our very first one ever on the first Sunday in January, go here to see the illustrations of new grad Ashley Smith.

This week we welcome Chris Eliopoulos, who goes by Elio. You’ll see there at his site that he is a Chicago-based illustrator and comic artist “who enjoys telling stories with my work. I reference mid century print, design and advertising; UFOs, donuts, and old cranky men.” Maybe he can tell us later if he’s ever done an illustration of an old, cranky man eating donuts on a UFO. Read the rest of this entry »

I had something of a religious experience last weekend: I saw Neko Case perform live at the State Theatre in Ithaca.

“Country Noir” is one phrase I’ve heard used to identify her style, and it’s probably the best description I’ve heard. I’ve been a big fan for a couple of years now, thanks to Jules, and seeing her live just crystallized it. If you ever have the chance, GO.

I’ve always thought her lyrics have a strong tendency towards poetry. So I was looking online for a link to something of hers I could share with you all for Poetry Friday, and found something kind of unusual: an article she wrote for Poetry Magazine, entitled “My Flaming Hamster Wheel of Panic About Publicly Discussing Poetry in This Respected Forum.” Besides having perhaps the best title of a poetry essay EVER, the article is great because it addresses a misconception that I think a lot of people have: that poetry is for “other people… smarter people.” Even Neko, a bonafide poet in her own right, feels inadequate in the face of Poetry-with-a-capital-P:

I think it’s because I don’t want to let poetry down. Poetry is such a delicate, pretty lady with a candy exoskeleton on the outside of her crepe-paper dress. I am an awkward, heavy-handed mule of a high school dropout. I guess I just need permission to be in the same room with poetry.

But she goes on to recognize that these feelings are wrong, that “we all have the right to poetry!” And she notes that she doesn’t feel the same reservations about poetry in the context of music.

So, in the hopes that it will lead you to some of Neko’s poetry-as-music, here are some lyrics from one of my favorite songs, “Deep Red Bells.”

He led you to this hiding place
His lightening threats spun silver tongues
The red bells beckon you to ride
A handprint on the driver’s side
It looks a lot like engine oil and tastes like being poor and small
And Popsicles in the summer

The rest of the lyrics are here. And trust me – it’s even better with music.

Just a quick note to say that over at the Cybils blog today you will find a Q & A that 7-Imp conducted for the Cybils with acclaimed author/illustrator Steve Jenkins. This Monday we here at 7-Imp will feature the entire interview — the extended edition, if you will. Shoo, go read! Enjoy.

(Thanks to Steve for this illustration from last year’s Living Color. See many more here at 7-Imp, including some new ones from forthcoming books, if you didn’t already see them last Sunday when he stopped by).

As a student in a graduate library school program, I was often reminded that Black History Month is of course important but that children’s librarians need to remember to avoid excessive tokenism. In other words, don’t pull all the books with black protagonists out for merely one month. To be sure, there has been controversy over such things, designating one month in the year dedicated to the history of one race, which can be reduced for some people to a perfunctory ritual with little meaning (this same tokenism can apply to poetry and the month of April as well as all the other months designated with themes).

Having said that, though, we are coming upon Black History Month, and there are some fabulous picture book biographies from last year and this year which feature prominent African-Americans. And the fact remains that — even if a librarian does a fine job of presenting a wide variety of so-called multicultural books throughout the entire school year and fully integrates African-American history into her regular curriculum, no matter the month — he or she is still expected to pull for teachers titles with African-American protagonists or ones created by African-American authors (as well as create that “Black History Month” book display). So here then are a small handful of outstanding recent titles, most of them new, that will work well for that cart o’ books for teachers and for that book display (which quickly will be raided if you’ve got the right books).

First, you’d be wise to treat yourself to this first biography, Piano Starts Here: The Young Art Tatum (Schwartz & Wade; January 2008), which already has garnered several starred reviews (Kirkus, SLJ, Booklist). I am so in love with this book, particularly the illustrations, that I can’t possibly gush about it enough. This is the first book which acclaimed Caldecott Honor-winning illustrator Robert Andrew Parker (himself a jazz musician) has written as well as illustrated, and it’s well worth your time and your students’. With an immediately engaging first-person, present tense narrative, we meet the young Art Tatum, who grew up to be a legendary jazz pianist and whom Count Basie called the eighth wonder of the world, in his home in Toledo where he was born. We also meet his mechanic father, his mother (“She often sings in the church down the street, but she isn’t singing here. She has too much cleaning to do”), and the rest of his family and friends. Though the young Art has “bad eyes” (“day and night, dark and light, don’t really matter to me”), he savors sounds and smells and plays on his mother’s piano as soon as he can reach the keyboard on tiptoe. Read the rest of this entry »

I have a confession to make: I read a lot of blogs but often get behind and have to seriously catch up in one sitting. But there is one blog whose posts I never miss. It’s the first cyber-stop I make every morning after first turning on my computer and getting coffee in hand. I mean to tell you that my house could be on fire or the Grim Reaper could come for me, all snarly-like, or an exceptionally large-‘n’-fiery meteorite could be heading straight toward the roof of my home, but I’d still holler, “Hold up! I haven’t read Read Write Believe today. You’re just gonna. have. to. wait.” And the site of which I speak is the blog of Sara Lewis Holmes, author of last year’s middle-grade novel Letters From Rapunzel (see here for a 7-Imp review). Sara gave birth to Read Write Believe last summer. It all began here when she asked us to enter. Lucky for us all.

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Author and teacher Anastasia Suen over at the blog Picture Book of the Day has randomly declared Mondays as Nonfiction Mondays for any bloggers who’d like to join in. Just like with Poetry Fridays, the idea is that, if you post about a nonfiction title on a Monday and send her the link, she’ll round ’em up over at her blog and, voila! You’ll have a cornucopia of posts about nonfiction titles.

I, for one, love this idea. I can still hear the words of one of my grad school children’s lit profs, knocking around in my head, reminding me that librarians, print journals, etcetera and yadaya don’t give enough attention to nonfiction titles. ‘Tis certainly true here at 7-Imp. Arguably, we should devote more to it than just one designated day a week. But for now I’ll leave it to an author who writes nonfiction to help whip me into shape with, at the very least, some Monday posts about nonfiction — when I can get to them, that is.

And here’s a fabulous nonfiction title I’ve been wanting to blog about for a while. It’s called Ox, House, Stick: The History of Our Alphabet by Don Robb and illustrated by Anne Smith, published by Charlesbridge last year. As the Booklist review pointed out, this title will find a happy home in both social studies and language-arts units. In describing the development of our Roman alphabet from the time of early Sinaitic peoples approximately 4,000 years ago to the present day, the book covers a large scope yet impresses with its conciseness. And the aged 9 to 12 readers at which the book is aimed are gracefully eased into the subject with an introduction about how people communicate; a discussion of symbols; and how we got from drawings that represented words to letters. The following spread explains in nine short paragaphs how through “caravans, commerce, and conquest” we developed what has become the modern alphabet, beginning with the 4,000-year-old carvings found on a rock wall in Egypt’s Nile Valley and ending with Rome, A.D. 100 — with stops in between to the
Sinaitic peoples of 1500 B.C.; the Phoenicians, who adapted the Sinaitic alphabet to their own language; and to the Greeks of 800 B.C. Read the rest of this entry »

Jules: Welcome to our weekly 7 Kicks list, the 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.

We’re so happy that Caldecott Honor-winning author/illustrator Steve Jenkins (whom School Library Journal last year called “a master illustrator”) has stopped by to share some new illustrations with us as well as some from current titles. The image here and above is from the Cybils-shortlisted Vulture View, written by April Pulley Sayre (Henry Holt, 2007), in which readers are introduced to the world of the majestic turkey vulture.

Steve also sent us two spreads from a book that he and Robin Page created (Robin is the talented co-author of many of Steve’s titles, as well as his wife) and which will be published this Spring by Houghton Mifflin. It’s called Sisters & Brothers. “It’s about sibling relationships in the animal world,” Steve told us, “a subject we were surprised to find not much information on, when we began to look . . .” Read the rest of this entry »

As many of you know, when we gather on Sundays to list our 7 Kicks for the week, we feature an illustration (or two or three or four) from some of our favorite illustrators, whether they have a new book coming out or not. And I’m such a fan of good picture book illustration that it’s become my favorite feature of all here at 7-Imp (here’s a list of whom we’ve featured thus far).

Author/Illustrator Anna Alter was lined up to be featured this Sunday but later re-scheduled for another Sunday. And when that Sunday didn’t work out for her after all (but after I had already lined up another illustrator for this weekend), I told her that 7-Imp would gladly feature her any ‘ol day of the week. Her illustrations have a way of brightening our days. As a result, I asked my Poetry Friday entry for today to scoot on over — shoo, shoo and skedaddle, I told it, and it obliged me — so that we could feature some art work from Anna’s new illustrated title, Priscilla and the Hollyhocks written by Anne Broyles (but, hey, I snuck in some poetry yesterday anyway). Read the rest of this entry »