Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

I’ve got sidekicks on the mind this week and started a short picture book round-up yesterday with Mighty Max and his sidekick, Power Pinky. Here are a couple more . . .

Move over, Harold. Meet Lucy, who also has the power to create a world of her own by simply drawing it. This is one of the best picture books I’ve seen this year — not to mention the celebration-of-books that this title is makes it a perfect book to highlight during this, Children’s Book Week. What we have here is a young girl who simply can’t get to sleep: “She could not, would not, did not want to go to bed.” Deciding she wants to draw, she creates a monster with an oval body, square head, rectangle legs, circle eyes, and extra added triangular spiky scales on his back. And power to Lucy: What does she immediately say to her new creation? “You don’t scare me . . . Let’s play!” So, the playing ensues: building castles, flying airplanes (which frightens our new monster a wee bit), marching in a parade, skipping, jumping, crawling, you-name-it — which all, of course, tires Lucy out. Turning the tables on the child/caregiver relationship and the usual bedtime struggles, Wing has Lucy try every tactic she can think of to get Monster to bed and to fulfill his needs: She draws him a bed, but he refuses to go to sleep; when he screams that he’s hungry, she draws him a mountain of meatballs; and when he yells “Potty,” she draws a bathroom. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is today’s Robert’s Snow schedule.

Today’s 2007 snowflake (pictured above) — which was not assigned to a blogger, so I’m happy to feature it here — was created by Brooklyn editorial illustrator, children’s book illustrator, designer, painter, and sculptor James T. Williamson, whose blog branches off in many directions: his work as a children’s book illustrator (where he talks about some of his books); his work as designer and illustrator on CD covers and posters; and his work as a “computer painter” at Impressionist Robot. Look at his post about his ’05 snowflake, “Vincent Van Goghflake.” The back of that snowflake is pictured here. And if you click here and scroll down a bit, you can see his ’04 snowflake, “Edward Hopper Snowfake, an interpretive copy of Edward Hopper’s New York Corner, 1913 with extrapolated dendrites and snow.” Read the rest of this entry »

Ah, sidekicks. So under-appreciated. So underpaid. I’ve got a stack ‘o’ picture books I’ve been wanting to talk about for a while (I’m in catch-up mode now, so here go some picture book posts, starting today and as often as I can) that in one way or another feature a sidekick or an, uh, sidekick-esque character. And we just have to start things off with the most sidekick-y one of all, the new Max and Pinky title from Maxwell Eaton III, The Adventures of Max and Pinky: Superheroes (Knopf Books for Young Readers; October 2007; review copy).

I reviewed the first Max and Pinky title here in March of this year. This was our introduction to the duo — the bald-headed, Charlie-Brown-esque Max who loves to hang out with his best bud, Pinky, a piglet who lives for marshmallows. They love adventure, and they’re tight, y’all. As I mentioned in that review, Kirkus Reviews nailed the book’s charm: “a warm affirmation of budship.” And Eaton’s style is spare, rendered economically and with bold colors (mostly blues and greens) and thick black outlines, all colored digitally. Spare but humorous. There are lots of laughs — mostly in the form of their bubble-speak asides — in that title.

And in this new one. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is today’s Robert’s Snow schedule.

The above ’07 snowflake by Kristina Swarner wasn’t on the initial Blogging for a Cure list, so it was not assigned to a blogger to feature. I’m pleased to show it here. Just look at that lovely snowflake! And Ms. Swarner’s portfolio. And this, too. And here’s an ’05 feature at Embracing the Child. Her work is not familiar to me, but I have now found a new illustrator whose books I must explore. I really like her style. According to my web search, her most recent illustrated title is The Bedtime Sh’ma: A Good Night Book, written by Sarah Gershman and published this year by EKS Publishing. She also illustrated Doris Gayzagian’s One White Wishing Stone: A Beach Day Counting Book in 2006 (published by National Geographic) and 2005’s Before You Were Born (Roaring Brook Press), a retelling by Howard Schwartz of a Jewish legend in which Lailah, a guardian angel, places the indentation that everyone has on the upper lip just before a baby is born. Read the rest of this entry »

Boy howdy, did reading this one take me back to my childhood — not only the terribly frustrating (as well as the sometimes poignant) moments of having siblings, but also the Judy Blume books of my own childhood. Every bio you read of her will tell you that she’s a pioneer of books for children and young adults and that she possesses a spot-on ability to nail the embarrassments, tensions, worries, headaches, and even joys of growing up and, in particular, sibling relationships. And all those bios would be right — not to mention she completely delivers in those ways with this, her latest title: Soupy Saturdays with the Pain and the Great One (Delacorte Books for Young Readers; August 2007; advance reader’s copy), seven brand-spankin’-new stories about the brother-and-sister pair that appeared in her 1984 picture book, The Pain and the Great One. The latter included illustrations by Irene Trivas, but this new title includes illustrations from James Stevenson (“wispy” — The Publishers Weekly review calls his illustrations “wispy.” I love it, ’cause it’s oh-so true).

Read the rest of this entry »

Below is today’s Robert’s Snow schedule.

Many thanks to Elaine Magliaro for telling me about some beautiful snowflakes she saw in person at the Danforth Museum of Art in Framinghman, Massachusetts, on Sunday, November 4th (here is her post about it). These are snowflakes who haven’t been assigned to a blogger in the Blogging for a Cure effort, so I was able to snag images of them from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and will be showing them to you over the next couple of days.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re so pleased to be shining a spotlight today on one half of the dynamic duo over at Just One More Book!!, Andrea Ross. Andrea and her husband, Mark, are — hands down — the hardest working duo in the kidlitosphere, and their podcast over there, which is all about picture books, is terrifically informative and fun. And what we love the most about them is how professional and consistent they are with their podcasts, the look of their site, and . . . well, everything. Best of all, their BIG ‘OL, HUMONGOUS passion for picture books is evident in each and every podcast they do.

Read the rest of this entry »

Below is today’s Robert’s Snow schedule.

Pictured here, just ’cause I like it, is Sophie Blackall’s 2005 snowflake, “Winter Swallow.” Her ’07 snowflake, “Flying Fox and Three Babies,” which is also quite beautiful, was featured here by Jennifer at not your mother’s bookclub during the second week of this Blogging for a Cure effort. Okay, it’s too beautiful to not just go ahead and post again, so I’ll do that just underneath today’s schedule below.

If you missed them, you can read yesterday’s features here. Yesterday’s write-up featured the second dino-flake I’ve seen in all the snowflakes thus far this year. So, if you want to see that and are generally trying to keep up, go read ’em and enjoy — and don’t forget this page where all the features are being compiled in one spot. Read the rest of this entry »

Jules: So, I’m going to try to keep things short this week, since the last two illustrator-feature portions of our kicks lists were loooooong. Interesting, but long. And that’s not to slight illustrator Rotraut Susanne Berner, whose illustration (one of many) from Jutta Richter’s The Cat: Or, How I Lost Eternity is featured here. If you’re not familiar with this German illustrator, I wouldn’t be surprised. I wasn’t, but I saw her illustrations in this unusual, little book, which I just finished, published by Milkweed Editions and translated from German by Anna Brailovsky, and I liked them. Not to mention I like to highlight international illustrators when I can, though I’ve done a rather pathetic job of it this year, despite my best intentions.

This is a quite distinctive, very philosophical-in-nature read, technically categorized in intermediate fiction but definitely an adult cross-over title as well. I love how Joyce Carol Oates described it as being not unlike “a Grimm fairy tale recast by Franz Kafka.” It’s about Christine, an eight-year-old girl, whose daily walk to school takes her past a talking alley cat, whose insights always give her something to ponder. I like this review of it I found after reading it (I love to read my reviews when I finish a book) and what they call the book’s striking and “odd starkness.” The book was named one of “The Best Seven Books for Young Readers for November 2006” by German Radio. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is today’s Robert’s Snow schedule.

Pictured here is R. Gregory Christie’s 2004 snowflake, “Christmas Dew.” Not only do I love this snowflake, but I just finished Ann Patchett’s new novel, Run, which is so entirely and perfectly wonderful (and I may not review here at 7-Imp; I might just cut myself a break from reviewing every dang thing I read). Anyway, this is exactly how I imagined the character of Kenya (from Run) looking. Exactly. When I stumbled upon this flake just now, I thought, I know her.

Read the rest of this entry »