Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

“… It feels hard to explain, but Zura wants to try. She swallows and takes a deep breath. ‘What if someone at school laughs at you or acts mean?’ she asks quietly.”
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It’s Circle Time in Zura’s classroom when her teacher, Mr. Dawson, announces that soon the class will celebrate Grandparents Day, during which students’ grandparents will visit the classroom to share “what makes them special.” Zura is apprehensive, because though her Nana Akua is her “favorite person in the whole universe,” Nana Akua has facial markings that “never wash off and never go away.” Zura worries her beloved grandmother will be mocked when she visits the classroom.

The facial markings are an African tradition, designating Nana Akua’s tribal family. Having grown up in Ghana and as she explains to Zura’s classmates on the day she visits … Read the rest of this entry »

 
This image was created just this past week by author-illustrator Elise Gravel.

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I had the pleasure of chairing the 2020 Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards with fellow judges Sujei Lugo and Leo Landry. The awards were announced yesterday. The books we fell in love with are pictured here, but you can head here to the Horn Book for more details.

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Greg Pizzoli visits 7-Imp today to share lots of process images behind the creation of his illustrations for the reimagining of Margaret Wise Brown’s Two Little Trains (HarperCollins), released back in March. Brown’s manuscript was first published in 1949 and illustrated by Jean Charlot. Another version, illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon, was released in 2001. Clearly, it’s a book that endures.

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You all may remember this deferred-hug art from illustrator Susanna Chapman back in late March. Susanna visits 7-Imp again today to talk about creating the illustrations for Laurie Ann Thompson’s Elizabeth Warren’s Big, Bold Plans (Atheneum, May 2020).

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“Swirl / Flow / Come and go”
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Today, I’ve a few spreads from Flash and Gleam: Light in Our World (Millbrook, March 2020), written by Sue Fliess and illustrated by Khoa Le. This is an exploration of light via a series of spare rhymes, as you can see in the spreads here — the light of fireflies, the lightning of a storm, rays of sunlight waking sleeping children, the light of a birthday candle, lights meant to heal, and much more.

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“They love to see the flaming forge,
And hear the bellows roar.
And catch the burning sparks that fly
Like chaff from a threshing-floor.”
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Illustrator G. Brian Karas visits today to talk a bit about his newest picture book, an adaptation of a poem originally written in 1840 by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The Village Blacksmith (Candlewick, April 2020) tells the story of a strong but humble village smithy, “his brow … wet with honest sweat.” He works, building a fence for a neighbor; worships at church; rests; and works again, “[w]eek out, week in, from morn till night.” Karas brings his world to vivid life with his soft mixed media illustrations, and he beautifully depicts the light and shadows of the smithy’s work (particularly its glowing embers and shining sparks), while we follow him through his days at the “flaming forge” and beyond, “[t]oiling — rejoicing — sorrowing — / Onward through life he goes.”

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“I really want to fly. Mama says that you can do anything if you really want to. It’s true. You can see I’m already good at it. But my mama finds it hard to let me go.”
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The Horn Book has posted my review of Annemarie van Haeringen’s My Mama (Gecko, March 2020), simultaneously published in New Zealand and translated from the Dutch by Bill Nagelkerke. That review is here, and today here at 7-Imp I’ve some spreads from the book. …

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Originally published in 2014 as O regresso, Natalia Chernysheva’s The Return (Groundwood Books) hit shelves in the U.S. last Fall, and I missed it. Better late than never.

A woman leaves the bustling city on a bus and heads into a less-populated part of the country. In fact, the house at which she arrives seems to be in the middle of nowhere. When she reaches the house, she stands high above it, as if a giant. Standing outside is a miniscule elderly woman in a floppy yellow hat, looking up at the woman adoringly.

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Over at Chapter 16, I’ve a Q&A with Vivien Mildenberger, who illustrated Elisa Boxer’s account of a historic vote for women’s suffrage and what it has to do with an obscure Tennessee woman — The Voice that Won the Vote: How One Woman’s Words Made History (Sleeping Bear Press, March 2020). Mildenberger also illustrated Lori Alexander’s All in a Drop: How Antony van Leeuwenhoek Discovered an Invisible World, published last year and the recipient of a Siber Honor.

The Chapter 16 Q&A is here.