{"id":2186,"date":"2011-08-12T00:01:33","date_gmt":"2011-08-12T06:01:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=2186"},"modified":"2011-08-12T06:37:47","modified_gmt":"2011-08-12T12:37:47","slug":"what-i%e2%80%99m-doing-at-kirkus-this-weekor-getting-creative-with-the-word-best","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=2186","title":{"rendered":"What I\u2019m Doing at <em>Kirkus<\/em> This Week;<br>Or, Getting Creative With the Word &#8220;Best&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This morning over at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kirkusreviews.com\/blog\/childrens\/seven-impossible-things-favorite-picture-books-201\/\"><strong>my <em>Kirkus<\/em> column<\/strong><\/a>, I&#8217;m considering&#8212;in a somewhat creative (okay, maybe goofy) manner&#8212;my 9 to 12 favorite picture book titles thus far in 2011. When <em>Kirkus<\/em> asked me to do my &#8220;best of&#8221; list, I was hesitant to do a straight-up, traditional &#8220;bests&#8221; list. And that&#8217;s for different reasons that I explain over in the column, but one reason I don&#8217;t mention is &#8230; well, see this?<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blaine.org\/jules\/swirlbyswirl1.JPG\"><\/p>\n<p>I saw this about two days ago, <em>after<\/em> submitting my column, and thought HOLY WOW. (The illustrations are a force of nature, so to speak.) So, yeah. That. I knew, when composing my &#8220;bests&#8221; lists, that I simply haven&#8217;t seen all of 2011&#8217;s top picture books. No, really. I blog about picture books and illustration, and my house is about to fall over with stacks and stacks of picture books, but I can&#8217;t see them all. I&#8217;m sure there are some stunners I&#8217;ve missed here and missed there and missed all around me. <\/p>\n<p>So, all that&#8217;s to say I just got kind of <del datetime=\"2011-08-12T04:21:52+00:00\">silly<\/del> &#8230; um, creative &#8230; in composing the 9 to 12 list. (And OF COURSE I did 12. I&#8217;ll always take the larger number.) But what it boils down to, silly or not, is that those are my favorites from the year. My favorites from what I&#8217;ve managed to see.<\/p>\n<p>And for those of you who have asked if I&#8217;ll share the picture book titles I mentioned at <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/knoxrooms.sirsi.net\/rooms\/portal\/page\/74_Best_of_the_Best_2011\">this<\/a><\/strong> workshop in Knoxville, Tennessee? Well, these titles over at <em>Kirkus<\/em> were some of the first I mentioned in my presentation (though I covered many more there). <\/p>\n<p>The link is <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kirkusreviews.com\/blog\/childrens\/seven-impossible-things-favorite-picture-books-201\/\">here<\/a><\/strong> this morning. <\/p>\n<p>As for what I did at <em>Kirkus<\/em> last week, don&#8217;t miss <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=2184\">yesterday&#8217;s interview with Tim Egan<\/a><\/strong>, a sort of follow-up to last week&#8217;s column. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This morning over at my Kirkus column, I&#8217;m considering&#8212;in a somewhat creative (okay, maybe goofy) manner&#8212;my 9 to 12 favorite picture book titles thus far in 2011. When Kirkus asked me to do my &#8220;best of&#8221; list, I was hesitant to do a straight-up, traditional &#8220;bests&#8221; list. And that&#8217;s for different reasons that I explain [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-picture-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2186\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}