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I was a little busy at Kirkus<\/em> this week. <\/p>\n Yesterday, I chatted with Sam Arthur, the Director of London-based Nobrow Press<\/a><\/strong>—whose books are now being distributed stateside by Consortium—about their beautifully-crafted comics, illustrated books, and children’s books. That Q & A is here<\/a><\/strong>. Next week here at 7-Imp, I’ll follow up with some images from some of their newer offerings. <\/p>\n Today, I write about the massively good (bad pun intended) Hippopposites<\/em> by Janik Coat. This is the best board book for children I’ve seen all year. That link is here<\/a><\/strong> this morning. <\/p>\n Last week at Kirkus<\/em>, I chatted with author\/illustrator Elisha Cooper<\/a><\/strong> about his newest picture book, Homer<\/a><\/strong><\/em>. Have you seen Homer<\/em>? Oh, you must. Here<\/a><\/strong> is that Q & A, if you missed it last week and are so inclined to read it now. <\/p>\n For more on Homer<\/em>, you won’t want to miss this post<\/a><\/strong> from Elisha over at Greenwillow’s blog, Under the Green Willow<\/em>, as well as the follow-up post here<\/a><\/strong>. Here’s an excerpt from that first post:<\/p>\n I read somewhere that all stories have one of two plots: man leaves town, or, man comes to town. That\u2019s it. I was thinking about this a few years ago while looking through Kevin Henkes\u2019s<\/a><\/strong> Kitten\u2019s First Full Moon<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, which, in its perfect simplicity, captures the man-leaves-town plot exactly, except that in this case the man is a kitten.<\/p>\n I started wondering, what if I reversed this? What if the \u201cman\u201d doesn\u2019t leave town, or come to town, but stays right there in town and everything comes to him?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Today I have some more art from Homer<\/em>, including early sketches — and images related to the book. (Wanna see a pic of the real Homer? Read on.) <\/p>\n Enjoy. <\/p>\n Elisha also noted in my Q & A that he’s been painting six huge canvases for the children’s room at the Jefferson Market Library<\/a><\/strong> — in the Village<\/a><\/strong>, that is, in New York and far, far from me here near Nashville. I wish I could see them in person. But he sent these images, and they’ll have to do for this Southerner. <\/p>\n HOMER. Copyright \u00a9 2012 by Elisha Cooper. Published by Greenwillow Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, New York. All images here reproduced with permission of Elisha Cooper.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Clouds sketch Final spreadElisha: “This spread was supposed to reference that great illustration inBlueberries for Sal where, halfway through the book, you see where everyone is.”(Click to enlarge) I was a little busy at Kirkus this week. Yesterday, I chatted with Sam Arthur, the Director of London-based Nobrow Press—whose books are now being distributed stateside […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogger-interviews","category-picture-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2369","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=2369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2369\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>
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Elisha: “This spread was supposed to reference that great illustration in
<\/em>Blueberries for Sal<\/a><\/strong> where, halfway through the book, you see where everyone is.”<\/em>
(Click to enlarge)<\/center><\/p>\n
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with our dog Homer on our farm.”<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n
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(Click either image to see spread as it’s laid out in the book)<\/center><\/p>\n<\/a>
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