{"id":2382,"date":"2012-07-05T00:01:54","date_gmt":"2012-07-05T06:01:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=2382"},"modified":"2013-02-20T08:03:25","modified_gmt":"2013-02-20T14:03:25","slug":"what-i-did-at-kirkus-last-week-a-follow-uppart-one-or-in-praise-of-strange-shaggy-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=2382","title":{"rendered":"What I Did at Kirkus<\/em> Last Week, a Follow-Up
(Part One); Or: In Praise of Strange, Shaggy Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n

“She made sweaters for all the dogs, and all the cats, and for other animals, too.
Soon, people thought, soon Annabelle will run out of yarn.”<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n

Last Thursday at Kirkus<\/em>, I chatted with the very funny writer and strongman-for-hire Mac Barnett<\/a><\/strong> about the fact that his early Spring picture book—Extra Yarn<\/a><\/em><\/strong> (Balzer + Bray), illustrated by Jon Klassen<\/a><\/strong>—up and got the 2012 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award<\/a><\/strong> in the Picture Book category. Here<\/a><\/strong> is that conversation, if you missed it and are so inclined to read it. (And I’ve been wanting to post about this book all year, having asked Mac and Jon about it back in January. Better late than never, huh?)<\/p>\n

Know what, too? I asked Mac, as you can see over there at the Q & A, about the fact that his writing is always described as “quirky,” and he gave such a wonderful response, one I’ll always remember. If you love picture books as much as I do, you also may very well cheer this: <\/p>\n

Last month on the radio, I heard a winemaker talking about how his business had changed, starting in the 1980s. Before that, apparently, vintners took pride in the idiosyncrasies of their individual processes and the quirks of their regions. You could take a sip and know that the grapes were grown in this particular terroir, say, and there was such wide and pronounced variety that you could tell the differences between two wines grown 30 miles from each other.<\/p>\n

But then that changed. Winemakers started aiming for received notions of the perfect Bordeaux or ideal Cabernet, and things started tasting the same. And this man on the radio was sad, because something had been lost.<\/p>\n

Now, during the Reagan years, I was too young to even taste the holy swill in the Communion cup, but I see a similar trend in picture books\u2014and on roughly the same timeline. The same plots get trotted out. Great ideas are shaved and sanded down until they look a lot like a lot of other things on the bookshelf. I like strange stories, shaggy stories, stories with knobby bits and gristle and surprises. And so I’m glad that people think my stories are quirky. All my favorite books have quirks. Although I think it is almost always more interesting to examine why something is quirky than to simply say that it is.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Strange, shaggy stories. YES, indeed. <\/p>\n

Here are some more illustrations from Extra Yarn<\/em> (sans text). [Fun Fact, Which Jon Mentioned in a Previous Email to Me and Which I Hope He Doesn’t Mind Me Sharing Here:<\/em> The yarn in the book was actually an old sweater Jon scanned in and then colored so that the stitching would be right.]<\/p>\n

Enjoy. (Part Two tomorrow…) <\/p>\n


\n

“So she went home and knit herself a sweater.
And when Annabelle was done, she had some extra yarn.”<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n


\n

“So she knit a sweater for Mars, too. But there was still extra yarn.”<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\n

“So she knit sweaters for her mom and dad. And for Mr. Pendleton and Mrs. Pendleton. And for Dr. Palmer. And for little Louis.”<\/em>
(Click to enlarge)<\/center><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\n

“…So Annabelle made sweaters for things that didn’t even wear sweaters.”<\/em>
(Click to see entire spread from which this illustration comes)<\/center><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\n

“Things began to change in that little town.”<\/em>
(Click to enlarge)<\/center><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\n

“‘Little girl,’ said the archduke, ‘I would like to buy that miraculous box of yarn. And I am willing to offer you one million dollars.’ ‘No, thank you,’ said Annabelle, who was knitting a sweater for a pickup truck. The archduke’s mustache twitched. …”<\/em>
(Click to enlarge)<\/center><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

* * * * * * *<\/center><\/p>\n

Illustrations from EXTRA YARN are copyright \u00a9 2012 by Jon Klassen and used with permission of HarperCollins.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“She made sweaters for all the dogs, and all the cats, and for other animals, too.Soon, people thought, soon Annabelle will run out of yarn.” Last Thursday at Kirkus, I chatted with the very funny writer and strongman-for-hire Mac Barnett about the fact that his early Spring picture book—Extra Yarn (Balzer + Bray), illustrated by […]<\/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-2382","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\/2382","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=2382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2382\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}