{"id":3839,"date":"2015-09-08T00:01:48","date_gmt":"2015-09-08T06:01:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=3839"},"modified":"2015-09-07T20:35:40","modified_gmt":"2015-09-08T02:35:40","slug":"as-you-wish-a-visit-with-greg-pizzoli","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=3839","title":{"rendered":"As You Wish: A Visit with Greg Pizzoli"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\nAuthor-illustrator Greg Pizzoli<\/a><\/strong> visits 7-Imp today to tell us a bit about his newest picture book, Templeton Gets His Wish<\/a><\/em><\/strong> (Disney-Hyperion, May 2015). I like this story and the way it swings from desperation to elation \u00e0 la Sylvester and the Magic Pebble<\/a><\/strong><\/em>. Templeton’s feelings are intense, as the feelings of young children tend to be, and in the end he sees the great error of his ways. It’s a book that unabashedly embraces its morality, and I look forward to sharing it with groups of children. <\/p>\n

I don’t need to tell you the storyline, because Greg does so below. And I don’t need to describe the art, because Greg also shares some below. I thank him for visiting. <\/p>\n

Let’s get right to it. … (p.s. This is the second time<\/a><\/strong> Greg’s visited 7-Imp this year. You have<\/em> read Tricky Vic<\/em>, right?)<\/p>\n


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\nGreg<\/font><\/strong>: Templeton Gets His Wish<\/em> tells the story of a young cat who is tired of his family bossing him around and making him do things he doesn\u2019t want to do — like, take baths, clean his room, and share his toys.
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\nOne day, he sees an ad in a comic book for a magical, wish-granting diamond and does what I suspect many kids (and adults) occasionally wish they could do themselves: He wishes his family away.
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\nAnd he has a lot of fun, too …
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\n… but eventually realizes he\u2019s better off with them around (even if they are annoying) and wishes them back. He\u2019s got a good heart.
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\nAs this book is about a character who doesn\u2019t really like his family very much and as I still enjoy receiving the occasional Christmas card from my own relatives, I dedicated this book to my family. It seems to have gone over well for now. And if I don\u2019t get an invite home for Thanksgiving dinner, I\u2019ll send you an update.
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\nTempleton was printed in four spot colors — orange, green, blue, and black. The greys that sometimes come up are the black layer printed at a lower opacity. What this means is that each layer is drawn separately and printed one on top of another. I\u2019ll show you what I mean:<\/p>\n

A finished spread:
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\nAnd here\u2019s just the orange:
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\nOrange and blue:
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\nOrange, blue, and green:
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\nAll four colors again — orange, blue, green, and black:
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\nAll my books so far with Disney-Hyperion use this spot-color process — and are the same size. The hope is that when they are on a shelf, they will feel like they are sort of a set.
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\nLike all of the books that I\u2019ve both written and illustrated, this book has a case cover which is different than the jacket, and I really went to town on the personal Easter-eggs for this one. The case cover itself is meant to feel like it\u2019s the box that is delivered to Templeton\u2019s front door, which contains the magic diamond.
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\nIt even says FRAGILE-EEE (it must be Italian!), a joke I put in solely for my father\u2019s benefit. Like I mentioned above, this book is dedicated \u201cFor my family\u201d and the stamps on the outside of the box all represent a family member (or members) whom I felt I should include. The illustrations on the fake stamps and even the cost of each stamp allude to something about each of them, although I\u2019m not sure even the family members themselves would get the references in the way I intended (if they do in fact peek under the jacket). But it makes it all feel more complete to me, and I\u2019m always happy to throw in extra layers like this when I can.
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(Click to enlarge)<\/em><\/center>
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\nSome examples:<\/p>\n

The \u201cHealy\u201d stamp is for my wife, Kay Healy. I was wrapping up Templeton<\/em> right around our first wedding anniversary, and it seemed appropriate to make a stamp that used Templeton\u2019s magic diamond as the stone on an engagement ring. It\u2019s twenty-two cents, because we were married on the 22nd of June. <\/p>\n

Another stamp example is this one I made for my Aunt Josephine and my greater family on my dad\u2019s side. She hosts most of the holiday gatherings and makes an unbelievable pizzelle, my favorite cookie. Thus the image on her stamp. The “25” is for the holiday when she makes them most often — Christmas. I\u2019m crossing my fingers for a double-batch this year.
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\nThere\u2019s only one other thing I feel like I should point out, and that\u2019s the not-so-subtle homage I made in this book to one of my all-time favorite illustrators, Abner Graboff<\/a><\/strong>. The first book of his that I saw was I Know an Old Lady<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, and I still look at it often. My favorite spread from that book is the first utterance of \u201cI guess she\u2019ll die!\u201d — and it was 100% the inspiration for the spread from Templeton below.
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\nHope you\u2019ll check out the book, possibly while avoiding your family.
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TEMPLETON GETS HIS WISH. Copyright \u00a9 2015 by Greg Pizzoli. Published by Disney-Hyperion, New York. All images used by permission of Greg Pizzoli.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Author-illustrator Greg Pizzoli visits 7-Imp today to tell us a bit about his newest picture book, Templeton Gets His Wish (Disney-Hyperion, May 2015). I like this story and the way it swings from desperation to elation \u00e0 la Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. Templeton’s feelings are intense, as the feelings of young children tend […]<\/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-3839","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\/3839","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=3839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3839\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}