{"id":4272,"date":"2017-02-17T00:01:02","date_gmt":"2017-02-17T06:01:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=4272"},"modified":"2017-02-17T06:06:52","modified_gmt":"2017-02-17T12:06:52","slug":"what-im-doing-at-kirkus-this-weekplus-what-i-did-last-week-featuringjessixa-bagley-marie-louise-gay-and-lane-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=4272","title":{"rendered":"What I\u2019m Doing at Kirkus<\/em> This Week,
Plus What I Did Last Week, Featuring
Jessixa Bagley, Marie-Louise Gay, and Lane Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"


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“‘Well, how about building a fort?’ asked Ma Badger. ‘We already made one,’ said Tic. ‘Then we invaded it, and it fell apart,’ said Tac.”
— From Jessixa Bagley’s <\/em>Laundry Day<\/center>
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“It WAS a perfect day for Squirrel.”
— From Lane Smith’s <\/em>A Perfect Day
(Click to enlarge spread)<\/center>
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“Monster!”
— From Marie-Louise Gay’s <\/em>Short Stories for Little Monsters
(Click to enlarge spread)<\/center>
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\nI’ve got poetry on the mind over at Kirkus<\/em>. That is here<\/a><\/strong> this morning. <\/p>\n

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

Last week, I wrote here<\/a><\/strong> about three entertaining picture books, where being up to no good is pretty great — Jessixa Bagley’s<\/a><\/strong> Laundry Day<\/em> (Neal Porter\/Roaring Brook, February 2017), Marie-Louise Gay’s<\/a><\/strong> Short Stories for Little Monsters<\/em> (Groundwood, March 2017), and Lane Smith’s<\/a><\/strong> A Perfect Day<\/em> (Roaring Brook, March 2017). I’m following up with art from each book today, and both Lane and Marie-Louise sent some sketches and other art as well. (Marie-Louise and Lane also share a little bit about what inspired their respective books.) <\/p>\n

Enjoy!<\/p>\n


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From Jessixa Bagley’s
Laundry Day<\/em> (sans text):<\/font><\/strong><\/center>
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“‘Why don’t you two read a book? You love to read,’ said Ma Badger.
‘We read all our books,’ said Tic. ‘Then we read them backward,’ said Tac.”<\/em>
(Click to enlarge spread)<\/center>
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“‘Laundry?’ Tick asked, looking surprised. ‘We haven’t done that yet,’ said Tac.
‘Okay!’ they chimed together.”<\/em>
(Click to enlarge spread)<\/center>
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“‘We’re really good at this!’ said Tic proudly. ‘I’m pretty impressed myself!’ said Tac.
But just then … Ma came home from the market.”<\/em>
(Click to enlarge spread)<\/center>
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From Marie-Louise Gay’s
Short Stories for Little Monsters<\/em>:<\/font><\/strong><\/center>
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\nMarie-Louise<\/font><\/strong>: This book was inspired by my love as a pre-teen and teenager of what we call in French bandes dessin\u00e9es<\/em>, like Tintin<\/a><\/strong> or Spirou<\/a><\/strong> or Le Concombre Masqu\u00e9<\/a><\/em><\/strong> (The Masked Cucumber<\/em>) or Little Nemo<\/a><\/strong> or Edward Gorey<\/a><\/strong>. And, actually, my first step to making picture-books was creating cartoon strips panel by panel which, as a college student, I sold to newspapers and magazines.
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Sketches<\/em>
(Click each to enlarge)<\/center>
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“Zombie Mom”<\/em>
(Click to enlarge spread)<\/center>
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“The Secret Life of Snails”<\/em>
(Click to enlarge spread)<\/center>
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From Lane Smith’s
A Perfect Day<\/em>:<\/font><\/strong><\/center>
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\nLane<\/font><\/strong>: The genesis of this book was the convergence of two things. I am constantly visited by bears at my studio …
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\n<\/a>
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(Click each to enlarge)<\/em><\/center>
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\n… and in my spare time I’ve been doing large paintings on canvas in gesso and cold wax medium. Just personal stuff [below]<\/em>. The technique of gesso and expressionistic brush stokes from my personal work managed to seep its way into my animal illustrations of A Perfect Day.<\/em>
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(Click each to enlarge)<\/em><\/center>
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Dummy images from<\/em>A Perfect Day
(Click each to enlarge)<\/center>
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A final spread: “It was a perfect day for Dog.”<\/em>
(Click to enlarge spread)<\/center>
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A final spread: “Birdseed. Bert topped off the bird feeder with it.”<\/em>
(Click to enlarge spread)<\/center>
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A final spread: “It WAS a perfect day for Chickadee.”<\/em>
(Click to enlarge spread)<\/center>
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* * * * * * *<\/center><\/p>\n

LAUNDRY DAY. Copyright \u00a9 2017 by Jessixa Bagley. Published by Neal Porter Books\/Roaring Brook Press, New York. Illustrations reproduced by permission of Jessixa Bagley.<\/em><\/p>\n

A PERFECT DAY. Copyright \u00a9 2017 by Lane Smith. Published by Roaring Brook Press, New York. All images reproduced by permission of Lane Smith.<\/em><\/p>\n

SHORT STORIES FOR LITTLE MONSTERS. Copyright \u00a9 2017 by Marie-Louise Gay. Illustrations reproduced by permission of the publisher, Groundwood Press, Toronto. Sketches reproduced by permission of Marie-Louise Gay.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“‘Well, how about building a fort?’ asked Ma Badger. ‘We already made one,’ said Tic. ‘Then we invaded it, and it fell apart,’ said Tac.”— From Jessixa Bagley’s Laundry Day   “It WAS a perfect day for Squirrel.”— From Lane Smith’s A Perfect Day(Click to enlarge spread)   “Monster!”— From Marie-Louise Gay’s Short Stories for […]<\/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-4272","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\/4272","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=4272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4272\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}