{"id":4539,"date":"2018-01-14T00:01:56","date_gmt":"2018-01-14T06:01:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=4539"},"modified":"2018-01-13T14:48:21","modified_gmt":"2018-01-13T20:48:21","slug":"7-imps-7-kicks-569-featuring-julia-sarda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=4539","title":{"rendered":"7-Imp\u2019s 7 Kicks #569: Featuring J\u00falia Sard\u00e0"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\nI’ve some spreads today from Kathleen Krull’s<\/a><\/strong> One Fun Day with Lewis Carroll: A Celebration of Wordplay and a Girl Named Alice<\/a><\/strong><\/em> (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, January 2018), illustrated by J\u00falia Sard\u00e0<\/strong><\/a>. In this book, which puts a fine-tune focus on Carroll’s creative abilities with language and his sense of adventure, we meet him as a young man, his ten brothers and sisters in tow. They adored him, Krull writes, and he led them on outings, played games with them, and made up stories for them. Krull emphasizes his sense of fun, even after he grew “into a prim and proper Victorian gentleman.” <\/p>\n

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“Then came one fine, famous Friday in July,” we read, during which Carroll spun a story we still read to this day. While rowing in a boat with a friend and the three children of another friend, including a girl named Alice, Carroll launches into the story of a girl, also named Alice, who falls down a rabbit hole. All the while, Carroll plays with words. Four spreads are devoted here to what came to be the iconic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland<\/em> \u2014 and all of its glorious wordplay. All throughout Krull’s book, many of the imaginative words that Carroll coined are worked into the text \u2014 in a larger red font. <\/p>\n

Sard\u00e0’s illustrations are beguiling. Remember Kyo Maclear\u2019s The Liszts<\/em> from 2016? (You can see some illustrations here at this 7-Imp post<\/a><\/strong>.) Sard\u00e0 also illustrated that. In one of my Kirkus columns<\/a><\/strong>, I described Sard\u00e0’s illustrations for that as “a lot like Edward Gorey meeting Charles Addams in a bar and the two buy [Wes] Anderson a drink.” I love Sard\u00e0’s offbeat characters and sly sense of mischief, which are on display here. She’s a fitting choice for capturing the mad, surreal lunacy of Alice<\/em> (I see she’s done it before<\/a><\/strong>), and she reverently depicts Carroll with an impish sort of charm. <\/p>\n

Because art can say so much more than I can, here are a few spreads. …
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“Lewis Carroll was an expert at fun.
A day with Lewis was always fabulous and joyous \u2014 as he would say, frabjous. …”<\/em>
(Click to enlarge and read text in its entirety)<\/center>
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(Click to enlarge)<\/em><\/center>
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Part one of “Words and Ideas Invented or Adapted by Lewis Carroll”<\/em>
(Click to enlarge and read text in its entirety)<\/center>
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(Click to enlarge cover)<\/em><\/center>
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\nONE FUN DAY WITH LEWIS CARROLL: A CELEBRATION OF WORDPLAY AND A GIRL NAMED ALICE. Text copyright \u00a9 2018 by Kathleen Krull. Illustrations copyright \u00a9 2018 by J\u00falia Sard\u00e0 and reproduced by permission of the publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston.<\/em><\/p>\n

Note for any new readers: 7-Imp\u2019s 7 Kicks is a weekly meeting ground for taking some time to reflect on Seven(ish) Exceptionally Fabulous, Beautiful, Interesting, Hilarious, or Otherwise Positive Noteworthy Things from the past week, whether book-related or not, that happened to you. New kickers are always welcome.<\/p>\n

* * * Jules’ Kicks * * *<\/strong><\/font>
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1)<\/strong><\/font> This week, Jacqueline Woodson<\/a><\/strong> became the new National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature! Her wonderful speech is here:
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