![](\"http:\/\/blaine.org\/7pics\/2020\/10\/neighborsopen.jpg\")
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“[I]f you stop to think about it … My ceiling is someone’s floor, and my floor is someone’s ceiling.” A young girl moves into a new apartment\u2014number 12 in Building 2 at 3 Ponds Lane. She considers who lives in the building: “If I could stretch my hand through that wall, I could actually touch someone. And that someone is my new neighbor!”<\/p>\n
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In a series of spreads, she imagines what the apartment inhabitants are doing, how they may look (what may be my favorite spread, pictured below, in which the building’s stairs become a vine; a cell phone performs on stage in the theater at the bottom of the building; a friendly monster lies hiddden in the top of the building; and more), and if they are even home. What if they don’t exist, she wonders, and the building is “my only neighbor.” (Here, she imagines the building itself as its own creature.) What if there’s really just nothingness beyond the walls of her very own room? A series of lovely, gently-paced wordless spreads follow, in which the girl sleeps for the night and then prepares for what we eventually learn is her first day of school. She knows today is the day she’ll connect with someone. And in the very hallway on the way out the door, she gets a happy surprise. <\/p>\n
Denisevich’s fine-lined ink drawings are beguiling, and there’s a lot of detail to pore over here. It’s a book for lingering. She uses color, sparingly, to great effect. The grayscale illustrations pop with subtle spots of red, including occasionally in the text, to represent our narrator. It is not until her day of school that we finally start to see shades of other colors, including a sunny spot of yellow for a new friend in the hallway\u2014and then in the blossoms of trees as they walk to school. The book’s endpapers\u2014the tiles of the building’s hallway\u2014also play cleverly with color. <\/p>\n
This is a contemplative book, thanks to our reflective, thoughtful protagonist, full of wonder. Here are some more spreads. … 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 1)<\/strong><\/font> I voted!<\/p>\n 2)<\/strong><\/font> The line was super long! (YAY. EVERYONE, GO VOTE.)<\/p>\n 3)<\/strong><\/font> My youngest daughter turned 15 this week, and her sister sewed her a GIANT Baby Kermit. (There has been some entertaining, old-skool Muppets<\/em>-watching around here lately.)<\/p>\n 4)<\/strong><\/font> Happy surprises in the mail. <\/p>\n 5)<\/strong><\/font> Star Trek: Discovery<\/em> is back. <\/p>\n 6)<\/strong><\/font> Long walks in the cool weather and …<\/p>\n 7)<\/strong><\/font> … the bird whistle my friend’s daughter brought for the walk. <\/p>\n What are YOUR<\/font><\/strong> kicks this week?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “My ceiling is someone’s floor, and my floor is someone’s ceiling.” Today, it’s a pleasure to share some spreads from Neighbors (Chronicle, September 2020), the debut picture book from Kasya Denisevich, a Russian-born author-illustrator now living in Barcelona. These illustrations were rendered in ink, and the book’s typeset is called Kasya Hand\u2014a font created […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-seven-good-things-before-monday","category-picture-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5209","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=5209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5209\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\n![](\"http:\/\/blaine.org\/7pics\/2020\/10\/neighbors1small.jpg\")
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But if you stop to think about it …”<\/em>
(Click spread to enlarge)<\/center>
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\n![](\"http:\/\/blaine.org\/7pics\/2020\/10\/neighbors2small.jpg\")
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(Click spread to enlarge)<\/center>
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\n![](\"http:\/\/blaine.org\/7pics\/2020\/10\/neighbors3small.jpg\")
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And that someone is my new neighbor!”<\/em>
(Click spread to enlarge)<\/center>
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\n![](\"http:\/\/blaine.org\/7pics\/2020\/10\/neighbors4small.jpg\")
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Are they going to bed, just like me?”<\/em>
(Click spread to enlarge)<\/center>
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\n![](\"http:\/\/blaine.org\/7pics\/2020\/10\/neighbors5small.jpg\")
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(Click spread to enlarge)<\/center>
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\n![](\"http:\/\/blaine.org\/7pics\/2020\/10\/neighborscoversmall.jpg\")
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\nNEIGHBORS. Copyright \u00a9 2020 by Kasya Denisevich. Illustrations reproduced by permission of the publisher, Chronicle Books, San Francisco.<\/em><\/p>\n
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