Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Ruth Krauss and Crockett Johnson on their front porch, 1959. Image courtesy of Smithsonian Institution. Reproduced courtesy of the New Haven Register.   Last week at Kirkus, an abbreviated version of a Q&A I conducted with author, professor, and blogger Philip Nel was posted over at the Kirkus Book Blog Network. We discussed his latest […]

One of Henkes’s house sketches in watercolor and colored pencil   It was my pleasure to review for the Horn Book the latest picture book from Kevin Henkes. It’s called A House (Greenwillow, September 2021), and that review is here. Here at 7-Imp today, Henkes shares some early sketches, as well as a few images […]

Early drawings(Click to enlarge)   Title page art for Roar Like a Dandelion   Sergio Ruzzier’s newest book is a special one. Granted, I always like to see what he’s up to in the world of picture books, but Roar Like a Dandelion (Harper, October 2019) is a text from the legendary author Ruth Krauss, […]

“Margaret Wise Brown lived for 42 years. This book is 42 pages long. You can’t fit somebody’s life into 42 pages, so I am just going to tell you some important things.”(Click to enlarge spread, which is sans text)   I’ve got a review over at BookPage of Mac Barnett’s The Important Thing About Margaret […]

  Pictured above is a preliminary image from Julie Fogliano’s A House That Once Was (Roaring Brook, May 2018), illustrated by Lane Smith. This, Lane says, was his attempt to use “very absorbent newspaper, but the line here was a little too blobby and uncontrollable.” Lane sent a few other roughs from the book, as […]

“It doesn’t pay to get too fonda /Your python or your anaconda.”— From Consider the Lemming   — From the endpapers of Donkey-Donkey   “There was a little little bird.”— From The Happy Egg(Click image to see spread with text and in its entirety)   Today over at Kirkus, I’ve got Valentine’s Day on the […]

Author/illustrator Rowboat Watkins and I had a long conversation about his picture book, Rude Cakes, coming to shelves in June from Chronicle Books — and I’m posting the conversation today. The book is the surreal story of cheeky, impudent cakes (words I never thought I’d string together)—throw in some cyclopses with some unexpected behavior traits—and […]

I couldn’t let 2014 go by without posting this interview with British author-illustrator David Roberts. I’ve enjoyed his books over the years, but he also provided spot illustrations for Wild Things! Acts of Mischief in Children’s Literature, the book I wrote with Betsy Bird and the late Peter D. Sieruta, which was released in August […]

“‘Children, stand up.’ Mother smiled. They pushed their chairs back and stood up.‘This is your sister. … Loretta Mason Potts … but it’s not Potts any more.She has come to live with us—at last.’”   Granted, I’m not so sure what I did to my blog, but it’d had enough of my nonsense and packed […]

Pictured above is Matt Phelan’s rendition of author/illustrator Greg Pizzoli, who’s visiting me for breakfast today (and whose human version is pictured left). “I turned 30 in January,” Greg told me, “and my wife had some friends and family draw portraits of me for a book she made. It was called ’30 Portraits of Greg.’” […]