Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

 
I’ve some spreads today from Kathleen Krull’s One Fun Day with Lewis Carroll: A Celebration of Wordplay and a Girl Named Alice (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, January 2018), illustrated by Júlia Sardà. 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.”

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“… This is the Earth that Lappé dreamed.”
— Melissa Sweet’s illustration of Frances Moore Lappé from Susan Hood’s
Shaking Things Up: 14 Young Women Who Changed the World

 

“She turned the guitar upside down and played it backwards.
It was kind of like brushing your teeth with your foot. …”
— From Laura Veirs’ Libba: The Magnificent Musical Life of Elizabeth Cotten,
illustrated by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh
(Click to enlarge and read text in its entirety)

 


“It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen is one of the greatest writers. But it might surprise you to know that Jane lived a simple life.
She wasn’t rich or even very famous in her time.”
— From Deborah Hopkinson’s Ordinary, Extraordinary Jane Austen,
illustrated by Qin Leng

 
Over at Kirkus today, I write about Andrea Davis Pinkney’s and Brian Pinkney’s Martin Rising: Requiem for a King. That is here.

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Last week, I wrote here about three new picture books featuring some remarkably talented and fearless women — Susan Hood’s Shaking Things Up: 14 Young Women Who Changed the World (Harper, January 2018), illustrated by 13 different artists; Deborah Hopkinson’s Ordinary, Extraordinary Jane Austen: The Story of Six Novels, Three Notebooks, a Writing Box, and One Clever Girl (Balzer + Bray, January 2018), illustrated by Qin Leng; and Laura Veirs’ Libba: The Magnificent Musical Life of Elizabeth Cotten (Chronicle, January 2018), illustrated by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh.

I’m following up with some art from each book today.

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“… Mrs. Vandenberg / holds up her hand.
Write about anything! / It’s not black and white.
But it is. / Charles is black, / and I’m white.”

 
Last week at Kirkus, I wrote here about Irene Latham’s and Charles Waters’s Can I Touch Your Hair?: Poems of Race, Mistakes, and Friendship (Carolrhoda Books, January 2018), illustrated by Selina Alko and Sean Qualls.

Today, I’ve a bit of art from the book.

Enjoy. …

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“Paula the cat / not thin nor fat / is as happy as house cats can be …”
(Click to enlarge and read poem in its entirety)

 
I’ve a few spreads today from Nikki Giovanni’s I Am Loved (Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum, January 2018), illustrated by Ashley Bryan.

This is a collection of primarily free verse poems from Giovanni — some previously published and the rest, brand-new. The poems are about memory, loss, friendship, and family — and (delightfully) there’s one about a house cat, “not thin nor fat,” who tires of her view and heads out to sea (pictured above). “Quilts,” a poem dedicated to artist Sally Sellers, comes from the point of view of an elderly woman, who likens herself to a “fading piece of cloth.” The ending is striking in its poignancy:

When I am frayed and stained and drizzled at the end
Please someone cut a square and put me in a quilt
That I might keep some child warm …

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It’s the first Sunday of the month, dear Imps, which means I like to turn 7-Imp over to an illustration student. Today, I have Deena So’Oteh, who is originally from Russia and is a student at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Deena shares many pieces of artwork today and tells us a bit about herself. Let’s get to it. I thank her for visiting.

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— From Steve Jenkins’ and Robin Page’s Who Am I?: An Animal Guessing Game

 

“Put some mustard in your nose, which then, proceed to lick.”
— From Anushka Ravishankar’s Hic!, illustrated by Christiane Pieper

 

“Feather, hidden in a tuft of grass, didn’t make a sound.”
— From Cao Wenxuan’s Feather, illustrated by Roger Mello
(Click spread to enlarge)

 

— From Andrea Tsurumi’s Accident!

 

— From Stephanie Graegin’s Little Fox in the Forest

 
Today over at Kirkus, I write about three new picture books featuring some remarkably talented and fearless women.

That is here.

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Last week, I wrote here about Stephanie Graegin’s Little Fox in the Forest (Schwartz & Wade, February 2017); Anushka Ravishankar’s Hic! (Tara, September 2017), illustrated by Christiane Pieper; Steve Jenkins’ and Robin Page’s Who Am I?: An Animal Guessing Game (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, November 2017); Andrea Tsurumi’s Accident! (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, October 2017); Cao Wenxuan’s Feather (Elsewhere Editions, September 2017), illustrated by Roger Mello; and The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine (Random House, September 2017), written by Mark Twain and Philip Stead and illustrated by Erin Stead.

I’ve got art today from each book — and, in some cases, some early sketches, etc. — but I’ll have a separate post later about the Twain/Stead book. More on that soon.

Enjoy! Read the rest of this entry �

In my Kirkus column today, I write about this candid book.

That is here.

I’ll follow up next week here at 7-Imp with some spreads.

Stay warm, dear Imps!