How to use this Page

Ana Albero 

next are some snaps from anthropologie's sister shop urban outfitters over on oxford street. highlights included gemma correll cards and a new book on designer celia birtwell.

a few snap shots taken at 'prints' in st.christopher's place in london. the store sells stationery, paper, envelopes, cards, gift wrap and japanese mt tape.

“I got an email from a fellow in London. He had been on his lunch hour, and seen my cartoon in a magazine at the newsstand. This fellow didn’t buy the magazine, but remembering my name, he walked back to his office, Googled me and found my site. His UK company was going to do a big ad campaign, and would I be willing to draw some cartoons for it?”

-

Mike Lynch Cartoons: The Business of Cartooning: Your Signature

Dan Smith’s Fairyland Cover Series

Best viewed large, and then very small to appreciate the simple beauty of the colours.

wardkimball:

11. Alternate Mickeys by Ward Kimball, 1985.

Have you subscribed to 365 Days of Ward Kimball? It’s the official tumblr for Amid Amidi’s upcoming biography called Full Steam Ahead: The Life and Art of Ward Kimball, coming this fall.

Amazing Facts…and Beyond! comes to an end.

Just like that, from out of nowhere, a great webcomic comes to a halt. If you’re not familiar with it, check out the archive or, better yet, buy the books and support the creators.

Last Thursday at Kirkus, I chatted with the very funny writer and strongman-for-hire Mac Barnett about the fact that his early Spring picture book—Extra Yarn (Balzer + Bray), illustrated by Jon Klassen—up and got the 2012 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award in the Picture Book category. Here is that conversation, if you missed it and are so inclined to read it. (And I’ve been wanting to post about this book all year, having asked Mac and Jon about it back in January. Better late than never, huh?)

Know what, too? I asked Mac, as you can see over there at the Q & A, about the fact that his writing is always described as “quirky,” and he gave such a wonderful response, one I’ll always remember. If you love picture books as much as I do, you also may very well cheer this:

Last month on the radio, I heard a winemaker talking about how his business had changed, starting in the 1980s. Before that, apparently, vintners took pride in the idiosyncrasies of their individual processes and the quirks of their regions. You could take a sip and know that the grapes were grown in this particular terroir, say, and there was such wide and pronounced variety that you could tell the differences between two wines grown 30 miles from each other.

But then that changed. Winemakers started aiming for received notions of the perfect Bordeaux or ideal Cabernet, and things started tasting the same. And this man on the radio was sad, because something had been lost.

Now, during the Reagan years, I was too young to even taste the holy swill in the Communion cup, but I see a similar trend in picture books—and on roughly the same timeline. The same plots get trotted out. Great ideas are shaved and sanded down until they look a lot like a lot of other things on the bookshelf. I like strange stories, shaggy stories, stories with knobby bits and gristle and surprises. And so I’m glad that people think my stories are quirky. All my favorite books have quirks. Although I think it is almost always more interesting to examine why something is quirky than to simply say that it is.

Strange, shaggy stories. YES, indeed.

Here are some more illustrations from Extra Yarn (sans text). [Fun Fact, Which Jon Mentioned in a Previous Email to Me and Which I Hope He Doesn’t Mind Me Sharing Here: The yarn in the book was actually an old sweater Jon scanned in and then colored so that the stitching would be right.]

Enjoy. (Part Two tomorrow…) (more…)

Madalena Matoso  studied Communication Design at Lisbon College of Fine Arts and post-graduated in Graphic Editorial Design at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Barcelona. View more of her portfolio work.

Madalena Matoso  studied Communication Design at Lisbon College of Fine Arts and post-graduated in Graphic Editorial Design at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Barcelona. View more of her portfolio work.

George Bellows by Robert Burleigh

from A NYT review:

Most children's books about celebrated artists don't open with anything like fight night at Sharkey's. (Not many grown-up books do either.) But a scene in which two boxers "bob and weave, jabbing and pummeling each other with muscular arms" is a fitting way to introduce the American painter George Bellows, who is also the subject of a large retrospective exhibition currently at the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

Here's an excerpt from my essay "Pyle as a Picturemaker" in the catalog for the Howard Pyle exhibition, which is now at the Norman Rockwell Museum:

• Date: Tuesday 31 July 2012
• Time: 6:30pm-8:30pm
• Cost: $35.00 (for catering)
• Book through our online booking system
• Venue: State Library of Victoria

Good Afternoon CYL loyalists!

We’re knee deep into planning our next Booktalkers event. It’s all Middle Years, all the time. So, what’s on the program?

Kate Constable will be on the panel talking about her recently shortlisted title, Crow Country, on the WA Premier’s Award. Crow Country was also shortlisted on the 2012 CBCA for Younger Readers and shortlisted for the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature (Children’s Literature). She is also one of the author’s in Allen & Unwin’s Girlfriend Fiction series

Aurealis winner, Tom Taylor, will be talking graphic novels and The Deep: Here be Dragons. He is best known for his Star Wars graphic novels for Lucasfilm and Dark Horse comics, including the critically acclaimed Star Wars: Blood Ties series and Star Wars: Invasion. He has written in the Batman and Green Lantern series for DC comics. Tom was also our Writer-In-Residence over at Inside A Dog last month.

Author and Illustrator Gabrielle Wang is not only this month’s Writer-In-Residence over at Inside A Dog, but a former winner of the Aurealis Awards herself. She has also been shortlisted for QLD Premier’s Award, a CBCA Notable and has been ‘highly commended’ on the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards.

We hope you can make it down for what promises to be an exciting and rewarding night of YA book talk.

Writing Picture Books

Workshop given by Tamson Weston at New Jersey SCBWI June Conference.

Written by Tiffany Alexander

Wouldn’t it be great to attend a workshop given by a person with insider book publishing knowledge and extensive practice helping writers hone their craft? That person is Tamson Weston. At the NJ SCBWI June 2012 Conference, Tamson used her expertise as an editorial consultant and former editor to give us a solid grounding in picture books. She talked about the current market and picture book myths/truths, and she also gave us time to do a writing exercise to stir up our creativity. Her answers to our questions aimed to help us navigate the seemingly temperamental waters of writing and publishing.

Tamson gave us a balanced look at the state of the industry. Right now there is some nervousness in the field concerning electronic formats, a decreasing number of editors, and so on. These may be issues, but they are not the only side of the story. Although the industry has been “painted bleakly,” Tamson showed sales figures from early this year that indicate some growth is occurring. Hardcovers showed good growth, while other categories like paperbacks and e-books showed modest growth. While this is good news, she reminded us that it is still crucial to work your manuscript into the best shape possible before sending it out to agents and editors.

After the market brief, Tamson tackled some common myths about picture book writing. Those myths and her counterpoints are:

1.) Picture books are short, so they’re easy to write. (Not so. Actually, it means each word is so much more important, and each word choice counts so much more.)

2.) Picture books should rhyme. (Not necessarily. Rhyme is very powerful, and all of us remember rhymes from our childhood, but this is no reason to try to write like Dr. Seuss.)

3.) Picture books shouldn’t rhyme. (If you are very interested in rhyme, if that style really fascinates you, then try it. Just be aware that many agents/editors have received many manuscripts with rhyme that was not done well, and they’re tired of poor rhyme. If rhyme is for you, really try to get it “right.”)

4.) Nowadays, picture books need a character that can be written about repeatedly over several books. (Not necessarily. There is no rule that says every book has to have the potential to be turned into a series.)

To illustrate her comments about myths, Tamson pointed out that, among several recent best-selling books, one book rhymes, one has a prominent character and one doesn’t, one is by a first-time author (which also happens to rhyme), and there is even a non-fiction book on the list. She used the term “strategic publishing” to explain that sometimes editors are making choices about what to publish based on many different internal factors, not hard and fast rules. And of course there is some amount of subjectivity in any editor’s choices. So, she said pick what you can do and do it well. Get feedback and readjust based on those comments, but also trust yourself. Please don’t write about something just because it seems like a popular topic.

And about the number of words, well, there is no exact number. It depends on your story. Five hundred might be a good number to aim for, but the word count is not the most important thing to understand about picture book text. Tamson stressed that picture books must say a lot with very little. The text of a picture book is not necessarily half of the book (think of the fact that some picture books are wordless, so obviously a picture book doesn’t need half or even any percentage

I wrote my memoir, Home is a Roof Over a Pig: An American Family’s Journey in China, sent it to beta readers, edited and rewrote, and began work on that all important task: the query letter. Following the advice I’d read on this blog and others, I wrote a query letter that rocked, and earned me several requests for partials. But then, one by one, they were rejected…

GIVEAWAY: Aminta is excited to give away a free copy of her novel to a random commenter. Comment within 2 weeks; winners must live in Canada/US to receive the book by mail. You can win a blog contest even if you’ve won before.

Guest column by Aminta Arrington, who has an M.A. in international
relations from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced Studies
and studied at Waseda University in Tokyo.  She has written about
China for The Seattle Times and China Daily, and she edited the
anthology Saving Grandmother’s Face: And Other Tales from Christian
Teachers in China. Aminta contiues to live and work in China with her
family. Her new memoir, HOME IS A ROOF OVER A PIG (Overlook,
July 2012) is about her move from suburban Georgia to China with
her husband and three children.

First there was Tina. “I don’t know who YOU are,” she wrote to me. And then I realized. I had kept “me” very private. And this was a memoir, after all. Readers of memoir want to know, upfront, who they will be spending several hours with. I stopped querying at this point, put myself out there despite my insecurities, listened to my voice, and rewrote my first chapter in a much more warm, personal way.

Then there was John. “I’m starting to feel I’ve read it already,” he said. I reread the manuscript looking for repetition. And I found some. I cut out portions and reorganized. The result was a much cleaner, flowing product.

Then Diana. “I wanted to follow your children,” she said. “I read about their conflicts in Chinese school, but then what happened? I wanted to know.” I listened to her advice, and spread the children’s struggles with learning Chinese, making friends, and coping with life in another culture at such a tender age, over several chapters. I also wrote about their victories, but kept the tension going instead of resolving the issues right away. It reflected our lived experience more accurately, and made the pages turn more quickly.

And what would I have done with Claire. Claire was the one who pushed me to put in more of our adoption story (our middle daughter is adopted from China), more of myself, more of my relationship with my husband Chris. It was while sending revisions back and forth to Claire, that the creative seed for the first page, the hook of the book, finally germinated and wro

There’s more than one way to refresh yourself on a hot summer day.

Welcome!

Thanks for visiting the official site of children’s author Artie Knapp!  

Where Alligators Bowl, Roosters Moo, and Elephants work at car washes!

Use of any of the content on this website without permission is prohibited by federal law

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Jacques Chessex's The Tyrant -- his 1973 novel that won the prix Goncourt but has only now been published in English translation, by Bitter Lemon Press.

A recent review of The Color of Bones...

Between the Pages: Book Review: The Color of Bones: The Color of Bones   (ages 9 and up) By Tracy Edward Wymer Twelve year-old Derby Shrewd lives in a divided town. Lights live on the...

July is usually the time when summer finally comes to stay.

The jury is still out on whether that will be the case for 2012; however, today has been beautiful, sunny, and a perfect 70 degrees.

Summer makes me think of berries, especially the ones that come from my very own yard.

It makes me think of hamburgers on the grill and homemade hamburger buns.

I am pretty excited to try these out tonight. I used a recipe from here, and it was SO easy, which is exactly what a pregnant-trying-to-finish-grad-school-girl likes to hear.

Oh yeah, and then there is this…

We have officially transitioned into the 3rd trimester!

And Fran could care less.

I’m not sure if the ruler is supposed to convey how big I am going to get (oh gosh), or just how far I’ve come (again, oh gosh). In any case, I love that all four members of the Johnson family are present and accounted for.

We are getting more and more excited to meet this little person, and I can’t stop wondering what he/she will look like.

Pregnancy has not been without its ups and downs. Last week I went in for my glucose test and flunked it.

(I really hate these tests where I can’t study and prepare.)

So, my doctor told me I had to endure the three hour glucose test.

For those who are not familiar, for the three hour test you have to fast for ten hours prior. Then you go in and the nice phlebotomist takes your fasting blood. Thirty minutes later they give you twice the concentration of glucose that was administered during the first test and you guzzle that in five minutes. Just try to imagine a really, really sweet Sprite without the carbonation.

Yuck-o.

Then they take your blood at one hour…

…two hours…

and three hours.

Oh yeah, and even though you feel nauseated from the sugar coma, they tell you that if you throw up you’ll just have to take the test over again another time.

Great.

Thankfully, I did not chuck my non-existent cookies.

Plus also, I passed!!

Bring on the cookies and ice cream!!

(just kidding)

(sort of)

So far, baby and mamma are healthy and co-existing nicely. Except when baby uses mamma’s bladder as a trampoline during a hike and mamma has to consider whether it is worth it to squat along the side of the trail even though there are tons of people around.

Oh the dignity that is pregnancy!

I hope you are all enjoying a happy and safe 4th!

Love,
your very pregnant friend, who is only going to get larger in the coming three months.

Amen.