A quick break from working on college projects and Floating Lemons uploads ... decided to pick the brush up and have a bit of therapeutic fun.
I'm now wondering whether they would look good on mugs, plates perhaps ... ooo, a shower curtain! Aha, off I go to experiment a bit more.
Have a fantastic week. Cheers.
By: Sylvia Vardell,
on 4/28/2008
I have always loved collective nouns—those interesting labels that describe groups of things, like “a pride of lions.” I think it’s fascinating to see the connection between the label and the attributes or behaviors of the item, object, or animal. Apparently, I’m not alone. Poet and professor Marjorie Maddox shares my fascination and has created 14 new poems centered around this notion in her 2008 book, A Crossing of Zebras; Animal Packs in Poetry. The table of contents says it all:
A Rumba of Rattlesnakes
A Tower of Giraffes
A Pounce of Alley Cats
An Army of Ants
A Murder of Crows
A Cartload of Monkeys
A Leap of Leopards
A School of Fish
A Crossing of Zebras
A Band of Coyotes
A Scurry of Squirrels
A Pride of Lions
A Crash of Rhinos
A Charm of Butterflies
Maddox uses a variety of poetic forms to capture the characteristics of the animal or the humor in the label, with rhymes, rhythms, and strong sound qualities that are pleasing to the ear. Here’s one example:
A School of Fish
by Marjorie Maddox
A school of fish reads in my swimming pool,
reciting ABCs and golden rules
(look both ways, be nice, no ocean duels).
They know it all—mountains to molecules:
T. rex, magic, Minotaurs, toadstools,
volcanoes, vipers, tricks for April Fool’s,
Egyptian mummies, pirates and their jewels,
strange flying saucers, robots, ghosts and ghouls.
Their dictionaries float, Old Mother Goose
quacks her rhymes and rhythms; it’s so cool
I’m signing a petition at my school—
let’s hold class every summer at the pool.
From: Maddox, Marjorie. 2008. A Crossing of Zebras; Animal Packs in Poetry. Illus. by Philip Huber. Wordsong/Boyds Mills Press, p. 19.
Philip Huber’s scratchboard illustrations add a strange and electric quality to the poems and a “Note from the Author” provides insight into the fascinating, less-than-scientific process used for coining collective nouns. Related books (like Ruth Heller’s A Cache of Jewels) and Web sites are suggested, as an extra bonus. Check it out!
Picture credit: Amazon
By: Rebecca,
on 12/19/2007
To celebrate the holidays we asked some of our favorite people in publishing what their favorite book was. Let us know in the comments what your favorite book is and be sure to check back throughout the week for more “favorites”.
Jaime Morganstern is an associate publicist at Planned Television Arts.
I remember asking my mom one day for a book she could recommend to me, preferably by an author with a few other books I would also enjoy. She handed me Love Story by Erich Segal. Little did I know that this would become my favorite book and I would soon read all the author’s other novels. (more…)
By: Melissa Wiley,
on 10/22/2007
"There are things I think people have a need to know . . . I want them to look around more — to pay attention to the world around them, to take an extra moment to look at things, to think about things."
—David Macauley
Ten and a half years ago, when our 21-month-old daughter was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, Scott and I were told to be thankful it was ALL and not some other kind of cancer. We were thankful, strange as it was to feel glad about anything related to a cancer diagnosis. We knew that the prognosis was better for kids with ALL than with other types of cancer.
But we were a full week into treatment before we found out how very good the prognosis actually was. Jane had started the week with two complete blood exchanges, purging her body of all the cancerous white blood cells that had escaped her bone marrow and were coursing through her tiny veins. She had made it through the first terrible week of chemotherapy—the fevers, the vomiting, the countless needle sticks. One week down, years to go. The head of the hem/onc department came in to meet us, and he asked us, rather professorially, what our goal was with Jane's treatment.
"Remission?" I asked. He smiled in obvious amusement.
"Yes, of course," he said, shrugging. "We will get her into remission, and very soon. But that is just the beginning. Our goal is to keep her in remission. Our goal is a cure."
Scott and I stared at him. I started to cry. A week earlier, during the nightmarish hour between leaving our pediatrician's office and arriving, per his urgent instructions, at the children's hospital emergency room, we had swung by our apartment to restock the diaper bag. On the way out the door, I had grabbed an old (but not that old) medical reference book we happened to have on the shelf. In the car I read aloud to Scott in horror. If the pediatrician was right, if the baby had leukemia, the best-case scenario, according to this tome, was a five-to-seven-year survival rate.
Until that moment when the Chief Oncologist said the word "cure," Scott and I had believed our best hope at the end of putting Jane through the torture of chemotherapy was that she would live to see her ninth birthday.
"I didn't know," I croaked. "I didn't know there was a cure for cancer."
"For this kind, there is," said the doctor.
We all know that ALL is but one of the many, many kinds of cancer. The treatment—the cure—doesn't work for everyone, but it works for a lot of people, especially children. Ten years later, Jane is still in remission and spilling joy everywhere she goes. If you find joy on this blog, she is a large part of the reason why. I threw that old medical reference book in the trash long ago, because the hard work of doctors and researchers, and the courage of patients who came before my Jane, had rendered its somber pronouncements inaccurate.
At the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, researchers are working on more, and better, cures. This research is paid for by the Jimmy Fund, named after a 12-year-old cancer patient who made a radio appeal in 1948 that brought in some $200,000 in funding for research that first year. Jimmy, like Jane, survived his cancer. It's possible that Jane survived because of breakthroughs in chemotherapy protocols developed by the doctors at Dana-Farber—I don't have any idea who all the people were whose work saved my daughter's life. I only know that I am thankful to the very marrow of my bones. And hers.
Children's book illustrator Grace Lin wrote a picture book called Robert's Snow during her husband's fight against bone cancer. Robert Mercer was diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma just months after he and Grace were married. Grace tells the story on the Robert's Snow site:
Nine months later, Robert was declared cancer-free. "Robert's Snow" was accepted for publication. We felt that our good luck had finally arrived. But, in March 2004, Robert's cancer returned. We were devastated. Our doctor told us that Robert's best chance for long-term survival was a breakthrough in cancer research.
So we decided to help the doctors the best we could. Because "Robert's Snow" had meant so much to us the first time, we decided to use it as an inspiration for a fundraiser. We recruited children's book artists to paint wooden snowflakes and auctioned them off — the proceeds going to cancer research at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
The response was tremendous. "Robert's Snow: for Cancer's Cure" snowballed greater than we ever dreamed.
To date, the Robert's Snow snowflake auctions have raised over $200,000 for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. This year's auctions will begin in November, and you can bid on a stunning array of snowflakes illustrated by some of the most talented artists in children's books.
Starting last week, bloggers all over the kidlitosphere joined in an effort to spread awareness of the upcoming Robert's Snow auctions. Encouraged by Jules and Eisha of Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, who dreamed up the "Blogging for a Cure" event, dozens of bloggers are featuring snowflakes by some of the participating illustrators. There are many, many more snowflakes being auctioned in addition to the ones you will see in these posts. I encourage you to go explore the auction site and feast your eyes on all these beautiful pieces of art.
Here is one of them. What an honor it is to be able to feature David Macaulay's snowflake here at Bonny Glen. I mean, David Macaulay! Caldecott winner! Author of The Way Things Work! The man who taught Jane what a laser is, and how parking meters work, and what is the difference between nuclear fission and nuclear fusion!
David Macaulay painted a snowflake for the Robert's Snow auction. Here it is:
Ten years ago, when Jane was diagnosed, David Macauley's books already had pride of place on our living room shelf. I first saw The Way Things Work in the children's bookstore I worked at during grad school. I bought a copy with my employee discount. I hoped to have children one day, lots of them, and I knew they'd want to know how stuff worked.
Now here it is 2007 and I've got those children, a lot of them!, and they are indeed full of 'satiable curtiousities. David Macauley's books have helped show them the world. Sit down with one of his black-and-white "Building Books" masterpieces, and you're likely to spend the whole rest of the day immersed in the details of another corner of the world. Here are some of the books he wrote and illustrated, a homeschooler's dream library:
City: A Story of Roman Planning and Construction
Cathedral
Pyramid
Mosque
Ship
Underground
Mill
He also wrote the Caldecott winner Black and White, a stunner of a picture book, as well as the charming Angelo.
There will be three rounds of snowflake auctions, beginning November 19th. If you'd like to see David Macauley's snowflake hanging on your Christmas tree or in your winter window, it will be sold in the second auction, which starts on November 26th. (Trivia time: one of the other snowflakes in that auction was made by the illustrator of one of my books. Do you know who?)
Many thanks to Mr. Macaulay and all the illustrators who donated these gorgeous works of art for the Robert's Snow auction, to Grace Lin for founding the event (view her own snowflake here), and to Jules and Eisha for organizing the Blogging for a Cure effort. And many, many thanks to the folks of the Dana-Farber Institute for continuing to work toward cures for other people like Jane.
Here are the rest of this week's Blogging for a Cure snowflake features (thank you, Tricia and Jen, for the list!):
Monday, October 22
Tuesday, October 23
Wednesday, October 24
Thursday, October 25
Friday, October 26
Saturday, October 27
Sunday, October 28
Related links:
Blogging for a Cure page at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast.
