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Self-taught Australian animator Lluis Fuzzhound’s Marooned On Watango Island is a loving tribute to the Cartoon Modern style, complete with jazz and tiki.

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Happiness mind-map (Photo credit: EEPaul)

This will be a short posting today. It is, after all the day before a large holiday weekend. To that end, I’m going to take most of today off to enjoy nature and see something besides the four walls of what I laughingly call my office.

I also want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who stops by this site. You read my words, and many take the chance to leave your own behind. The exchange is good for me, and I hope, for you as well.

Many of you are new to this neck of the woods. I’m glad you’ve decided to make this station a regular stop on your weekly sojourn around the cyber world. I’m also happy that I’ve provided material which has stirred conversation, discussion, debate and, for some, pleasure enough to click the “LIKE” button. In my book, you all deserve a medal.

THANK YOU, all of you.

Here’s hoping you all have a fantastic weekend of fun and family joys. I may take today off, but the rest of the weekend is a working holiday for me. Enjoy yourselves out there at the park, the lake, the beach and stay safe to return next week.

I’ll see you then. A bientot,

Claudsy

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8 Comments on Holiday Enjoyment, last added: 5/28/2012

Funny well-timed animation and a cute concept in D. A. D. Digital Amusement Device by Brisbane, Australia-based Mark Osberg. He created the film in Flash and After Effects over 3 months.

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: After Effects, Australia, Mark Osberg

mrbuffalo:

Am I Rob Liefeld yet?

Hotdog Hustle from Tom Hunter on Vimeo.

So here's a weird thing where I've already reviewed the 4th book in this loosely connected series, but not the first three.

Now, I've written about my undying love for Jacyln Moriarty before. In 2010, she topped my list of Unsung YA Authors. When I turned 30, the first book in this series made my list of the 30 Most Influential Books in My Life (so far). It caught my eye when I was shelving books at the library and was the first YA book I had read since I was a teenager (not counting rereads of teen favorites or Potter.) This book is pretty responsible of the monster you know and love today.

Now, when I first read the first two books in this series, I wasn't reviewing everything I've read. The third one, however is a legitimate OUTSTANDING REVIEW. The other two were re-read for my YA lit paper and when I re-read them, I was committed to reviewing everything I read... I could easily get away with not reviewing them BUT. THEY ARE AWESOME SO I WANT TO TELL YOU ABOUT THEM.

Feeling Sorry for Celia Jacyln Moriarty

Elizabeth has problems. Her best friend, Celia, is missing. Her father's moved back to Australia from Canada. To top it all off, the new English teacher wants the Internet Generation to rediscover the JOY OF THE ENVELOPE and is making the students at Ashbury (posh private school) become penpals with students at Brookfield (public school a few blocks away.)

This book is told entirely in letters. Some letters are obvious-- notes between Elizabeth and her Mum, the letters between Elizabeth and her penpal Christina. Some come from not-actual-characters, such as the The Association of Teenagers (which does things like inform Elizabeth that the new zit under her nose is utterly disgusting) and the Best Friends Club (which does things like harp on how much progress Elizabeth is making in finding Celia.)

I loved the hilarity of the notes Elizabeth's Mum writes, always asking her to cook elaborate desserts and come up with slogans for bizarre products (she words at an ad agency.) I loved the slow-building friendship between Elizabeth and Christina and the juxtaposition of their friendship with the deteriorating one Elizabeth has with Celia.

It's been a while since I've last read it, but as I was dipping in to write this review, I ended up rereading large chunks of it. Elizabeth is not a drama queen and when confronted with real drama, she takes it in stride, but she's still very vulnerable. The letter-writing assignment allows her to open up to someone new, something I don't get the sense that she does a lot with Celia, as she tries to keep Celia grounded.

The Year of Secret Assignments Jaclyn Moriarty

So the Ashbury Books are more like companion novels than actual sequels.

It's a new year at Ashbury and three best friends-- Emily, Lydia, and Cassie are subjected to Mr. Botherit's JOY OF THE ENVELOPE and each have three Brookfield Boys (BOYS!) to correspond with over the year.

There are no letters from fake organizations this time. We get the letters from the boys and the notes the girls pass back and forth. We get the legal memos between Emily and her lawyer-parents, transcripts of meetings, pages from Lydia's writing prompt notebook, school notices, and diary entries.

There's the heavier component-- Cassie's dad died last year and things have been hard since then (she's in therapy with her mom and she's not off the deep end, but well, her dad died, that has to completely suck and there will be consequences). To top it off, her Brookfield pen pal is a complete jerk but she keeps writing to him and he just gets worse. (The original Australian title of this one is Finding Cassie Crazy. I like Year of Secret Assignments better.)

Emily and Lydia get very close to their penpals (Charlie and Seb. My oh my how I adore Charlie and Seb) and quickly discover that the boy Cassie's been writing to doesn't exist. MYSTERY!

On the surface, the three girls are your stereotypical rich shallow girl but over the course of the book, you see some depth. Emily's hilarious though, in that she wants to be a big-time lawyer but she's not that smart. She uses lots of big words, but always uses the wrong ones. There's some great romance going on and Elizabeth and Christina make small appearances.

This is the most light-hearted and funniest of the bunch.

The Murder Of Bindy Mackenzie Jacyln Moriarty

No more JOY OF THE ENVELOPE. Readers may remember Bindy's amazing typing skills from the dramatic climax of Year of Secret Assignments. So this one is mostly told in Bindy's journals and transcripts that she keeps of the conversations she overhears around her.

Poor Bindy. Bindy's incredibly smart and gifted, but annoying and unpopular. It's not hard to see why no one really likes her. Think Hermione before the bathroom troll incident. And then multiply it by 5. That's Bindy. But that's ok, because Bindy doesn't have a high opinion of her peers either.

This year, Ashbury's developed an experimental course called Friendship and Development. All the students are placed in small groups that meet for an hour a week with a facilitator to talk about their feelings and offer support. (Emily and Elizabeth are in Bindy's group.)

Something weird is going on though, Bindy's sleepy all the time. She's become careless and is losing her edge. She feels sort of ill. She can't sleep. She's hallucinating. Is someone trying to kill her?

As unlikeable as she was, Bindy broke my heart. Her parents have moved away and so Bindy's living with her aunt. Bindy doesn't understand why people don't see the world she does and finds her classmates rather bewildering. Friendship and Development is actually good for her in helping her understand other people.

And she's just... unraveling. Something's going on and it looks like Bindy might be going crazy. Or someone really is trying to kill her.

The original Australian title is Becoming Bindy MacKenzie which is much more fitting (if not as grabbing.)

It's a wonderful character study, even if the it did not end up going where I thought it was going to go. Bindy's a wonderful person.

It was also great to see a lot more of Emily and Elizabeth, but through Bindy's eyes.

The fourth book in the series is The Ghosts of Ashbury High, which I reviewed here.

Books Provided by... my wallet, ultimately. I originally read Feeling Sorry for Celia and Year of Secret Assignment from the library, but then went out and bought them, because I like them THAT MUCH.

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

The Show by Rebecca Hayes offers a beautifully animated glimpse into the private lives of performers in a traveling circus troupe. Although the film’s genteel slice-of-life approach doesn’t build to much of a climax, its charm grows on the viewer. The student short was completed in 2010 at RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology), but released online yesterday.

(Thanks, Rubber House)

Susanne Gervay, illustrated by Anna Pignataro,
Ships in the Field
Ford Street Publishing, 2012.

Ages: 8+

“Every night Brownie and I wait for Papa to come home.” – and when he arrives, “Round and round we whirl.”  This joyous ritual provides the opening sequence of Ships in the Field, a story whose essence is perhaps distilled into the notion of the transcendental power of love.  Acclaimed Australian author Susanne Gervay (I Am Jack, That’s Why I Wrote This Song) has based the story on her own childhood as the daughter of Hungarian refugees.  Told through the eyes, perception and narrative voice of a likeable, effervescent little girl, we learn that her beloved, funny Papa works in a car factory but used to be a farmer “in the old country, before it was broken”; and quiet, withdrawn Ma, who seems to have forgotten how to smile, was a teacher and now “sews dresses all day long”.  The girl’s confidante is her soft toy dog Brownie but she also longs for a real dog.

Every Sunday the family goes into the countryside and Papa says, “Look at the ships in the field.”  This makes the little girl giggle, for it conjures up a funny image, but it makes her sad too, because other people laugh at the way her father speaks – and so she staunchly joins him in his pronunciation of the word “sheep”.  One Sunday, near the “woolly ships”, she finds something very precious that signals a new chapter for all the family.

The undercurrents in the story are felt in the girl’s awareness of aspects of her family’s past.  It is never mentioned in her presence but it weighs on her nevertheless, and she confides in Brownie, “I don’t like war.”  Anna Pignataro’s beautiful watercolour illustrations perfectly capture the emotions – love, pain, joy – that emanate from the story.  As well as the ever-faithful Brownie, vignettes of a real dog appear throughout the story; and two notable sequences merge events from the past, depicting war and flight through the second-hand filter of the little girl’s knowledge and imagination.  The rough pencil outlines underlying the watercolours imbue the illustrations with energy and a sense of movement that is further emphasised in the variety of page layouts: the use of continuous narrative is particularly effective.

Ships in the Field is itself a multi-layered term, from straightforward mispronunciation to providing scope for metaphorical and poetic interpretation – or simply delight in its nonsense.  While offering a warm reading experience for young children, the book also poses questions for older readers and adults about how much young children can or should know about painful elements in a family’s past; and about the damage that can be caused by not bringing the past into the open, when children have already absorbed more than adults give them credit for.  Each rereading of this perfect synthesis between spoken and visual narrative offers something new, through the nuance of the writing or a dawning awareness of a visual motif.  Above all, Ships in the Field is a very special picture book of extraordinary depth, that carries a message of hope and reassurance that time does and will heal.

Marjorie Coughlan
October 2012

Our newest PaperTigers’ issue is now live and  focuses on cats and dogs in multicultural children’s literature – a topic that was suggested by my 12-year-old daughter, who is animal fanatic.

Among the many highlights in the issue is our interview with Aboriginal elder and storyteller Gladys Milroy, in which she discusses her children’s book  Dingo’s Tree, co-authored with her daughter Jill Milroy, who is currently Dean of the School of Indigenous Studies at the University of Western Australia. Dingo’s Tree is published by Magabala Books, Australia’s oldest independent Indigenous publishing house, and is PaperTigers’  Book of the Month. Look for our review of the book soon and in the meantime enjoy this wonderful review that Emma Perry at My Book Corner has graciously allowed us to reprint.

Located in Australia, My Book Corner provides book reviews on an entire assortment of children’s literature and is a great place to visit and find out what is hot in the world of Australian kid and YA lit. We reprint some of My Book Corner’s reviews under the reviews tab of the PaperTigers website.

Australian Children’s Laureate Press release: Dec 6, 2012

Double the Stories, Double the Fun as Two Champions of Aussie Storytelling Announced as Inaugural Laureates

Much-loved children’s authors Alison Lester and Boori Monty Pryor are being announced today as the first Australian Children’s Laureates at the launch of the initiative in Adelaide.

Both are talented and award-winning storytellers who bring a wealth of experience and creativity to the role – Alison as a renowned author and illustrator, and Boori as a celebrated author, performer, dancer and poet.

This prestigious national honour, the first of its kind in this country, is to be awarded at the launch by the Hon. Grace Portolesi, SA Minister for Education and Child Development and iconic children’s presenter Noni Hazlehurst, and is the culmination of the work by the Australian Children’s Literature Alliance (ACLA) to promote the transformational power of reading, creativity and story in the lives of young Australians.

ACLA Chair Marj Osborne says, “We are delighted to announce Alison and Boori as our joint inaugural Australian Children’s Laureates for 2012 and 2013. In them we found not one but two incredible individuals with the creative and passionate spirit we were looking for, so we made the unusual but exciting decision to appoint both.”

During their appointment Alison and Boori will act as national and international ambassadors for Australian children’s literature and will separately visit every state and territory inspiring young people to tell their own stories.

Click here to read the entire release and click here to see the events planned for Australia’s National Year of Reading 2012.

According to the Freedom to Read website: Freedom to Read Week is an annual event that encourages Canadians to think about and reaffirm their commitment to intellectual freedom, which is guaranteed them under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Freedom to Read Week is organized by the Freedom of Expression Committee of the Book and Periodical Council.

Freedom to Read Week is February 26 - March 3, 2012.

Each year a Canadian author is awarded the Writers' Union of Canada's 2012 Freedom to Read Award. This year's recipient is Lawrence Hill who was honoured because of "his reasoned and eloquent response to the threat to burn his novel The Book of Negroes," according to Greg Hollingshead, chair of the Writers Union.

The full story was covered in a past entry about Lawrence Hill. A Dutch group called Foundation Honor and Restore Victims of Slavery in Suriname had planned to burn Hill's book to protest the use of the word "negro" in the title. Ironically, the Book of Negroes' title comes from an actual historical document which recorded the names of 3,000 African slaves who were moved from New York to Nova Scotia, then to Africa.

It is not the first time the title has stirred controversy. The Book of Negroes was called Someone Knows My Name in the US and Australia, while in Quebec, it was given the name of the main character and titled Aminata.

Silly Frilly Grandma Tillie is written by Laurie Jacobs and illustrated by Anne Jewett.

We are thrilled to announce that our titles featuring grandmas, grandpas, and grandkids, are featured in www.grandparentsdaymagazine.com, an Australian publication. Our five grandparent-themed books are featured on page three of the Autumn 2012 Issue now viewable in pdf.

Easy Way Out by Gotye

Director Darcy Prendergast of Melbourne, Australia-based Oh Yeah Wow had one golden rule for this music video: “Nothing should be created in a computer. All of the elements were created in camera, then masterfully assembled by visual effects wizard Andrew Goldsmith. We animated the plasticine blood, the cat, the flames, the smoke—all in stop motion with a motion control set up. Andrew then composited all these elements together.”

French artist Ugo Gattoni came up with the concept for this boldly art directed video that was directed by Gattoni, Guillaume Cassuto, and Jeremy Pires.

Love Is Making Its Way Back Home by Josh Ritter

This stop-mo video was created with over 12,000 pieces of construction paper, shown as it was shot, with no effects added in post. A collaboration between director Erez Horovitz and animator Sam Cohen.

The animation for the Russian video blends pixel, stop motion, and live action. The director is Yegor Lymarev, and the animation is by Alexei Medvedev.

New Sum (Nous Sommes) by Hey Rosetta!

Using a roto-scoping technique similar to Waking Life or Scanner Darkly, Jesse Davidge directed this video at Blatant Studios, in Vancouver, BC.

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Australia, Canada, Darcy Prendergast, Erez Horovitz, France, Guillaume Cassuto, Jérémy Pires, Jesse Davidge, Oh Yeah Wow, Ugo Gattoni, Yegor Lymarev