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Just in case you’re looking for something to do…your very own Popeye mask. (Click to em-biggen.)

“Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again.”

That would be an old line from a TV column in the Marin Independent Journal by one Rick Polito describing the film The Wizard of Oz.  My brother-in-law Steve brought it up this past Thanksgiving and I’ve been savoring it ever since.  What better way to kick off this lovely Friday morning then, eh?  The birds are singing.  The fish are grumbling.  Let’s get to it then!

• Let’s get the me stuff out of the way first.  Lemme see, lemme see.  First off, over at the blog For the Future: What Today’s Youth Services Librarians Want the Next Generation to Know I answer some questions about the state of librarianship today, what to know, what to do, etc.  Then SLJ did a very nice write-up of a recent panel I moderated with the Women’s National Book Association.  It was a talk with industry professionals that examined how one goes about making a YA bestseller.  The article is good, but you will have to forgive my mugging in the accompanying photograph.  As god is my witness, I thought the angle the photographer took meant that I wasn’t going to be in the frame.  So I hedged my bets and posed, but in such a way where I look like I’m hosting a reality show and these are my ill-fated contestants.  Forgive me, Hannah.  I meant not to block you like that.

• Speaking of advice to folks about the fine state of librarianship, if you have not read Kelly Jensen’s corrective You’re Going to Piss People Off do so.  Something to chew on for you newbies out there.  Heck, something to chew on for us oldbies as well.  Cause we do, man.  We do.

• Oh, man.  Three words for you: Ed Emberly fabric.  Go wild, tootsies.  You know you wanna.

• The gift giving season approacheth.  The pocketbook expandeth.  And the gift giving ideas dryeth up like a tiny puddleth.  That’s why it’s important to have resources on hand.  Resources like MotherReader’s recent 150 Ways to Give a Book.  Gift giving advice.  It’s the gift that keeps on . . . er . . .

• I’m feeling old.  I have lived long enough to see books for kids appear and disappear only to potentially reemerge years later with the force of a petition behind them.  Hand me my cane, I am done, but not before I let you know about this rather fascinating attempt to garner online support.  Any of you remember the Wright & Wong series from a couple years ago?  Well before the current flush of books with kids with Asperger’s it was the rare pre-London Eye Mystery mystery series starring a kid with AS.  Now with so many folks clamoring for books of this sort to appear, an online petition has been created and the authors are putting out the word that they need support for it to come back.  To be honest, I’ve never seen this sort of thing before.  Let’s watch and see what happens.

• Should you happen to read the interview with Daniel Handler in The New York Times you will no doubt curse as I did at those horrid little words, “INTERVIEW HAS BEEN CONDENSED AND EDITED” found at the end.  Pfui.

• I read with great interest the opinion piece What Should Children Read? which discusses the Common Core and reactions to it.  I should like to sit on it and process it for a while, though.  Seems to me one of the more interesting discussions on the topic.  I am torn.  A tip of the hat to PW Children’s Bookshelf for aiding in this confusion.

• Several months ago the great and legendary editor Patti Lee Gauch spoke in my library with a talk entitled The Picture Books as an Act of Mischief.  Now that very talk has been typed up and put online over at Horn Book.  Huzzah, sayeth I.  And also hooray.

• Daily Image:

You could be forgiven for wondering if artist and cartoonist Saul Steinberg ever made a children’s book.  To the best of my knowledge he did not, but many was the child like myself that grew up seeing his New Yorker covers hither and thither.  The discovery of this Saul Steinberg mask series pleases me to no end.  Some examples:

Thanks to Lisa Brown (see you this Saturday, yes?) for the link.

Filed under: writing for children Tagged: black and white, kids photos, masks, photo, photography, superheroes

I was looking through my old college archives and found this renaissance inspired (digital) painting I did during my junior yr (or was it senior yr?) of college.  Since this weeks topic is old fashioned, I thought ‘well you can’t get anymore old fashioned than this!’ It’s taking a lot of restraint not to render the rough edges of this, but I think it’s good leaving the past unrendered, it’s easier to see how much ones evolved.

Have fab weekend yall! xoxo

Want to see something scary? Head over to Mercedes M Yardley's blog to catch a glimpse of me 'almost' wearing a mask. I looked like a reject superhero wearing it over my eyes hence the dangling off the face pose. Ahem! Moving along...

It's been a strange old start to the year. First off, I had the flu (geez, will you shut up about it already) and it took until yesterday to get any writing done - a wonderful 500 words, well 500 hundred probably not-so-wonderful words when I re-read them later, but we have lift off. Working on a short story that I hope is scary enough to send to Necrotic Tissue, working title too hideous to post here. When the short is done, I'm hoping to get back into the novelette I was working on pre-Christmas (Cobweb Strings of the Rotting House).

One final note. Four things guaranteed to add sparkle to flu-days: 1) receiving a card with a pug humping Santa's leg; 2) getting a free copy of Shroud magazine; 3) Receiving a handmade get well card from your 4 year old neice; 4) Glitter added to snot...

And on that lady-like note, I bow out...

Last night we all jumped in the car after school and raced to Leeds to go and watch the beautifully crafted staging of Little Leap Forward. Adapted from the book, by Guo Yue and Clare Farrow, illustrated by Helen Cann and published by Barefoot Books, it tells the story of events from Yue’s own childhood set against Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China.

A powerful combination of masked actors, puppets and shadow-box/animation, not to mention an atmospheric score and cleverly versatile set, the story is told “only” through mime. We followed Little Leap Forward’s dawning awareness of the importance of freedom, both through the political events unfolding around him and through his love for a songbird captured for him by his best friend. No matter how much Little Leap Forward coaxes and bribes with seeds, the bird cannot sing from within the confines of a cage. A “scary” dream sequence that had Little Brother on the edge of his seat alerts Little Leap Forward to what he has to do and he sets the bird free.

I have to say that this particular performance will be looked back on by us - and probably by the cast - with very mixed feelings. There was a group of children in the audience from a local School for the Deaf, who were entranced - picking up enough of the vibrations of the music to get a feel for it, and able to particpate fully in the action on stage. Wonderful. However, the first three rows were taken up by a youth-group outing and it very soon became evident that the children did not know how to behave in a public, live performance. All the more credit to the production, then, that in the scene when Red Guards arrest Little Leap Forward’s mother (an event related in Guo Yue and Clare Farrow’s book for adults, Music, Food and Love), there was not a sound from the auditorium.

Afterwards, the four actors/puppeteers gave a short talk to these children (which we gate-crashed!) and again, they captivated their audience. I couldn’t help thinking what a pity it was that the children had obviously not had any sort of introduction to what they were going to see… I wonder how many would have liked to turn the clock back and engage with it more fully, once they’d had a chance to find out a bit more about it?

Little Leap Forward is on tour in England until 17 July - for further details, look here. In the meantime, watch this short video

and read the production blog. If you haven’t come across the book yet, watch this very moving introduction, narrated by Yue and featuring his magical flute-playing; and read our review, here on PaperTigers.

Little Leap Forward was definitely a production not to be missed: a big thank you to Nicky Fearn, Frances Merriman, Jonny Quick and Mark Whitaker, the faces behind the masks; and to Gemma Bonham of The Carriageworks, for an empathetic discussion afterwards.

* Photograph credit: Ian Tilton

TEN DAYS UNTIL THE CONFERENCE! and in other news...

Look at these amazing masks from Pahela Baishakh, the Bengali New Year 1416. Today, Bengalis marched in the capital Dhaka and across the country. What fun it would be to recreate these masks with kids. They look like they might be paper and plaster. Does anyone have experience with these or more information about the symbolism of the animals?

Some creepy masks for your delectation. Masks are my favourite thing to illustrate right now, and I have decided to keep venturing forward in this vein. You can see all of the mask photos in the Ink & Mess set on my Flickr or on my website.