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Ooo.  Lots of adult books with smatterings of children’s literature littered about the pages today.  Don’t even know where to start with this one.  Let’s see, eeny meeny miney . . . MO!

Libertarians on the Prairie: Laura Ingalls Wilder, Rose Wilder Lane, and the Making of the Little House Books by Christine Woodside

This is the most interesting of the batch in many ways.  This year saw the publication of the book The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder, published by editor William Anderson.  I know these letters well since Jules Danielson and I used them for our book Wild Things: Acts of Mischief in Children’s Literature.  Yet little did I know that the story of Rose Wilder was far more interesting than the degree to which she wrote the Little House books herself or whether or not she could swear like a sailor (she could).  Listen to this part of the description:

“Rose hated farming and fled the family homestead as an adolescent, eventually becoming a nationally prominent magazine writer, biographer of Herbert Hoover, and successful novelist, who shared the political values of Ayn Rand and became mentor to Roger Lea MacBride, the second Libertarian presidential candidate. Drawing on original manuscripts and letters, Woodside shows how Rose reshaped her mother’s story into a series of heroic tales that rebutted the policies of the New Deal.“

Nope.  Didn’t know that one!

Lois Lenski: Storycatcher by Bobbie Malone

Sometimes a book gets published and I sit in my library and think, “Is anyone else in the entire world going to really read and enjoy this besides me?” Then, after a moment, I’ll get a crazed look in my eye, stand up at my desk, and scream, “THEN I SHALL MAKE THEM ENJOY IT!!!!”  Little wonder my desk is sequestered at the end of my floor, far from my cowering co-workers.  This Lenski bio may have a limited built-in audience but for Newbery die-hards (Strawberry Girl fans, are you with me?) this is a must.  Plus I really like the central conceit involving inherent class structures.  Says the description: “Lenski turned her extensive study of hardworking families into books that accurately and movingly depicted the lives of the children of sharecroppers, coal miners, and migrant field workers.”  Now somebody out there write me a comparative study looking at how Kate DiCamillo has done similar work with working class people in Florida, with a good compare and contrast of the two award winning authors’ work.  And . . . go.

Everybody Behaves Badly: The True Story Behind Hemingway’s Masterpiece The Sun Also Rises by Lesley M.M. Blume

Okay.  You’ll bite.  What’s the children’s literature connection here?  Is it the fact that the book’s about Hemingway and we know that his grandson Eddie Hemingway makes picture books?  Is there going to be a revelation in the book that Hemingway based The Sun Also Rises on The Velveteen Rabbit (think about it . . . no, wait, don’t)?  No, it’s a lot simpler than that.  Its author, Lesley M.M. Blume, has made a veritable plethora of children’s books over the years.  My personal favorite was her Modern Fairies, Dwarves, Goblins, and Other Nasties: A Practical Guide by Miss Edythe McFate.  Now she’s getting stellar reviews on the adult side of things.  Bully for her, says I!  Well done!

Love From Boy: Roald Dahl’s Letters to His Mother by Donald Sturrock

What We Know: 2016 marks 100 years since the birth of Roald Dahl.

What That Means: Lots o’ books about Dahl.  Some covering areas we’ve seen before.  Others traipsing into new territory.  I certainly haven’t seen this one before and as the mom of a 2-year-old boy it gets frighteningly close to teary-eyed territory.  I also love this part of the book’s description: “Sofie Magdalene kept every letter her son wrote to her (sadly, her own side of the correspondence did not survive).”  Tsk.  Ain’t that like a boy.

The Best “Worst President” by Mark Hannah, ill. Bob Staake

Bob Staake cover and interior art.  Nuff said.

Walking with Ramona: Exploring Beverly Cleary’s Portland by Laura O. Foster

One of my catalogers came up to me the other day, book in hand.  Baker & Taylor has cataloged this book as 813.54 (literary stuff) but the book is clearly (Cleary-ly?) a travelogue.  Indeed, open it up and you get a whole mess of delightful Portland, Oregon haunts.  Where the HECK was this book when I was moving there, all those years ago?  I would have lapped it up.  As it stands, it’s really very delightful.  Those of you planning to move there, or have friends or kids moving there, grab this thing.  Like I say – Ramona invented the original Portlandia.

In the Great Green Room: The Brilliant, Bold Life of Margaret Wise Brown by Amy Gary

 Hold the phone. Now hand the phone to me.  Someone else besides Leonard Marcus has written a biography of Margaret Wise Brown?  Who is this Amy Gary type personage?  Sez the description: “In 1990, author Amy Gary discovered unpublished manuscripts, songs, personal letters, and diaries from Margaret tucked away in a trunk in the attic of Margaret’s sister’s barn. Since then, Gary has pored over these works and with this unique insight in to Margaret’s world she chronicles her rise in the literary world . . . Amy Gary has cataloged, edited, and researched all of Margaret’s writings for the last twenty-five years.”

Oh.  There you go then.

Okay.  One more.

Looking for Betty MacDonald: The Egg, the Plague, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, and I by Paula Becker-Brown

For whatever reason I feel like this is slightly more accessible than the Lois Lenski book.  Probably because MacDonald had a career outside of children’s literature occasionally.  “Readers embraced her memoir of her years as a young bride operating a chicken ranch on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, and The Egg and I sold its first million copies in less than a year. The public was drawn to MacDonald’s vivacity, her offbeat humor, and her irreverent take on life. In 1947, the book was made into a movie starring Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert, and spawned a series of films featuring MacDonald’s Ma and Pa Kettle characters.” Piggle-Wiggle is what she’ll go down in history for, but it’s nice to see another side of her as well.  Could have put a little more work into that book jacket, though.  Seriously, University of Washington Press.  You weren’t even trying.

Enter to win a copy of Goodnight Songs: A Celebration of the Seasons, by Margaret Wise Brown! Giveaway begins August 4, 2015, at 12:01 A.M. PST and ends September 3, 2015, at 11:59 P.M. PST.

The first book in Mike’s series, Little Elliot, Big City, debuted on August 26th, 2014 and was the winner of the 2015 Ezra Jack Keats New Illustrator Honor. I had briefly met Mike a year ago in one of those … Continue reading →

Over the weekend, dozens of authors and illustrators appeared at the Library of Congress’ 14th annual National Book Festival. Children’s books creator Bob Staake designed this year’s official poster. We’ve collected three writing tips that some of the writers shared during their panels.

Joey Pigza book series author Jack Gantos suggests that one “stay as organized as possible.” He thinks that one should keep several notebooks. This helps to categorize different thoughts because one idea might be a good fit for the beginning a story and another could work for the middle.

(more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Okay . . . soooooooo this.  Look at this, oh ye children’s librarians.  Breathe this.  LIVE this!  Become this.

So naturally I had to find out who she is.  Go to YouTube and she has numerous videos under the moniker OoeyGooeyLady.  Almost all her videos date back two years.  Real name?  Lisa Murphy.  And as you might expect, she has a whole web presence as well.  Certainly those videos, the hand rhymes ones, are invaluable for children’s librarians.  There are other good ones there too.  Here’s a different one of her videos on respecting kids.

Kinda sorta could watch her all day.  Thanks to Alison Morris for the link.

From this blog I complain about so many things you’d think I was some kind of permanent grumpus. For example, you know what really bugs me?  When a TV show or movie can’t be bothered to show a kid reading a real children’s book and instead gets their prop team to make some fake one.  Recently I watched an episode of Louie that did just that (though props to the show for making it clear that a woman who knows her children’s literature is desirable, particularly if she’s played by Parker Posey).  So though I’m loathe to credit commercials, Intel got it right when they decided to hire Bob Staake for a bit rather than just make someone up.  Credit too to Travis Jonker for spotting the Staake.

Thanks to 100 Scope Notes for the link.

At first I thought this animated book trailer for Lizi Boyd’s Flashlight was burying the lead.  Yes the book looks good, but listen to that music.  Then look at the credit at the end.  “Original Music by Eric Wright”.

Turns out I was confusing the fellow’s name with Eric Wight.  An easy mistake to make.

A nice video from Louisville on the importance of reading early:

It’s a good piece but I was a little perturbed by the accompanying How Many Children’s Books Have You Read? piece.  Apparently this list was created by a National Education Association survey of teachers.  So  . . . Dom DeLuise?  Really?  And Love You Forever?  *sigh*

Two of my favorite guys.  Just talking.  Dishing the dirt.  Signing the books.  You know how it is.  It’s Tom Angleberger and Jonathan Auxier.

Oh.  And this may be useful in the future.  Just in case we ever want to set up an official yo-yo author tour (hey, you never know).

And for our off-topic video, for no particular reason, here is author Steve Almond tearing to teeny tiny shreds the song “Africa” by Toto.

Thanks to Mom for the link!

A book never has fleas or chews on the furniture. It never, ever poops. In fact, for one boy in Smartytown, a book seems like the perfect pet! With its bright, wacky illustrations, My Pet Book is about the best pet book you could ever have. Books mentioned in this post My Pet Book Bob [...]

First Jane got sick, then I got sick, then Scott got sick. I’m waiting for the next domino to topple…waiting in my bed, all bundled up and aching, reading a little, playing that art puzzle game, which is very soothing. I wasn’t up to our usual morning read-aloud time (no Winter Holiday, alas), but we had a tall new stack of picture books come into the library the day before, a bunch of Dan Yaccarino and Bob Staake things I’d requested, Boy + Bot, (art by Yaccarino, written by Ame Dykeman), The Donut Chef (Staake), a bunch of others—go look at their sites; they have so many good books. You may recognize Dan’s art from the Oswald show, which my littles love. (Though I think possibly it’s Scott who loves it most of all.)

Rose did all the reading. Huck loves loves loves Hervé Tullet’s Press Here.

Also, she did all the dishes.

Then Rilla and I listened to a couple of chapters (somewhat abridged, I realized later) of The Wind in the Willows, magnificently narrated by Sir Derek Jacobi . I picked up this edition, a BBC Radio dramatization, on sale years ago, and we’d never listened. The voices are splendid.

My husband Matt pairs well with me for a number of reasons.  Amongst them is our mutual inclination to collect things we love.  As such, Matt has systematically been holding onto all his issues of The New Yorker ever since he got his subscription in college.  Over the years these issues have piled up piled up piled up.  I was a Serials Manager before I got my library degree and one of the perks of the job was getting lots of lovely magazine holders. For years these holders graced the tops of our bookshelves and even came along with us when we moved into our current apartment a year ago.  Yet with the arrival of our puir wee bairn, we decided to do the unthinkable.

Yes.  We ripped off all their covers.

Well, most anyway.  We have the complete run of New Yorker text on CD-ROM anyway, and anything published after the CD-ROM’s release would be online anyway.  Thus does the internet discourage hoarding.

In the meantime, we now are the proud owners of only three boxes worth of New Yorker covers.  They’re very fun to look at.  I once had the desire to wallpaper my bathroom in such covers, but that dream will have to wait (as much as I love New York apartments and all . . .).  For now, it’s just fun to flip through the covers themselves and, in flipping, I discovered something.  Sure, I knew that the overlap between illustrators of children’s books and illustrators of New Yorkers was frequent.  I just didn’t know how frequent it was.  Here then is a quickie encapsulation of some of the folks I discovered in the course of my cover removal.

Istan Banyai

Zoom and Re-Zoom continue to circulate heavily in my library, all thanks to Banyai.  I had a patron the other day ask if we had anything else that was similar but aside from Barbara Lehman all I could think of was Wiesner’s Flotsam.  Banyai is well known in a different way for New Yorker covers, including this controversial one.  As I recall, a bit of a kerfuffle happened when it was published back in the day.

Harry Bliss

Author and illustrator of many many picture books, it’s little wonder that the Art Editor of The New Yorker, Ms. Francoise Mouly, managed to get the man to do a TOON Book (Luke on the Loose) as well.  And when it comes to his covers, this is the one I always think of first.

When is Arbor Day?

http://www.arborday.org/

YouTube - The Creation Of A New Yorker Cover

Bob Staake illustrates the October 13, 2008 cover of The New Yorker. Sorry if we’ve posted this before, but even if we have it’s worth re-watching! 

By Diane Muldrow and illustrated by Bob Staake

Golden Books, 2010

$17.99, ages 4-8, 40 pages

You don't need to plug it in. All you do is plant it and give it water. A tree, one of the most efficient air cleaners we have, and perhaps the most sublime.

In this rosy, exuberant book, author Muldrow and award-winning illustrator Staake celebrate the simple act of planting a tree and get us energized to plant one too.

The story follows two families of four, one from a typical American city, the other from rural Kenya, as they nurture a sapling and follow its growth through the years.

From the moment each family buries the root ball, their eyes and smiles grow wide and joyous, reflecting all of the possibility that the trees hold.

Each day sunshine pours onto leaves, bringing food to the trees, and soon plump buds appear at the tips of branches and pink blossoms spring open.

As summer settles in, the American children sit under a cooling canopy of leaves beside their napping dog; the branches are like broad shoulders and it feels as though the tree watches over for them.

Across the world, the Kenyan family tends a vegetable garden they've planted near their tree. They know the tree will keep soil from blowing away and help rainwater collect in the ground, and are thankful to the tree for helping them grow their own food.

At times the story cuts away from the two families to show other people and animals enjoying the splendor of trees, widening the celebration.

In a big city greenway, a broad tree shadows the path of joggers and horse-drawn carriage, as children run around a baseball diamond surrounded by trees that help to cleanse their air (a wonderful opportunity to explain to kids how trees remove the heat-trapping gas carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and use it to make wood for their growth).

It’s that time again: the newest Cloudy Collection letterpress print set is now available! The seven variations on the idea of a repeating pattern in Repeat/Repeat are created by artists Will Bryant, Dustin “UPSO” Hostetler, Mike Perry, Heather Ross, Julia Rothman, Bob Staake, and me, David Huyck.

The other big news from the Cloudy Collection is subscriptions for Volume II! In addition to all the fantastic prints you know and love, you’ll also get an exclusive, subscriber-only t-shirt designed by me and Drawn! pal Elio, plus a few other bonuses, discounts, and benefits. A maximum of 50 subscriptions are available!

Finally, Volume I, Edition 3, print sets are $5 off from now until New Year’s! See more about all of this stuff over on the Cloudy Collection website.

Previously: Edition 1, Edition 2, Edition 3

Posted by David Huyck on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog | Permalink | No comments
Tags: bob staake, Cloudy Collection, David Huyck, Elio, Heather Ross, Julia Rothman, Mike Perry, UPSO, Will Bryant

Reader Michael Johnson took issue with Bob Staake’s recent Picture Book Dummy. He writes:

I think that if the dummy remains as it is, it will mislead aspiring picture book creators into thinking they have, as Staake writes, “15 spreads… (and) a single page finale,” when they are more likely to have 14 spreads, a single page beginning and a single page finale. I’d hate to see a bunch of Drawn readers (or Bob Staake fans) show up at a publisher or agent only to be told that they’ll have to lay the whole thing out again.

I’ve attached a “corrected’ (if I’m right) version. It more closely resembles the children’s books I own - books from different decades, Caldecott winners, etc.

The revised dummy shows the flip-sides of the end papers as what they must of course be, i.e., end papers, too. The title page is the first of the 32 (non-end paper) pages, the publication information is on the flip-side, and the story begins on the facing page.

I assume there are books out there that resemble Bob Staake’s diagram, which shows printing on the backside of end papers, etc., but this revised version is closer to the books I’m familiar with.

Here’s Michael’s version (click to see the full size):

And here’s Bob’s version again:

So who’s right? By my calculations, neither of them. Of course, they’re not wrong, but certainly neither guide should be treated as gospel.

For example, neither Where the Wild Things Are nor The Cat in the Hat, arguably two of the world’s most famous picture books, follow either of Bob or Michael’s guidelines.

A quick survey of the picture books on my shelves reveal books with 10, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 21, 23, 27, and even 30 spreads. And of those, there are books with publication info at the front, publication info at the back, books with multiple title pages, books with no title page, books with blank pages, books that begin or end on a single page, books that begin or end on a double-page spread, and all manner of variations.

As it is with all things, there is clearly no one true method. These guides certainly help one understand the basic construction of a physical book, and how it affects page layout, but I’d think twice before letting any one set of rules dictate too strongly how to write your story.

To me it would seem that the best picture book dummies are picture books themselves.

The Picture Book Dummy: Made Easy
(once again, I cut and paste, thanks to Fuse #8)

See also: all-on-surfaces

To serve as a reminder and guideline for how to think about writing a picture book, Bob Staake created this diagram, The Idiot-Proof Picture Book Dummy. Bob writes:

Of course there are execptions to the rule, but when we talk about a “picture book” we’re speaking of a “32-pager” (or depending on how liquored up your editor is) a “40-pager”. Think of it this way: you as the artist only have to worry about 15 spreads, a title page image, a single page finale and, of course, the cover.

Reflection

by Bob Staake
The New Yorker
November 17, 2008

See Bob's sweet logo for Just One more Book!! (Then check out his caricature gallery)

From Mark and Andrea:

This July, the Just One More Book!! children’s book podcast will celebrate its second anniversary and 400th episode of promoting children’s books and literacy. As part of our celebration, we are redesigning our website and would like the new look to include artwork that promotes a love of reading.


Illustrators of all backgrounds are invited to submit a logo-like illustration that can be resized nicely and featured on our website for everyone to enjoy. Illustrators submitting artwork will be invited to be guests of Just One More Book!! to talk about their design, the creative process and how their submission helps to promote a love of reading.


We ask that all submissions be emailed to [email protected] in JPG, PNG or GIF format, 500×500 pixels on or before June 15, 2008. Please let us know if you have any questions.

The Pink-Haired Librarian

from bobstaake.com (by way of martinklasch.blogspot.com --Thanks, P-E!)

http://www.bobstaake.com/halloween

A new Design Inspiration interview with the terrific Bob Staake. He has created covers for The New Yorker, greeting cards for Hallmark, animation design for Cartoon Network, cartoons for MAD magazine, illustrations for The Washington Post and has over 42 books to his credit. His most recent picture book, 'The Red Lemon' (Golden Books / Random House) was named one of the 10 Best Illustrated Children's Books of 2006. A great interview with some fantastic insight, be sure to check it out.

-Jeff
http://www.diinterviews.com

Drawger, Bob Staake's site, is another good art/illustration site to browse.