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My friend, Connie, alerted me to a fantastic art project: the SketchCrawl. In short, it is a world-wide drawing marathon. Visit the website for details, tell your friends, and sharpen your pencils because the next crawl is scheduled for March 29th, one month from today!

The SketchCrawl map above was drawn by Enrico Casarosa, the fella who founded this foolishness.

George Lucas said that Revenge of the Sith would be the final Star Wars movie. Well, George Lucas is a liar. But he’s the good kind of liar! Because on August 15th, Star Wars will return to movie theaters in all new animated feature film, Star Wars: The Clone Wars

I’ve already heard some complaints about the animation style. It is a far cry from Genndy Tartakovsky’s masterpiece but I, for one, love it. This still of Anakin Skywalker and his padawan, for example, reminds me of some of my favorite artists and illustrators.

Happy Valentine’s Day to all! To celebrate Valentine’s Day I thought it would be nice to share the love, language love that is. So today, instead of Ben’s column, please go check out some of his fellow wordies. Be sure to leave comments and let them know how much you love their blogs. Over the next couple weeks some of these illustrious bloggers will be guest blogging in this space so stay tuned.

Take a look at Mark Peter’s language guide for parents or his Wordlustitude blog.

Swing by Jeff Prucher’s blog for an interesting meditation on horror as a genre.

Then click over to Grant Barrett’s Double-Tongued Dictionary which can keep you busy for hours on end.

Don’t miss Erin McKean’s Dictionary Evangelist blog which proves just how much fun you can have with language.

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Here’s another one of my favorite works of art, Riding with Death by Jean-Michel Basquiat. I saw it first in text books and later online but didn’t think much of it until I saw it in person at the Menil Gallery in Houston, Texas. The piece is very large and it photographs poorly because there is so much gold in the painting. Up close, I saw that Basquiat was aware of every brush stroke. The field of gold and the rhythm of the strokes was hypnotic. Looking at it was almost like looking at the ocean. The effect + the subject matter moved me unexpectedly.

Hey punks,

It just occurred to me that we share our favorite websites and artists of the moment but we rarely talk about our favorite individual works of art. I’m curious. If anyone else wants to post their all-time favorite paintings et cetera and reasons why they love’m so much, I hope you will.

Here’s one of mine:

You can click the picture for a more legible view. The piece speaks for itself but I love it especially because it illustrates a daydream that I have when I am especially calm.

We have TWO special birthdays this week, our very own Melanie Ford Wilson and Rama Hughes!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

To celebrate, let’s share some dancing cake!!

It's always fun when you're invited to something, and in the past week I've been invited to two different, but totally cool things.

First, fellow African American author Kyra Hicks invited me to be interviewed on her blog. Kyra has a great blog so I was really honored. You can take a peek at www.BlackThreadsinKidsLit.blogspot.com.

Then, I was invited to participate in the Illinois Reading Council's Author Luncheon at their March 2008 conference. They have an author sit at each table and the guests at your table each receive a copy of your book. Plus good old Anderson's Bookshop will be there selling books. Wow!

The other totally cool thing that happened in the past week was that my friend Jacky, who is an art teacher, gave me a very cool idea for my school visits. Prior to this, what I was going to do was pretty routine stuff, but this has totally energized me. I'll say more about that when I see if I can actually pull this off.

I have to mention the other really wonderful thing that happened to me--I got to go to Millennium Park in downtown Chicago. Now I just live in Chicago's suburbs, so you might think, "Hey, what's the big deal? She's had three years to get down there." But you can't get to Millennium Park without walking and lately walking is not something I've been doing very well. My lupus has caused some peripheral nerve damage in my left foot so if I try to walk very far or very long, I really feel it. The most walking I've been doing is shuffling around a grocery store or resale shop behind a shopping cart or navigating the book store or library on a good day.

But I was super motivated to go to the park last Thursday. My favorite quiz show, NPR's "Wait, wait. . . don't tell me!" was having a free taping of the show in the Pritzker Pavilion. And the special guest was the rock stars of prosecutors, Patrick Fitzgerald. My teenager really wanted to go also so I was motivated to try. I studied the map of the park and figured out where the best place to park was and went for broke. It was a beautiful evening, the program was a riot, the park is beautiful, and I got to do something with my 16-year-old. How cool is that?!

So the message to myself is to keep trying to do those hard things (like finishing that middle grade novel). The feeling is unbelievable when you accomplish it.

Figuring that 200 episodes and one year of Just One More Book!! is a milestone worth celebrating, we took a few minutes to share some stories and thoughts on what we’ve done so far and some of the changes we’re making to our podcast. Is the next milestone episode number 500?

Don’t forget that we will be giving away an autographed copy of Lois Ehlert’s Eating the Alphabet during the first week of September. To qualify, send a review of one of your favourite children’s book (five-minutes or less) as an MP3 file (or text review) in email to [email protected], phone it in to our listener feedback line (+1-206-350-6487) or leave a two-minute MyChingo by August 31, 2007.

Photo of Andrea and Mark on the PAB2007 boat cruise taken by Scarborough Dude.

By Paula J. Becker
Juvenile Greeting Card

Leaving for the beach in the morning...soooo no posts next week. I'll be watching other artists for a change!

Break out your walking shoes NYC, it is time for the biggest (and in my opinion) best party of the year, Museum Mile. Head up to 5th avenue and 82nd street for free admission to nine museums, including the Metropolitian Museum of Art. In honor of this summer ritual we have excerpted a piece about the MET from Grove Art Online, written by Eric Myles Zafran. Get some history on this NYC landmark before you hit the jam-packed subways.

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Today is the day! Let the celebrations commence! Kids can now stop giving ME dark and envious looks and flock to the stores to buy their own copy of the third installment of Percy Jackson's adventures. We have been waiting for that Harry fellow no doubt, but the kids I know are even more excited to get this book in their hands.

There's a nice profile of Rockstar Rick Riordan in the Austin American Stateman today and Riordan will be celebrating with his fans at BookPeople tonight. Riordan dedicated Titan's Curse to Topher Bradfield who has been a booster of the series at BookPeople and one of the forces behind summertime Camp Half-Blood.

Riordan also dedicated the book to Toni Davis, a bookseller in Cornwall, England. Sadly, Davis passed away this week. He posted a moving tribute to her, "Farewell, My Huntress," on Saturday.

This family has organized our schedule this week to be at one of his signings here in town. We must have a complete autographed set.

I have also discovered a branch of my family, that has not found the series yet.

Bwa-ha-ha.

I'm off to sub today. Oh, I hope 5th grade is coming to the library. I know exactly what book I want to read!!!