new posts in all blogs
Viewing Blog: Happy Birthday Author, Most Recent at Top
Results 1 - 25 of 427
Celebrating children's literature was a joy for me as a special education teacher in the classroom. I decided to share my ideas with parents, homeschoolers, and enthusiastic teachers, as I take time off to be a stay at home dad. I hope you enjoy the format of this blog to study an author each week to celebrate their birthday. Check back often to celebrate more author birthdays!
Statistics for Happy Birthday Author
Number of Readers that added this blog to their MyJacketFlap: 1
Happy Birthday, Margarita Engle - September 2
This is the second summer of our butterfly garden. We planted native milkweed to attract monarch butterflies with the hope of seeing caterpillars change into butterflies right in our backyard. Last year, we found two caterpillars but they died before they were full grown. This year, I didn't find any monarch caterpillars. I gave up hope and thought,
maybe next year.
Margarita Engle is fascinated by people who make "hopeful choices in situations that seemed hopeless." (
Colorín Colorado). Additionally, she commented on writing about hope, "The one thing I do very differently for young people is I only choose stories that have hopeful endings. Even when I'm writing about very difficult situations, I wouldn't have written it if there was not a real-life hopeful ending." (
Fresno Bee, 2015).
It is probably not a coincidence that because of our author birthday celebration for Margarita Engle our butterfly garden will have a hopeful ending this year.
|
Our butterfly garden. |
Margarita Engle is the author of books for all ages including the Newbery Honor book,
The Surrender Tree: Poems for Cuba's Struggle for Freedom and
The Sky Painter: Louis Fuertes, Bird Artist, illustrated by Aliona Bereghici. Margarita's parents, both artists, met and fell in love when her father traveled from Los Angeles to her mother's hometown, Trinidad, Cuba, after seeing it featured in National Geographic. Margarita was born in Los Angeles and returned to Cuba during the summers to visit her relatives. This all changed after 1960, when U.S. relations with Cuba prevented Margarita from communicating with her family. She described this experience in an interview with
Colorín Colorado, "So for me as a child, it was as if Cuba had fallen out of the solar system. It was like science fiction. I had this huge extended family. And suddenly, they were gone. They weren't available. And it was as if they didn't exist." Margarita missed visiting her family. She missed spending time on the family farm. She missed experiencing the tropical wilderness.
Margarita was a "bookworm" as a child. She would often check out stacks of poetry books at the library and then write her own poetry. However, it was her love plants and farms that led her to study botany and agronomy. While working as a professor of agronomy at California State Polytechnic University she wrote many papers on plants and soil, but decided to take a creative writing course from Tomás Rivera. Margarita said, in an interview with
Author Turf, "I had already experienced stability and security. I decided to give rejections and insecurity a try, in exchange for the euphoria of daydreaming on paper."
Margarita was able to visit Cuba again in the 1990s. She reacquainted with her family, the inspirational landscape, and her poetry. "Until I started returning to Cuba in 1991, I mostly wrote individual poems and stories. I struggled for 10 years to write about the poet slave Juan Francisco Manzano. Only when I switched to free verse I did find success." (
School Library Journal). Her first book for children was the novel written in free verse,
The Poet Slave of Cuba: A Biography of Juan Francisco Manzano. For this book she earned a
Pura Belpré Medal in 2008.
She went on to be awarded
Pura Belpré Medals in 2009 for
The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom and in 2016 for
Enchanted Air: Two Cultures, Two Wings: A Memoir. She also won three
Pura Belpré Honor Awards in 2011, 2012, and 2014. Also, in 2016, her book
Drum Dream Girl was awarded a
Pura Belpré Medal for Illustration. We highlighted this book when we celebrated
Rafael Lopez's birthday in August 2015. Margarita and Rafael have a new book,
Bravo!: Poems About Amazing Hispanics, scheduled for release in March 2017.
In addition to all of Margarita Engles's award winning books for older children she has written many picture books including
Orangutanka: A Story in Poems, illustrated by Renée Kurilla,
Tiny Rabbit's Big Wish, illustrated by David Walker,
When You Wander: A Search-and-Rescue Dog Story, illustrated by Mary Morgan, and
Summer Birds: The Butterflies of Maria Merian, illustrated by
Julie Paschkis.
I remembered reading
Summer Birds when we celebrated
Julie Paschkis's birthday in 2013. This picture book is about Maria Sibylla Merian who lived in Germany during the 1600s, a time when people believed that small creatures and insects were evil. At the young of 13, Maria wants to prove that beautiful creatures like butterflies were not born of "spontaneous generation" but instead go through metamorphosis. Maria observes carefully, documents her observations with art, and hopes of putting everything she learns in a book to teach others.
My children and I love visiting butterfly houses. There is something magical about being in room filled with butterflies. I thought it would be fun to read
Summer Birds: The Butterflies of Maria Merian in a butterfly house, but when I read about
Beech Creek Botanical Garden and Nature Preserve I was hopeful this place was going to be something even more special and it was.
|
Beech Creek Botanical Garden and Nature Preserve is in Alliance, Ohio. It is a non-profit organization that operates on 175 acres "to provide educational opportunities and interactive experiences that inspire people to be good stewards of their communities and the world." (Brochure). |
|
When we arrived my children didn't know what to do first. Everything at Beech Creek was so inviting. First, my children decided to walk through the hummingbird garden. |
|
Then, we went on a short hike. There are four trails less than 1 mile long, perfect for my young children. |
|
They loved the Make-Your-Own Rock Sculpture area. |
|
The Amazing Garden was amazing! It would be the perfect place to bring a class for a field trip because of the numerous learning stations and variety of plants on display. |
|
My children loved the train! |
|
We saved the best area for last, THE BUTTERFLY HOUSE. There was small fee of $3 to enter. All the other activities mentioned above were completely free. |
|
We were greeted by a volunteer upon entering. She immediately showed us the chrysalis station. I sadly told her we had a butterfly garden, but there weren't any caterpillars or chrysalides. |
|
This butterfly had just emerged from a chrysalis within the last hour. By the time we left the Butterfly House it flew out of the chrysalis station and was flying with all the other butterflies in the butterfly house. |
|
These are monarch chrysalides. They start out light green and then turn clear right before the butterfly is ready to emerge. |
|
The volunteer set up a microscope for us to look at monarch butterfly eggs on a milkweed leaf. |
|
Three monarch eggs on this leaf. |
|
Q-tips were available to dip in sugar water to offer to the butterflies. |
|
If you were lucky, a butterfly would let you pick them up. |
|
Or maybe just wear a flower shirt and they will land right on you! |
|
When I read the words from the book, "I am only thirteen years old, but I capture insects. I study them." My son captured one too. |
|
I set the book down to take a photo like I always do and immediately a butterfly landed on it. Do you see it? It blends right in. |
|
Then it flew to the inside pages! |
|
Inside the butterfly house there is the caterpillar hatchery. On display were many different caterpillars in boxes with their favorite leaves to eat. |
|
My children got to "sit still" and "watch" just like Maria Merian. |
|
I thought this pasta craft activity was very cool. |
|
While my children did the craft and played with all the hands-on activities the volunteer I talked to earlier came up to me and asked, "How would you like to take some caterpillars home to your garden?" I couldn't say yes fast enough. She packed up caterpillars of various sizes and even gave us a few leaves with eggs on them. The whole ride home I was thinking, We are going to have caterpillars in our garden!! |
|
When we arrived home and after a short torrential downpour, we put most of the caterpillars in our garden. |
The video above shows one of the monarch caterpillars from our garden eating a swamp milkweed seed pod. He is the largest caterpillar to ever live in our garden.
While the caterpillars were in our garden munching away on the milkweed. We set our minds to another project.
|
I purchased a 6 foot long post that was 3.5" x 3.5" at Home Depot. It cost around $7. |
|
We cut it in half. |
|
The little ones sanded all the rough spots. |
|
We had two posts, but we decided to make just one painted pole. |
|
My daughter primed the poles and then we added a coat of blue paint. |
|
Each of my children chose their favorite color to make their handprints. |
|
Then, they turned their handprints into butterflies. |
|
Pink butterfly hands! |
|
Making art together. |
|
I let the paint dry overnight and then I sprayed a layer of clear acrylic on top to protect their art. |
|
Then, we added a solar light (available at Home Depot for less than $10) to the top and placed it our butterfly garden. The poles at the National Aviary were called "Painted Peace" poles. I think we will call our pole a "Painted Hope" pole; hoping for butterflies. |
|
This photo was taken the morning I wrote this post and by the afternoon I was unable to find him. I have read that monarch caterpillars will travel up to 40 feet to find a hard surface to attach themselves to begin the pupa stage. He is somewhere in our yard waiting to become a butterfly. |
|
We do have one chrysalis in our mini-butterfly house, too! This is so exciting and hopeful! Thank you, Margarita Engle for writing a book that inspired us to learn more about the life cycle of a butterfly! |
Margarita, it was a pleasure meeting you at the Virginia Hamilton Conference at Kent State this year. Thank you for sharing your birthday with us. We
hope you have wonderful birthday. Thank you for sharing your stories with us.
Links:1.
Margarita Engle's Website2. Video Interview -
Colorín Colorado3. Interviews -
Young Adult Review Network,
Publishers Weekly,
BookPage,
Multicultural Children's Book Day,
Toasted Cheese,
Pat Mora,
Author Turf,
Matt Forrest,
School Library Journal,
Macmillan4. Activity Kit for THE SKY PAINTER -
margaritaengle.com5. Discussion Guide for DRUM DREAM GIRL -
margaritaengle.com6. Margarita Engle at the National Book Festival -
Library of Congress on YouTube
Happy Birthday, Lizzy Rockwell - August 30
In 2014, our family had a
big author birthday celebration for Anne Rockwell. A few weeks later I received an email from Lizzy Rockwell, Anne's daughter and children's book illustrator, thanking us for celebrating her mom's 80th birthday! Included in the email was a picture of her mom's birthday cake.
Lizzy's email made me very happy. I often wonder who reads our blog and when Lizzy Rockwell wrote to tell me that she "stumbled across" it. It made my day, week, month, and year!
Just imagine how excited I was when I had the chance to meet and spend time with Lizzy at the Mazza Museum Summer Conference in July 2016. I neglected to get a photo of me with her at the conference, but check out the personalization she did for my son in his copy of
Plants Feed Me. This book was supposed to be for Christmas, but I couldn't wait. I gave it to him this week and he loved it!
I wish you could have seen his smile when he saw the drawing! |
I explained to Lizzy that my son loves gardening so much he is growing carrots in pots on our deck. So, she doodled a carrot in a pot for him. It was perfect! |
Lizzy Rockwell has illustrated over 25 books including
Good Enough to Eat: A Kid's Guide to Food and Nutrition,
The Busy Body Book: A Kid's Guide to Fitness, and
Hello Baby!. Lizzy Rockwell told the audience at the Mazza Museum Summer Conference 2016, "Books were a vital part of my childhood." The books Lizzy loved to read were science field guides and picture books. Especially picture books by
Lois Lenski,
Wanda Gag, and her parents Harlow and
Anne Rockwell.
Her parents' art studio was in their home and it was "the first place [Lizzy and her siblings] went after school." (
Pass It Down: Five Picture Book Families Make Their Mark). As you can imagine with an art studio in her home it wasn't hard to find art supplies. On
Lizzy's website she described this, "My brother and sister and I were always drawing and coming up with stories...My sister and I spent hours copying photos in fashion magazines and album covers."
|
"A healthy community has arts and literacy." |
In an interview with
Got Story Countdown Lizzy said, "Growing up in my family was quite an adventure. Along with all the cultural immersion right in our home in the form of books, music and art supplies, we spent many weeks of many summers traveling around France, Italy, and England. We were exposed to a lot of beautiful art and architecture." All the exposure to art led Lizzy to attend Connecticut College to study art and art history. However, Lizzy was reluctant to fully commit to becoming an art historian and with some encouragement from her father she decided to pursue illustration. She studied illustration at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and moved back home to strengthen her portfolio. She did freelance work creating book jackets and illustrations for magazines.
|
"I like making books for the child audience...Picture books are a unique and powerful media." |
In 1988, Lizzy's father died after a lengthy battle with illness. He was working on the book
My Spring Robin and with the book two-thirds complete Lizzy "sat at the drawing table and finished the last few pictures" in her Dad's style. This was the third book in a series of four and the publisher chose Lizzy to finish the series and illustrate her first picture book,
Apples and Pumpkins, written by her mother. Lizzy described this experience as "an apprenticeship" and was "really proud to carry it on." (Mazza Museum Keynote).
Lizzy and her mother have collaborated on over 20 books together including
Career Day,
100 Days of School, and
Father's Day (all of these books were featured in our
Anne Rockwell Reading Experience). Their latest book together is
Library Day, A My First Experience Book which was released in January 2016. The next in the series is
Zoo Day which will be available in January 2017.
In addition to collaborating with her mom, Lizzy has written many of her own books. One of our favorites is
A Bird is a Bird and it was the inspiration for our author birthday celebration activity. Lizzy came up with the idea for this book when she was looking through the New York state curriculum standards. In the book, readers will learn that a bird is a bird because it has a beak, wings, and hatches from an egg. But, wait...insects have wings and snakes hatch from eggs. And a platypus has a beak. Are they birds? Of course not! They are missing another key characteristic of birds...feathers!
My wife and I knew the perfect place to bring this book to life was at the
National Aviary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (While we were in Pittsburgh we also celebrated
Virginia Lee Burton's birthday which is also August 30th!!)
|
We took this photo as soon as we arrived at the National Aviary or as my youngest daughter called it...The Bird Zoo! |
|
We saw birds using their beaks to eat. |
|
We met birds up close like this Spectacled Owl. |
|
We played with the birds too! This African Penguin loved our van keys. |
|
My oldest daughter is as tall as a Greater Flamingo. I also have children the size of the Chilean Flamingo, the Andean Flamingo, and the Puna Flamingo. |
|
In the Rainforest room, my youngest son needed to sketch the birds he saw. Here he is observing a Victoria Crowned Pigeon. |
|
Here are a few of his sketches. The Victoria Crowned Pigeon is one the left. |
While he was sketching, my wife ran over and said, "You need to come quick!" Check out the video below of what happened! (A huge thanks to my daughter for capturing this moment!)
|
Here is a photograph of the Great Argus Pheasant and his mate. Their names are Gus and Mrs. Gus. |
|
My daughter was so excited to feed a lorikeet. |
|
This photo is from the only other time we have visited the National Aviary. It was seven years ago! |
|
It was his first time at the National Aviary and it was his first time feeding a lorikeet too. He couldn't believe that one bird drank all his nectar! |
|
We went back into the Rainforest room and Gus was no longer courting Mrs. Gus. Here is a close-up picture of him. |
|
My daughter caught me being a blogger! |
|
The National Aviary offers guests the opportunity to view feedings throughout the day. The Southern Bald Ibises were ready for some worms. |
|
My daughter was given a mealworm to hold in her hand. A bird swooped down to get it! |
|
I think she was surprised! |
|
She probably doesn't remember this but she was surprised by a bird once before at the National Aviary. |
|
The flamingos and pelican looked on as we read. |
|
Colorful birds having a snack. |
|
Can you guess who he got to feed? |
|
It is a big bird that loves fish... |
|
It's a pelican! |
|
I think I heard him say, "Thank You!" |
|
A super fun day with a super fun book! |
Lizzy, I am so happy we connected at Mazza! We all had a great time reading your books this week! (Even my 11-year-old sat and read through a stack of your books and said, "She writes some good books!") We hope you have a wonderful birthday. Send us a picture of your birthday cake!
Links:1.
Lizzy Rockwell's Website2. Interviews -
Random House,
Got Story Countdown3.
Good Enough To Eat Teacher's Guide -
TeacherVision
Happy Birthday, Virginia Lee Burton - August 30
(August 30, 1909 - October 15, 1968)
Our family has celebrated over 300 author birthdays, but never two on the same day! Virginia Lee Burton and Lizzy Rockwell share the same birthday of August 30th. We celebrated by spending the day in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at two amazing places that brought their books to life. Virginia Lee Burton is up first today, a day early, and watch for Lizzy Rockwell's birthday blog post tomorrow!
Virginia Lee Burton published over a dozen picture books including the classics
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel and
Katy and the Big Snow. Virginia's mother, a poet and musician, and her father, an engineer, filled her childhood with music, dancing, and good books. According to
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, she said, "Dad, instead of giving us toys for birthdays and Christmas, gave us beautifully illustrated children's books, which he would read aloud to us. I am sure my interest in picture books stemmed from this." At the age of eight, Virginia and her family moved from Massachusetts to California. They found a new home in Carmel-by-the-Sea, a town known for their artists and theater productions. Virginia and her sister enjoyed dancing and acting in many plays.
Virginia attended California School of Fine Arts after high school. One of her favorite things was traveling by train, ferry boat, and cable car from her home in Alameda to San Francisco for school each day. These travels gave her valuable time to practice sketching. After one year of school, Virginia returned to Massachusetts to be with her father, who was then divorced from her mother. Virginia committed to joining her sister's dance troupe in New York City, but her father broke his leg. She decided to help care for him instead of dancing in the troupe. (
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Cape Ann Museum).
Virginia renewed her focus on drawing when she was hired as a sketch artist for the
Boston Transcript. She drew dancers and actors at live events and performances. Her interest in drawing and art led her to take a course at the Boston Museum School from George Demetrios. The course was held in the fall and by the spring Virginia and George were married in 1931. Together they raised two boys at Folly Cove in Gloucester, Massachusetts. According to
Cape Ann Museum, "When her two boys were young Jinnee would take them to places around Cape Ann to sketch what she saw...When Aris [her oldest son] was five years old, she took him to the Rockport Station to see the steam engine from the Boston and Maine line." This experience led to her first published book,
Choo Choo in 1937. Not to be left out, her youngest son, Michael, was used as the model for the little boy in
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel (1939), a book Virginia dedicated to him
.
Virginia Lee Burton is best known for her books about big machines, her Caldecott award for
The Little House (1942), and her Caldecott Honor award for
The Song of Robin Hood (1948)
written by Anne Malcolmson
. However, it is not as widely known that she started an art and design group in her hometown called the Folly Cove Designers that specialized in fabric prints. She started the group in 1938 where she inspired people to create art from their observations of every day life. The group's most productive years were between 1941 and 1955 when operations had to be moved to a barn at Virginia's home to accommodate the group's efforts and art sales. You can read more about this remarkable community collaboration at the
Cape Anne Museum's website.
Last year, I got my hands on a copy of the
Mike Mulligan and More: A Virginia Lee Burton Treasury. The book contains the story of
Maybelle the Cable Car, a San Francisco cable car who watches the city of San Francisco change and grow. Maybelle worries when the city threatens to shut down all the cable cars, and replace them with buses and trackless trolleys. The citizens of San Francisco rally behind Maybelle to get an issue on the ballot to save the cable cars.
This was the first time I had ever read
Maybelle the Cable Car and I loved it. I admired the people for recognizing the importance of this unique and fun mode of transportation. I wondered if there were cable cars near Ohio. To my surprise I found
The Duquesne Incline, in Pittsburgh, PA. We were unable to make the trip last year, but this year we made it happen!
|
The Duquesne Incline was built in 1877 and operated until 1962 when it closed suddenly. The local residents, much like the residents in Maybelle the Cable Car, rallied together to save the incline. By 1963, a committee of citizens organized the repair and restoration of the incline and got it running again. |
|
The lower station was built in 1890. |
|
A view from the upper station. |
|
This cable car is one of two that run on The Duquesne Incline. They were built in the early 1900's and seat about 18 passengers. The black compartments under the cable car were once used to carry trunks, barrels, and boxes from the busy streets below to the residential area at the top of the hill. |
|
Just like Maybelle the cable cars at The Duquesne Incline run from "early morn till late at night." |
|
Maybelle said, "Fares please...ting ting...Let's go." |
|
It was time to board the cable car. |
|
Ding.Ding.Ding. Three dings means the conductor is going to start to move the cable cars. I love the excitement on their faces. |
|
The looked back to see the upper station, the track, and the moving cables. |
|
We paused for a photo at the bottom. |
|
And another photo before we entered the lower station lobby. |
|
A view from the lower station. |
|
The Duquesne Incline is a funicular, a railway operating by a cable with two cars counterbalancing each other. One cable car goes up while the other goes down. Maybelle did not run on a funicular system. She could be attached and detached manually from the cable. |
|
Family selfie! |
|
I wonder what she is thinking... |
|
We got back into the cable car to ride it back up to the top. This is a view of the lower station as we ascended. |
|
These cable cars travel 800 feet in 80 seconds at a speed of 6 miles per hour. |
|
At the upper station there is a self-guided tour to learn how the incline operates. |
|
This cable drum is 12 ft.-3 inches in diameter. |
|
The smaller drive gear is 11 ft. 6 inches in diameter and has over 100 removable teeth. It was installed in 1877! |
|
We are so glad the people of Pittsburgh saved this treasure! |
Be sure to stop back to the blog tomorrow to read about our second adventure in Pittsburgh to celebrate Lizzy Rockwell's birthday!
Links:1. Virginia Lee Burton Resource Website -
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt2. Folly Cove Designers -
Cape Ann Museum3. Virginia Lee Burton, A Sense of Place documentary -
Website
Happy Birthday, Arthur Yorinks - August 21
Ideas are coming! Ideas are coming! Some of my ideas come out of nowhere and land in my head. Sometimes I am skeptical and have to ask myself,
How could I ever let that idea into one of my blog posts?This week, we read
Company's Coming by Arthur Yorinks. In this story, tiny spacemen come out of nowhere and land in Moe's backyard. Moe is skeptical, and yells at his wife Shirley, "How could you let them into our house!"
Shirley reassures Moe by saying, "Stay calm. Be polite. Maybe we can make friends with them."
This week I was skeptical, like Moe. Not of tiny spacemen, but of my idea for our author birthday celebration activity. I thought,
Making meatballs? To celebrate Arthur Yorinks's birthday? There has to be a better idea than that. Instead of being like Skeptical Moe I decided to be like Let's-Just-See-What-Happens Shirley and thought,
I should stay calm. Be polite. Maybe I can make meatballs with them.My kids ended up having a real blast with this activity. I think this whole experience could really help me in the future. Maybe I should have a new mantra,
More Shirley. Less Moe. More Shirley. Less Moe. Yeah, I kinda like that.
Arthur Yorinks is the author of over 35 books including
It Happened in Pinsk illustrated by Richard Egielski,
Tomatoes from Mars illustrated by Mort Drucker, and
The Miami Giant illustrated by
Maurice Sendak. As a child, Arthur wanted to be like the adults in his life. He wanted to play the piano like his aunt and uncle and started at the young age of six. He wanted to be a reader like his father and enjoyed reading his father's collection of 19th century literature. (
NY Times, 1994). As teenager, Arthur wanted to be short-story writer and after a trip to local book store he had a better understanding of the stories he wanted to tell. Arthur described the experience, "I walked into a book store and I found a section that said
Children's and thought, W
hat does that mean? And low and behold, that was first time I saw a book by Maurice,
Bill Steig, or anyone. The idea of marrying words and pictures was fascinating to me." (
Just One More Book).
Later, at the age of sixteen, Arthur read an article about Maurice Sendak in the New York Times and was convinced that if he met Sendak he would help him with his short story writing. So, he went to Sendak's house unannounced. Maurice told him he would prefer to talk on the phone and asked that he give him a call sometime. There were many phone calls and meetings between Maurice Sendak and young Yorinks and a friendship formed. (
Side By Side). Sendak saw promise in this young teenager and said, "Some of these [short stories] might be interesting texts for picture books." But, Arthur admitted that at the time he "didn't quite get it." (
Just One More Book).
Years later, Maurice Sendak taught an illustration course and one of his students was Richard Egielski. Sendak mentioned to Arthur that he thought Egielski would be the perfect illustrator for his stories. By chance, one day in an elevator, the two met and decided to collaborate. (
Talking with Artists). They were a perfect match, like Sendak predicted, and together Yorinks and Egielski published their first book,
Sid and Sol in 1977. The team went on to publish ten books together including the 1987 Caldecott Award Winner,
Hey, Al.
In addition to writing books, Arthur Yorinks has written and directed theater productions including many plays at the The Kennedy Center. (
Arthuryorinks.com- Biography). In the 1990s, he and Maurice Sendak collaborated on The Night Kitchen Theater, which produced family-friendly dramatic radio programs for satellite radio audiences. Now, Arthur is once again producing audio theater with his latest venture,
Airwayv, which was launched in June 2016.
The inspiration for our author birthday celebration activity for Arthur Yorinks was
Company's Coming and
Company's Going, both illustrated by
David Small. These two picture books are about Moe and Shirley and their encounter with tiny spacemen that land in their backyard. Moe is skeptical of the little guys, but Shirley welcomes them into their home. The spacemen turn out to be harmless, friendly, and kind. (They buy Shirley a really nice gift.) Shirley wins them over with her spaghetti and meatballs and the spacemen ask her to cater their sister's wedding on their home planet of Nextoo. Of course, Shirley accepts, but Moe questions, "What if they don't like humans?" Shirley wasn't worried.
|
Moe and Shirley meet the spacemen. |
|
My oldest kiddos dressed up as Moe and Shirley for this birthday celebration. (I never expected this! We hadn't even made the meatballs, yet! I was already pleased with how this author birthday celebration was going!) |
|
I asked my son to make a flying saucer out of two red plastic bowls before I read the books to them. I used the flying saucer while I read the books. |
|
After reading, I told them we were going to make meatballs just like Shirley. I found a recipe online. My youngest daughter helped mix together the beef and sausage. |
|
Shirley said, "We have meatballs to make!" (I will never forget her enthusiasm!) |
|
Here is an illustration from Company's Going that shows Shirley frantically making the meatballs for the wedding. |
|
My children worked together to add all the ingredients. |
|
They worked together to form all the meatballs. (I never expected this either. I thought they would think it was gross!) |
|
I can't believe she did this. She usually can't even be in the kitchen when I am preparing meat for dinner. |
|
"Shirley had made so many meatballs it seemed as if there was enough food to feed the whole planet." (from Company's Going). We only made about 2 and 1/2 dozen. It was enough for dinner and leftovers! |
|
I asked my boys to make 6 flying saucers, one for each member of our family. They used silver sharpie markers to draw the windows. |
|
My daughter...(err...Shirley) prepared a sauce to cover the meatballs in the crock pot. |
|
The spaceships were ready for dinner. |
|
This is how our dining room table looked before I called everyone in to eat. |
|
I think Shirley would be proud. I am glad I invited this idea into our home. |
Links:1.
Arthur Yorinks's website2. Audio Interview -
Just One More Book3. Arthur Yorinks and Richard Eglieski -
SIDE BY SIDE (Google Books)4.
Airwayv: new audio theater
Happy Birthday, Michael Buckley - August 16
My two boys would not be classified as daredevils. They wouldn't be classified as cowards either. I would probably describe them as cautious stuntmen. When they were younger they were eager to learn the monkey bars at the playground as long as I was within an arm's reach. This summer they wanted to ride the big water slides at the water park, but only after I went with them the first time. Now, they ride their bikes at top speed down the sidewalk in front of our house and will take both hands off their handlebars, but only for a millisecond. Courageous but careful. Daring but deliberate. Tough but tentative. I like them like this. I hope it continues into their teenage years!
This week, I planned a few activities for my little daredevils, (err...cautious stuntmen) to celebrate Michael Buckley's birthday. They didn't cringe or cower at the stunts I prepared. In fact, they performed them with amazing skill and ease. I hope you will read on. It will be quite a show!
Michael Buckley is the author many chapter books for middle grade readers and young adults including
N.E.R.D.S.: National Espionage, Rescue, and Defense Society series and the
Undertow Trilogy. He was born in Akron, Ohio (not too far from our house!) and in school he was known as the "class clown". (
Miss Literati). When Michael was in the fourth grade his school librarian encouraged him to read
The Mouse and the Motorcycle by
Beverly Cleary. He loved it and credits this book with helping him become an avid reader and a writer. (Mazza Museum Keynote). Also, in the fourth grade, he decided to share some of his writing with his teacher, who supposedly didn't like him too much, and she told him, "You are never going to be a writer. You can't spell." Michael heard the words not as crushing criticism, but as a challenge.
At the age of 16, he won a joke writing contest sponsored by Mad Magazine. His prize was to spend the day at the mall with Eddie Murphy, who thought Michael was pretty funny and encouraged him to sneak into comedy clubs to do stand-up. Michael took Murphy's advice, "I told everyone I was 18 and started doing stand-up." This experience taught Michael about the how to write a "set-up and punchline." (Mazza Museum Keynote). He told
This is My Show, "Writing your own jokes can teach you a lot about the rhythm of language and speech. That's when I started to really see the power of words."
He graduated from Ohio University in 1996. One of his professors, Mel Helitzer, encouraged Michael to get an internship and said, "You need to send a resume to David Letterman." Michael took Helitzer's advice and landed an internship with the David Letterman Show in the research department creating the interviews with the goal of making the guests "seem hilarious." Michael went on to develop and create TV shows for Discovery Channel (
The Mole People), MTV (
Beavis and Butthead,
Celebrity Deathmatch), VH1, Nickelodeon, and Cartoon Network (
Robotomy). Eventually, Michael "got burnt out" and needed a break.
During his break from creating TV shows, he had an idea for another TV show. He told his then girlfriend, Alison Fargis, all about it. Alison, who was working in the book industry, said, "That is not a TV show. It's a book." Michael didn't think he could write the book, but once again took the advice. To make a long story short, he wrote the book and it turned into the nine book series,
The Sisters Grimm: The Fairy Tale Detectives series. Later, he married Alison and she is now his agent.
Michael Buckley has written one picture book,
Kel Gilligan's Daredevil Stunt Show, illustrated by
Dan Santat. In this book, Kel Gilligan performs amazing stunts like eating his broccoli, going on the big boy potty, and getting dressed all by himself. He does all of his stunts while wearing a red, white, and blue helmet, a cape, and white gloves. He is successful at all of his stunts, but his last stunt is the most daring one yet! He will go to bed without checking for monsters. Has Kel Gilligan lost his mind? Or will he amaze us once again?
Kel Gilligan's Daredevil Stunt Show was the inspiration for our author birthday celebration for Michael Buckley. It inspired two craft ideas and some crazy fun in our driveway. For the first craft, I noticed a photograph of Kel Gilligan wearing an "I {heart} Danger" t-shirt on the second last page of the book. I thought this shirt would be perfect for my cautious stuntmen.
|
Kel Gilligan loves danger. Do my boys? Well, kinda... |
|
I bought two blue t-shirts and cardboard letters we would use as stamps. |
|
I found the cardboard letters on the clearance rack at a craft store. They were corrugated so they left lines after we stamped them. |
|
My boys painted in the rest to make the letters solid. |
|
I cut out a heart shape and stamped on red acrylic paint. We let the shirts dry for two days and then ironed them for about five minutes to set the ink. |
|
We found a picture frame at a garage sale for 50 cents to recreate the illustration from the book. Just like Kel Gilligan. |
|
My youngest son is the "least cautious" of cautious stuntmen brothers. |
|
Our second craft was to modify a white snowboarding helmet we had in our garage. |
|
I taped off areas to make the stripes. They painted the middle stripe and let it dry over night. |
|
The next day I taped off the areas for the red stripes. |
|
After many coats of red paint, we let it dry over night too. |
|
The next day we removed all the tape and it revealed this amazing helmet! I added a coat of clear acrylic spray to protect the paint too. |
|
It was time for our stunt show. |
|
My oldest son "laughed in the face of danger" as he rode his Razor Flash Rider 360 down the neighbor's driveway at top speed. |
|
My youngest son "threw caution to the wind" and faced the hill himself. |
|
Next, up was this guy! The craziest of them all! |
|
He prepared for another run. |
|
Off he goes! |
|
I am lucky I didn't get hurt. |
|
He was so happy. |
|
His smile says it all. |
Michael, thank you for sharing your birthday with us and thank you for signing my huge stack of books at Mazza. We hope you have a great birthday!
Links:1.
Michael Buckley's Blog2. Michael Buckley Fan Page -
Facebook3. Follow Michael Buckley -
Instagram,
Twitter4. Interviews -
Yogi Times (2013),
Miss Literati,
Nerdy with Children,
Author Turf (2014),
Melissa's Eclectic Bookshelf (2015),
State Impact (2013)5. Video Interview -
TeacherTube,
National Book Festival 20156. National Book Festival Presentation 2015 -
Library of Congress on YouTube7. National Book Festival Presentation 2011-
Library of Congress on YouTube8. National Book Festival Presentation 2010 -
Library of Congress on YouTube
Happy Birthday, LeUyen Pham - August 10
Klopp. Klopp. Klopp. Klopp.
"Dad, can I wear these shoes to the store?"
"No, but you can keep your princess dress on."
Klopp. Klopp....No. Noooo.
"No princess shoes on the steps!"
"I won't fall, Dad."
Klopp. Klopp. Klopp......
"Hey! Da-a-a-a-a-d! He took my shoes."
"Dude. For real? Give your sister back her shoes."
Klopp. Klopp. Klopp. Klopp.
"Why are there shoes in your bed?"
"I wanted to sleep with them."
Klopp. Klopp. Klopp. Klopp.
I don't think there is anything more adorable than my four-year-old daughter carefully walking around in high heel shoes. She loves all her fancy shoes. I've lost count of how many pairs she owns. But, every girl needs another pair. Right? This week, our birthday celebration activity for LeUyen Pham had my daughter (...and son) smiling, feeling proud, and saying "Shoe-la-la" after adding a new pair of shoes to their collections.
LeUyen Pham (pronounced Le Win) is the illustrator of over 80 books for children including
Bedtime for Mommy written by
Amy Krouse Rosenthal,
Piggies in a Polka written by
Kathi Appelt, and
Grace for President written by Kelly DiPucchio.
At the age of two, LeUyen and her family left Vietnam near the end of the War and found a home in California. As a child, she was a voracious reader and spent her Saturdays at the library lost in books like
Where's Wallace? by Hilary Knight and
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. (Mazza Museum Keynote). As much as she loved reading she loved drawing even more. She sold doodles of Star Wars, Garfield, and Calvin and Hobbes to her classmates for a quarter and is thankful her teachers fostered her artist talent, "There wasn't a single year in my school age when I didn't have at least one teacher encouraging me to draw and cultivate my art. Which was important, because my family didn't really give much value to art. I always loved that my teachers gave me sort of a safe haven to dream and to pursue what I loved so much, even at a super young age." (
EW).
Later, LeUyen attended UCLA to study Political Science. However, a professor noticed her artistic talent and referred her to Art Center College of Design in Pasadena where she received a scholarship. While at art school she earned an internship with SGI, the animation company behind the first
Jurassic Park movie. (
The Noe Valley Voice). After she graduated she worked for DreamWorks Animation in the layout department for the movies
The Prince of Egypt and
The Road to El Dorado. She learned a lot at DreamWorks, especially how to draw quickly, but the animation industry was changing and LeUyen wanted to work as a freelance illustrator. (
Patricia Newman). While still at DreamWorks, she landed her first book deal to illustrate the chapter book
The Sugarcane House: And Other Stories About Mr. Fat written by Adrienne Bond (1997). That book led to
Can You Do This, Old Badger? written by
Eve Bunting, her first picture book, and a few more contracts. LeUyen was able leave DreamWorks to work as an illustrator.
LeUyen has been described as the "girl with many styles." (
Webesteem art and design,). Her
illustration work can be found in the chapter book series
Alvin Ho written by Lenore Look and
Princess in Black written by Shannon Hale, graphic novels (
Real Friends coming May 2017), board books, and picture books. She also has written many of her own picture books too. Her first was
Big Sister, Little Sister in 2005. (
Click here view more of her art.)
LeUyen is prolific illustrator. She produces three or more books each year and takes great care to "present as many multicultural races as possible" with the goal of "where any child can look at an image and not necessarily identify it as a particular race, but to identify themselves in it." (Scholastic). She told the audience at the Mazza Museum, "When I draw anything. It is a little piece of me." Her latest picture book is
Freckleface Strawberry and the Really Big Voice written by Julianne Moore.
|
Wow! An amazing artist and a champion for diverse books. |
Shoe-la-la!, written by Karen Beaumont, inspired our birthday celebration activity for LeUyen Pham. In this book, four girls, Emily, Ashley, Kaitlyn, and Claire head to the shoe store to find the perfect pair. The girls try on a variety of shoes, much to the frustration and exhaustion of the store clerk, but they can't find a single pair to buy. Back at home, disappointed, one of the girls has an idea. With paint, pom-poms, gems, beads and bows the girls transform their plain shoes into something glamorous! Our family couldn't resist this crafty idea! We had to try!
|
We found a few pairs of high heel shoes at the thrift store. |
|
I knew my youngest son would love this activity, so I bought an inexpensive pair of canvas shoes at Wal-Mart. |
|
My daughter was so excited to see the drawing from LeUyen in our copy of Shoe-la-la!. |
|
At the Mazza Museum, LeUyen did portrait drawings for anyone who wanted one in their book. All she needed was a photo, so I showed her one of my daughter on my phone. How cool is that! |
|
We gathered goodies from our craft bins to decorate the shoes. |
|
I found a video sharing how to add glitter to a pair of canvas shoes. I showed it to my son and he was beyond excited to try it. We started by taping off the white bottoms of his shoes so they wouldn't get covered with glitter. |
|
My daughter made a plan with Mom. |
|
My son wanted to add gems and other things to the tops of his shoes. We taped over the front part of the shoes to prevent glitter from getting there too. |
|
My daughter added beads and fancy ribbon to the straps. We used E-6000 adhesive as the bonding agent. |
|
While my daughter worked with her mom, I helped my son prepare his glitter mixture. He poured a generous amount of fine gold glitter into a bowl. |
|
He painted the mixture onto the shoe. |
|
She was still working hard. |
|
Thankfully, mom was still on summer break and was able to help with this craft. |
|
She loved her first pair. |
|
My son allowed the first coat of glitter to dry and then he added another coat. At this point, he had two colors of glitter going at the same time. |
|
My daughter saw how much fun her brother was having and she decided to add gold glitter to the heels of another pair of shoes. |
|
Then, she found more gems and added those to the first pair. |
|
Our kitchen was busy! |
|
We let the shoes dry overnight. Then, we removed the tape. |
|
They looked pretty good. Notice that he used two different types of glitter. The gold glitter was finer and tuned out smoother. The black/blue glitter was traditional glitter and it had a more bumpy finish. |
|
He planned the location for a few colored stars. |
|
I helped with the adhesive. |
|
"Shoe-la-la!" |
|
How glamorous! |
|
He said, "I am going to wear these shoes on the first day of school. And I can where them to art class, because they are piece of art." |
|
LeUyen, thank you for sharing your birthday with us! We hope you have a glamorous birthday! |
LeUyen Pham has many new books on the way; THE BEAR THAT WASN'T THERE (picture book) and ISABELLA FOR REAL by Margie Palatini (chapter book). Both will be available October 2016!:
Links:1.
LeUyen Pham's Website2. Follow LeUyen Pham -
Facebook,
3. Biography -
Webesteem art and design,
We Need Diverse Books,
Patricia Newman4. SHOE-LA-LA Trailer -
Scholastic on YouTube5. Video Interview -
Scholastic on YouTube6. Interviews -
The Children's Book Review,
Seven Impossible Things,
Pamela Goodman,
Finding Wonderland,
KinderLit,
EW7. FRECKLEFACE STRAWBERRY the Musical -
website8. Audio Interview -
Stories Unbound,
Storybook Spotlight9. LeUyen Pham: My Kids See Themselves in Every Book They Read -
BookPeople10. Drawing with the Stars: Illustrator LeUyen Pham -
The Noe Valley Voice
Happy Birthday, Christian Robinson - August 2
On the first day of second grade, my teacher gave each student in my class a worksheet to complete. The title of the worksheet was
A Time Capsule About Me and it had a list of fourteen things to respond to by filling in the blanks;
What is my favorite thing to do?
My favorite hobby?
My favorite TV show?...and more.
Then, on the last day of school the worksheet was returned to us.
My mom kept this worksheet in my Baby Book and I still have it. I recall looking at the worksheet often while I was growing up. I was intrigued by how my favorite things had changed. For example, my favorite thing to do in second grade was playing soccer, but that was the only year I ever played soccer. My favorite hobby in second grade was collecting bottle caps? Really? I don't think I ever had a bottle cap collection, but I loved watching Sesame Street and I admired
Bert's amazing bottle cap collection. I am thankful my second grade teacher gave us this assignment. Without it I may have forgotten how much I loved the TV show,
The A-Team. (
Mr. T was my hero!)
When my family attended the 2015 National Book Festival where Christian Robinson and
Mac Barnett read their latest collaboration,
Leo: A Ghost Story, they demonstrated a creative way to document your favorite things. Their demonstration reminded me of my second grade time capsule. I thought about how "favorite things" change. Sometimes they change often. I knew at the Festival that I wanted to give my children a chance to record some of their favorite things so they could have the same experience I had and Christian Robinson's birthday would be the perfect time to do it.
Christian Robinson is the illustrator of ten books for children including
Gaston by Kelly DiPucchio and
The Smallest Girl in the Smallest Grade by Justin Roberts. When Christian was a child he loved to make things. He said, "Creativity allowed me to be in charge, to make my own rules, to make my own little world on paper." (
Read Brightly). He did not have many resources growing up, but his grandmother taught him "how to make the most of whatever I had and to count my blessings." (
The Horn Book).
Christian Robinson graduated from California Institute of the Arts in 2008 with a degree in Character Animation. After graduation he interned at Pixar Animation Studios and was paired with a mentor who happened to love picture books, talked about them all the time, and encouraged Christian as an illustrator. (
Ezra Jack Keats Foundation). One day, his mentor invited Christian to attend a consumer products meeting with the director of the movie
Up and asked him to bring some of his artwork featuring the characters from the movie. (
Seven Impossible Things). The director saw Christian's artwork and suggested that he should make a book based the movie. This suggestion allowed Christian to became a children's book illustrator with his first book,
Beware of Dug!, in 2009.
After Pixar, Christian continued making art for various projects and shared his work on
his blog. Steven Malk, a top agent in children's literature, took notice of Christian's illustrations. In an interview with
The Brown Bookshelf Christian described the experience, "One day I get an email from a guy who had come across my blog asking if I had an agent and if I did to just consider the message as fan mail." Christian signed on with Steven and quickly published his first picture book
Harlem's Little Blackbird by Renée Watson.
It didn't take long for Christian to gain more attention for his picture book illustration. In 2014, he was awarded the 2014 Ezra Jack Keats New Illustrator Award for
Rain! by Linda Ashman. In 2015, he was awarded a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Award for
Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker by Patricia Hruby Powell and this year he received his 2016 Caldecott Honor and another Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Award for
Last Stop on Market Street by
Matt de la Peña. Christian's next books are
Little Penguins by
Cynthia Rylant (October 2016) and
Antoinette, a companion to
Gaston (February 2017).
At the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C., it was a treat to hear Christian Robinson read
Leo: A Ghost Story. It is a story about a house ghost named Leo who is unwanted by the new family who moves in. So, he decides to roam. He meets a girl named Jane and together they play Knights of the Round Table. Jane thinks Leo is her imaginary friend. Leo doesn't tell her that he is ghost. With Jane asleep, Leo is designing his coat of arms when a robber breaks into Jane's house. Leo knows exactly what to do, but his decision reveals his true self. What will Jane think?
|
Christian Robinson told the audience, "I start small...before I make all the art in the book I have to do storyboards which are like little teeny tiny doodles, little teeny tiny sketches." |
|
What is Christian Robinson's favorite tool for storyboarding? Post-its! He said, "Starting small helps me think about what to put on the page. Where do I want the characters to go? Not get overwhelmed by the colors and the backgrounds." |
|
"I make lots and lots of mistakes...I keep trying until I get it just right." The post-its in his photo "didn't work out" and found their way to the trash can! |
Mac Barnett, the author of
Leo: A Ghost Story, joined Christian on stage. Together they removed the dust cover from the book to reveal an illustration of Leo's coat of arms. They explained that a coat of arms displays the knight's favorite things. On Leo's coat of arms are mint tea, honey, toast, and a rocking horse.
|
Ta-da! |
|
Here is a close-up of Leo's coat of arms. |
|
Mac and Christian invited a young girl on stage and Christian drew a coat of arms of her favorite things. It was pretty awesome! Christian drew the girl's favorite food, the favorite thing she did over the summer, and her favorite animal. |
During the presentation
Mac Barnett said, "We want everyone here to make their own coat of arms." So, I thought it would be fun for my children to make one in the style of Christian's sword and shield in the photo above.
|
I purchased four pieces of foam board from the dollar store. My children picked out their favorite color of paint. |
|
They asked, "Why are we painting the whole thing?" I said, "I don't know. I THINK it will make the next step easier?.?" |
|
I made a paper template for our coat of arms. After the paint dried, I used an x-acto knife to cut out the shape. |
|
My son was working faster than everyone else. So, he started working on his sword. |
|
Busy, busy, busy. |
|
In this photo, my youngest son started to draw his sword. |
|
After the coat of arms and swords were cut out they painted the edges with white paint. |
|
Then, they added their favorite things. My son's favorite animal is a cat. |
|
My daughter was so excited I let her use the x-acto knife. |
|
My son got inspiration from Leo's coat of arms. |
|
They loved this painting activity. |
|
My daughter's favorite thing of the summer was playing with her friends. |
|
After they finished painting they said, "Now we need mint tea and honey toast for a snack." I made some for them and we listened to Emily Arrow's Leo song as we ate. |
|
We let our art dry over night and then we added a handle to our coat of arms to make it into a shield. |
|
She looked more like a princess than a knight. |
|
It looks like Mr. V and his A-Team have a new favorite book. |
Are you a teacher or homeschooler? Read LEO: A GHOST STORY and download this worksheet for the first day of school! One of your students will appreciate this in the years to come.
Christian, thank you for sharing your birthday with us!! We hope you have a wonderful birthday! AND THANK YOU, again for signing our book!
Check out Christian's latest books, THE DEAD BIRD by Margaret Wise Brown and SCHOOL'S FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL by Adam Rex.
Links:1.
Christian Robinson's Website2.
Christian Robinson's Blog3. Follow Christian Robinson on
Instagram4. Interviews -
Read Brightly,
Seven Impossible Things,
Fish Ink Blog,
Art of the Picture Book,
Ezra Jack Keats Foundation,
NPR,
The Brown Bookshelf5. 5 Questions with Christian Robinson -
The Horn Book6. Audio Interview -
Let's Get Busy Podcast7. Mac Barnett and Christian Robinson Interview at the National Book Festival -
Book View Now (YouTube)8. JOSEPHINE book trailer -
Chronicle Books on YouTube9. LAST STOP ON MARKET STREET book trailer -
Scholastic on YouTube10. LEO: A GHOST STORY song by Emily Arrow -
YouTube11. LEO: A GHOST STORY book trailer -
Chronicle Books on YouTube
Happy Birthday, Aaron Becker - July 14
Last summer I met Aaron Becker at the
Mazza Museum. I told him about our blog and asked if he would share his birthday with us so we could plan a celebration. He said, "My birthday was just three days ago."
363 days later we finally got to celebrate, but a few things happened which made it worth the wait. In April, my whole family got to meet Aaron Becker at the South Euclid-Lyndhurst Library, where the children's area is like stepping into
Journey. This week, we created a fun sewing project to bring to life
Quest. And in less than one month, Aaron's next book
Return will be available! It has been an exciting journey leading up to this blog post. I hope you read on to learn more!
Aaron Becker is the creator of the
Journey Trilogy. As a child he taught himself to draw from books by
Ed Emberley. His parents fostered his hobby of drawing and making books. His father made sure he had plenty of left over paper from the dot matrix printer and Aaron would tape two pieces together. His mother made him his own special space, a handmade work bench, "where he was let to discover and learn on his own." (Mazza Museum Keynote).
Despite his love for drawing, Aaron never took a formal art class until after high school. He graduated from Pomona College in 1996 with a degree in media studies after briefly considering majoring in Japanese Language and Pacific Rim politics. (
Pomona Magazine). In 1998, after a brief time in web and graphic design Aaron thought about entering the world of children's books and even attended a children's book writing conference. (
Seven Impossible Things). He thought if he was going to make a children's book he would need to work on his art first and chose to attend
Arts Center College of Design in California for six months. This experience led him to be hired as a concept artist for the animated film
The Polar Express, based on
Chris Van Allsburg's beloved book. Aaron worked in the film industry for over eight years and decided to move with his wife all the way across the country. It was after this move things changed for Aaron.
The company Aaron was working for was purchased by Disney and he lost his job. He was even more concerned because he would soon be a father! He needed to find a job, but thought, "I had always wanted to do this children's book thing, a now or never kind of feeling, all my cards on the table, just a 'Hail Mary Pass'." (
Good Reads with Ronna). Aaron feared he would miss out on a chance so he wrote a story, made a real life dummy book that he hand-stitched with needle and thread, got an agent, and sold his first book to an editor he met 15 years prior at the children's book conference he attended after college. (
Seven Impossible Things).
Journey was a huge success and Aaron was awarded a Caldecott Honor medal in 2014. Amazingly, Aaron taught himself how to use watercolor to make the illustrations for the book. He said, "I did teach myself watercolor! Everything I had done previously was either in oils, acrylics, or digital, but I wanted
Journey to have a precious, handmade feel that only watercolor can pull off." (
Henry Herz). Initially, a sequel to
Journey was not in the plan, but soon came
Quest in 2014 and in about one month, August 2016,
Return will conclude this amazing wordless picture book adventure. (I can't wait!!)
I was so excited to find out that Aaron Becker was returning to Ohio last April. I enjoyed hearing him speak and knew my family would love him too. The reason for Aaron's visit to the
South-Euclid Lyndhurst Library was to celebrate the new children's area based on
Journey. If you are ever in Northeast Ohio and love Aaron's books you need to carve out some time to visit this library! It is amazing.
|
The children's area brings Journey to life! |
|
Children (and adults!) can walk out of the door in the tree. |
|
Hanging from the ceiling is the hot air balloon the girl draws to keep herself from falling from the aqueduct around the castle. |
|
There are many interactive components for the kids too. |
|
Take a ride in the red boat. |
|
She said, "Hey! It's the castle from the book." |
|
Aaron wanted the children's area to include activities to encourage imagination. There are blocks, hand designed by Aaron, to build your own castles. |
|
I was so happy my children got to meet him! |
|
Aaron gave out these cool markers at his visit. My youngest was so excited that the next week at school she took the markers, Journey, and Quest to share with her preschool class. When I was planning our birthday celebration activity I wondered if I could use these markers somehow. |
|
In Quest, the king gives the girl and the boy a map, an orange marker, and sash to hold the markers they will gather on their adventure. I challenged myself to come up with a way to make the sash with materials I had in my house. I started with a random roll of brown fabric we acquired many years ago. |
|
I cut a 6 inch wide piece, folded it in half, and pinned the edges. |
|
I stitched the edges leaving one of the ends open. |
|
Through the opening I reversed the fabric to hide the stitch. |
|
I used my youngest daughter as my model to check the dimensions and to plan the next step. |
|
I needed to devise a way to hold the markers. I decided to do this with felt. |
|
I stitched a 2.25" x 7.75" piece of felt onto the brown fabric. When, I placed the sash back on my daughter I worried that the markers would be too big and heavy because of the fabric I chose to use. So, I decided to continue my design for crayons instead of markers. |
|
Next, I took another piece of brown felt and measured out six slots. I left about 1/2 inch between each slot and each slot was 3/4 inch wide. This was the perfect size to hold the crayons snug. |
|
It worked! |
|
I found a purple, teal, light green, yellow, orange, and red crayon for the sash. |
|
The last stitch sewed the two ends of the fabric together. It was sewn diagonally to allow it to lay against my daughter's hip. The excess brown fabric was trimmed. |
|
With the prototype a success, my children wanted to make one of their own. |
|
My son ran the pedal on the sewing machine while I guided the fabric. |
|
My 11 year old daughter asked if she could make one too. I got her started and she wanted to do the rest. |
|
I was amazed with how determined she was to do this project all by herself. |
|
Wow! Great work! |
|
Aaron, our family hopes you have a wonderful birthday! I am so happy we all got to meet you. Your books have been a huge hit in our house! Have a great birthday! |
Return will be available August 2, 2016. Pre-order it today!
Links:1.
Aaron Becker's Website2. Follow Aaron Becker on
Facebook, Twitter3.
Aaron Becker's Blog 4.
Journey Trailer (YouTube)
5.
Quest Trailer (YouTube)
6. Interviews -
Seven Impossible Things Blog,
Candlewick,
SmartBooks for SmartKids,
Good Reads with Ronna,
School Library Journal,
Design Mom,
East Oakview Library,
Henry Herz,
KidLit 4117. 5 Things You Didn't Know About Aaron Becker -
Huff Post8. The Making of Journey -
Vimeo9. Video Interview for Candlewick -
YouTube10. Your Guide to a Wordless Book -
StoryBreathing11. Aaron Becker feature -
Pomona Magazine
Happy Birthday, Patricia Polacco - July 11
I was lucky enough to hear Patricia Polacco speak at the Mazza Museum Fall Conference 2013. My notes from her talk are sparse. I remember just listening. Hanging on to each of her words. She spoke of
Mr. Falker,
The Keeping Quilt, the importance of the arts in schools, and more. I remember crying. She has a way of doing that to me, to everyone who reads her books.
I urge you to visit the children's section the next time you are at your library. Find Patricia's books. There will be many.
The Junkyard Wonders is my favorite. Pick one of them. Her books are unlike any others.
I did write down one thing in my notes that day. She suggested making a tent with a blanket. Lots of pillows. Maybe some peanut butter crackers like she loved when she was a child. No electronics. Some books. A flashlight. She said, "You will be somewhere magical."
On Patricia's
Facebook page, she wrote about some of her magical childhood experiences:
"In the summer, in the backyard, we would put on a circus, our poor dogs and cats would be dressed up and paraded down the streets in our radio flyer wagons, while a band of three kazoo players walked in front of us, lead by a grand drum major! And how about those wonderful running games that were invented on the spot? All that needed to happen was a large group of children dividing into opposing teams. Games like 'Red Rover Come Over', 'Mother May I', 'Simon Says', 'King of the Mountain', 'Kick the Can', and some version of 'Buck Buck or Leap Frog', and of course the old standard, 'Hide and Seek' and 'Ollie Ollie Ox and Free'."
"We also use to rip all the sheets and blankets off the beds, drape them over tables and chairs, safety pinned together, making an amazing maze of tunnels and forts. We would fill these tents with crackers and peanut butter, flashlights, cushy pillows, and tons of picture magazines, comic books, flash cards, and board games." (
Facebook January 28, 2015).
I have been wanting to make a tent out of blankets to celebrate Patricia's birthday with my children ever since I wrote it down. This year it finally happened.
|
I thought the best place to make our tent with blankets was in our basement library. |
|
I brought down three card tables and a larger table to build our tent. We also had the table and chairs from our library. My son worked on covering the tables with blankets. |
|
I have always thought we had too many blankets in our house. Today, however, I was thankful for having so many. |
|
Our tent was finished. It took 45 minutes to build! |
|
A view from inside our tent. Plenty of blankets. Plenty of pillows and stuffed animals. Plus a stack of Patricia's books. |
|
My daughter came up with the idea of hanging flashlights from the tables and chairs. |
|
Of course we had peanut butter crackers for a snack. |
|
The blanket-tent is still up in our house. I think it will be up for many days to come. They even slept in it one night with their older sister.
|
|
We read Some Birthday inside the tent. It was a tiny bit scary and fun to read with the flashlight. |
|
They were so proud of their tent. Each time a new friend came over I heard them say, "You have to come downstairs and see our tent." |
|
Patricia was right. It was magical. |
Patricia has two new books coming out later this year,
The Mermaid's Purse, (October 4, 2016) and
Because of Thursday (October 18, 2016). Both are available for pre-order!
Links:1.
Patricia Polacco's Website2. Follow Patricia Polacco on
Facebook and
Twitter3. Video Interview -
Reading Rockets,
TeachingBooks.net4. Patricia Polacco Author Study -
Reading Lady,
Scholastic5. Other interviews -
Nextgen,
TeachingBooks.net6. The World of Patricia Polacco -
Teacher's Guide7. Patricia Polacco reads
Thunder Cake -
DreamJam World on YouTube8. Books Alive! Interviews Patricia Polacco -
YouTube
Happy Birthday, Laurie Keller - July 3
My son's elementary school had Right to Read Week at the end of May. The theme for the week was the Olympics. My responsibility was to design a reading room for all the first and second grade classes to visit. I came up with the idea of "Reading the World" and found books that featured over fifty different countries. When each class visited the reading room students chose a book from the country they wanted to learn more about and read it silently while sitting on bean bag chairs or carpet squares. One of the books that was available to read for the United States was
The Scrambled States of America Talent Show by Laurie Keller.
After Right to Read Week concluded I brought all the books home. My oldest daughter was looking through them before I returned them to the library and our bookshelves. She came running over to me and said, "Dad, look at this."
She showed me the end pages for
The Scrambled States of America Talent Show. Kentucky says, "Hey, Idaho - you and Laurie Keller have the same birthday!" Idaho, whose birthday is July 3, 1890, replies, "Hmmm, I wonder which one of us is older?" We were so excited to learn Laurie Keller's birthday. My daughter said, "You need to write it on your calendar!"
I did and we hope you enjoy our author birthday celebration for the hilarious, Laurie Keller!
Laurie Keller is the author and illustrator of many funny books for children including
Open Wide: Tooth School Inside and
Do Onto Otters: A Book About Manners. She was offered a scholarship to study dance at Western Michigan University, but chose to study art and illustration at Kendall College of Art and Design. After college, Laurie worked at Hallmark Cards for seven years. On her lunch breaks she loved visiting a nearby children's book store and fell in love with picture books.
She was given a special four month assignment at Hallmark to generate ideas, write, and create art on whatever she wanted. She loved the freedom of this assignment and after it concluded she had a hard time adjusting back to her old job. She missed the "creative freedom". (
Let's Get Busy Podcast).
One night, almost like a dream, she had an idea of the states of America having arms and legs. She loved the idea and put all her creative energy into developing it into a story. She said, "I would come home from Hallmark every night and work into the wee hours of the morning." (
MLive). After the idea came together she set up a few meetings in New York with children's book publishers. There was no initial interest, but upon arriving back at home in Kansas City she decided that she wanted to move to New York.
During her six month preparation for the move, she received a few rejections, but then a short time after she quit her job at Hallmark she got an offer to publish her first book which was
The Scrambled States of America.
Our favorite book by Laurie Keller is
Arnie the Doughnut. Arnie is a chocolate-covered doughnut with sprinkles and is so excited to be chosen by Mr. Bing, a regular customer at the Downtown Bakery. Much to Arnie's surprise Mr. Bing tries to eat him. Mr. Bing, who is very patient and kind, tries to explain to Arnie that people eat donuts. Arnie is in disbelief and only a phone call to the baker helps Arnie face the truth. Mr. Bing decides it wouldn't be right to eat Arnie, but wants to figure out a way for Arnie to be of some use. However, none of their ideas are stellar and Arnie says, "I guess doughnuts really are only good for eating aren't they?" and he walks out the door. It looks like a sad ending for everyone, until Mr. Bing comes up with a clever idea.
My children came up with a clever idea for their end-of-the-year gifts for their teachers. They wanted to give them Dunkin' Donuts gift cards and accompany the gift card with a hand-painted piece of cardboard that looked like a donut. They turned out so cool that I thought it would be fun to repeat the craft, but this time turn the cardboard donuts into Arnies!
|
My daughter was there to support me as I got the craft supplies ready. |
|
I cut the donut circles out of corrugated cardboard. Also, I had acrylic paint, pipe cleaners for Arnie's arms and legs, glitter, and SPRINKLES! |
|
They came up with idea of squirting acrylic paint into an empty yogurt container. In this case it was brown paint for Arnie's chocolate icing. |
|
Then, he added glitter. Not a little glitter...A LOT! This made the paint spreadable with a craft stick. |
|
Big brother decided to join the fun! |
|
My daughter had her sweatbands on. Mixing paint is hard work! |
|
Icing his doughnut. |
|
My oldest daughter joined in too. While the paint was still wet she added googily eyes. We added the pipe cleaners too. This was easy to do. We just slid the pipe cleaner into the opening in the corrugated cardboard. |
|
We made Arnie's mouth on another piece of cardboard with a black Sharpie marker. |
|
Adding the sprinkles was the most fun! |
|
He shook off the extra sprinkles. |
|
Hello, Arnie! |
|
She loved this craft! |
|
This is my youngest daughter's Arnie the Doughnut. |
|
This is my youngest son's Arnie the Doughnut. It had so many sprinkles we needed to think of a way to keep them from falling off. |
|
We squirted fast finish decoupage onto Arnie. After a few applications all the sprinkles stayed in place. It worked out so well that we decided to decoupage all of our Arnies. |
We did this activity right before all of our children went to stay at grandma and grandpa's house for the weekend. Then, my wife and I got away to
Geneva on the Lake in Ohio. Once we arrived in town, by coincidence we were told that we had to visit
Madsen Donuts for breakfast. How could pass up this opportunity to visit a donut shop on Laurie Keller's birthday. The donuts were the best I have ever had. Of course, I had to get one with sprinkles!
|
My wife loves taking selfies. |
|
I loved watching them glaze the donuts! |
|
Is that a Scrambled States of America map on the wall? |
|
The best donut I have ever had! |
Pre-Order Laurie Keller's next book, WE ARE GROWING! It will be available in September 2016!
Links:1.
Laurie Keller's Website2. Follow Laurie Keller Books on
Twitter3, Interviews -
Watch. Connect, Read.,
Kids' Book Review,
Zrecs,
LibrarySparks,
Literacy Worldwide,
Seven Impossible Things Blog,
Bookie Woogie,
100 ScopeNotes4. Audio Interview -
Let's Get Busy Podcast5. Video Interview -
Scholastic6. Gaithersburg Book Festival 2014 -
YouTubeBirthday Source:
Scholastic/Weston Woods,
Junior Library Guild, Scrambled States Talent Show End Pages
Happy Birthday, Sophie Blackall - July 2
Today I told my children, "We are celebrating our 300th author birthday." They looked at me with disbelief and said, "What!?! NO WAY!"
I can't believe it either. I can remember how excited I felt when we reached fifty celebrations. Today I couldn't help thinking,
Why do I keep writing this blog?There are many reasons.
Because it is fun.
Because I like the challenge.
Because my kids like it.
Because it makes me a better dad.
Because it keeps me reading children's books.
Because it inspires me to do things I normally wouldn't do.
Because it makes me feel creatively anxious.
Because we get to meet really cool authors and illustrators.
Because it keeps me feeling young and alive.
Because maybe I will inspire another dad to read to his child.
Because what else would I do with my spare time.
Because with each blog post I am becoming a better writer.
Because I never know what could happen.
I never know what could happen. That is my favorite reason. I keep reading, thinking, creating, and writing just because I want to find out what is going to happen next.
This week's birthday celebration for Sophie Blackall went nothing like I expected, but I realize as I write this that it was still pretty awesome. My mom, who encouraged me to write this blog from day one, helped with part of the celebration. The weather wasn't cooperating, but improved just at the right time and despite getting lost in the woods we found our destination, the perfect spot to wrap up the celebration.
Sophie Blackall has illustrated over 30 books for children including
Jumpy Jack and Googily by Meg Rosoff,
Edwin Speaks Up by April Stevens, and
Spinster Goose: Twisted Rhymes for Naughty Children by
Lisa Wheeler. She was born in Australia and spent many hours of her childhood reading books in trees. She said, "I spent a great deal of my childhood up a tree with a book. My brother was usually in the tree next door, also with a book. We had a brilliantly designed, poorly executed rope, pulley and basket system between trees to exchange books." (
Nerdy Book Club). Her favorite book when she was younger was
Winnie-the Pooh. She said, "
Winnie-the-Pooh was the first book I bought with my own money. It was an old, worn edition. A prop in my mother's antique shop. I read it in my secret spot under a table. I used to hide the book so nobody would buy it. Eventually my mother sold it to me for a dollar, and I polished the steps to earn the money." (
The Horn Book, Caldecott Acceptance Speech)
Sophie earned a Bachelor of Design in Sydney in 1992. After graduating, she held a variety of art-related jobs and had a few exhibitions of her art in galleries. In 2000, she won a green card in a lottery and moved to New York with her family with hopes of making children's books. (
Advance.org). In 2002, she published her first book
Ruby's Wish by Shirin Yim and was awarded the Ezra Jack Keats New Illustrator Award in 2003.
Sophie Blackall has been very busy during her sixteen years living in the United States. She has created editorial illustrations for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and more. In 2011, she created a poster for
New York MTA that hung in all the new trains in the city. Also, in 2011 she both wrote and illustrated her first children's book,
Are you Awake?. She has illustrated the successful chapter book series
Ivy and Bean by Annie Barrows and a few chapter books by her studio-mate
John Marciano. (
Click here to read more about her studio). Their latest collaboration is the
The Witches of Benevento series. Sophie Blackall told Don Tate, "I have done at least two (and up to four) picture books and a chapter book and a bunch of other projects every year for the past 13 years. And THEN I realize that I haven't had a proper weekend in about 13 years. And then I feel like taking a nap." (
Don Tate).
All this hard work led up to winning the 2016 Caldecott Medal for
Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World's Most Famous Bear. When she spoke at the Mazza Museum Summer Conference she described this book as a "once in a lifetime book." As she spoke of the book, you could feel her excitement. All of us at the conference had to wait as it wasn't available at the time of conference. But, it was worth it and I was beyond excited for Sophie when my family and I heard the announcement that she had won the Caldecott! A well-deserved award for and amazing illustrator and person!
Additionally, at the Mazza Museum, Sophie Blackall talked about
A Fine Dessert: Four Centuries, Four Families, One Delicious Treat by Emily Jenkins. A story about
blackberry fool, one of the oldest desserts in Western culture.
We read this book before bed on a night my mom came to stay at our house. The next day my youngest two children went back to her house for special grandma and grandpa time. What was one of the things they did? The made red raspberry fool to bring back to share with us the next day! How cool is that?
|
It is even more cool that they went to their great-grandpa and great-grandma's farm to pick the red raspberries to use in the dessert. Do you see great-grandpa in the background? He is 92 years old and loves his great-grand children very much! |
|
They used special baskets designed by great-grandpa to make picking berries more efficient. The bucket was tied around his waist to allow him to pick with both hands. |
|
Fool is made with fresh fruit, sugar, vanilla, and heavy cream. The big kids were very happy that grandma brought the fool back to share! |
|
Yum! The fool was so good! |
|
The book shows families from 1710, 1810, 1910, and 2010 eating blackberry fool. |
|
This is how a family from 2016 eats it! |
|
Thank you, Mom, for helping out with this part of the author birthday celebration! |
Remember at the beginning of this post when I shared with you that Sophie Blackall spent a lot of time reading in trees with her brother when she was younger. I thought this would be a fun activity for my family too. But, the weather wasn't cooperating. It was supposed to rain the day I planned to take the whole family to a special tree I found in the woods. We were patient and the skies cleared in the afternoon, but would I remember where to find the perfect tree?
|
Something didn't seem right about this path. I didn't remember walking this long the day I found the tree. I was getting a little nervous. |
|
My son checked the signs and tried to help me remember. We doubled back and I realized we took a wrong turn right at the beginning of our hike. We walked for a over a mile, when it should have been a 3 minute walk to find the tree. |
|
We found it! This was the tree with its massive low lying branch we were looking for. Local friends, this tree is at the Moebius Nature Center in Aurora, Ohio. |
|
Just a boy and one of his favorite books of all time! |
|
Do you want to trade? |
|
I am so happy to have shared so many reading experiences with these two. They were 4 and 2 when we started celebrating author birthdays. |
|
I think we should frame this photo. |
|
We love your books, Sophie! |
|
Thank you, Sophie for sharing your birthday with us. It was beyond awesome to spend time with you at the Mazza Museum Summer Conference. It has been one of the highlights of all my experiences writing this blog! |
Links:1.
Sophie Blackall's Website2.
Sophie Blackall's Blog3. Follow Sophie Blackall on
Facebook,
Twitter4.
Sophie Blackall's Etsy5. Sophie Blackall and John Marciano talk about THE WITCHES OF BENEVENTO -
YouTube6. Interviews -
Don Tate,
Brain Pickings,
Juana Martinez Neal blog,
BookPage,
Veerle Blog,
Seven Impossible Things Blog 2008,
Seven Impossible Things Blog 2011,
Pen and Oink,
The Horn Book,
Audrey Moore Blog,
The Rumpus7. A FINE DESSERT teacher's guide -
RandomHouse8. IVY + BEAN Teacher's Guide -
Chronicle Books9. FINDING WINNIE Educator's Guide -
Little Brown10. Sophie Blackall and Emily Jenkins make Blackberry Fool -
KID LIT TV
Happy Birthday, Adam Lehrhaupt - June 28Last March, I received a tweet from Adam Lehrhaupt after we celebrated
Ame Dyckman's birthday. At the time, I had no idea that the sweets from Ame's birthday and the exchange of tweets with Adam would lead to even more treats for my family. Sure the moon pies were delicious, but reading Adam's wonderful picture books with my children this week was the best treat of all!
Adam Lehrhaupt is the author of three picture books with many more on the way! His love of writing started in high school when he "wrote snippets of stories or ideas in the margins of all [his] books." (
Robin Newman Books). A couple of his teachers took notice of his creative side and "pushed" him to find out where his creativity could take him. (
Let's Get Busy Podcast).
He went to two different art schools and during his time at Tisch School of the Arts at NYU he studied many things including light and sound design. In the summers he worked for a lighting company that toured with popular music bands including The Allman Brothers and Dave Mathews Band. Later he had the opportunity to work for David Copperfield. He spent four years traveling all over the world as a member of his tour crew. After touring, he worked on a farm for a short time and then returned to art where he worked as an art director for ten years. (
AdamLehrhaupt.com).
Adam's creativity took him on many different journeys and all the while he was writing and journaling about his experiences. "When I was on tour and traveling, I kept a journal. Eventually, I sat down to write my great American novel...but what came out was a goofy poem about a puppy." (
Robin Newman Books). The poem about a puppy led to many more poems and a few manuscripts.
During a trip to Honduras his family encountered some "naughty monkeys" and Adam had to write about them. It was this experience that would lead to his first picture book
Warning: Do Not Open This Book!. He said, "The monkeys that were the inspiration for this story live on an island off the coast of Honduras called Roatan...They live at the resort there, and spend their days stealing tourists' drinks, playing with their suntan lotion, wearing their sunglasses, eating their books, generally causing all kinds of trouble. Needless to say, my family fell instantly in love with them." (
Kate Louise Author Blog). Those naughty monkeys are trapped inside
Warning: Do Not Open This Book! and by opening the book the reader lets them out along with some toucans and an ALLIGATOR! The only way to get them back in the book is to lure them with something they really like and shut the book quickly.
Warning: Do Not Open This Book! was named a 2014
E.B White Read Aloud Honor Book and an ALA Notable Book. Its success prompted a sequel,
Please, Open This Book!, that is equally as entertaining. The naughty monkeys, toucans, and alligator are back and are begging the reader to open the book to let them out because it is really dark inside. Once the book is open they plead their case to the reader, but panic sets in as the reader gets closer to the end. These books are so much fun!
Adam's latest book
Chicken in Space! inspired our author birthday celebration activity. Zoey is a chicken and has a friend named Sam who is a pig. Zoey shares with him her plan to travel to outer space and Sam reluctantly follows along, but he can't help thinking about pie. Sam wonders if its a good idea to go on this adventure before eating some pie but Zoey is ready now! She finds a space ship which is really a basket and a bunch of balloons and together they liftoff. Sam is looking for pie, but Zoey's imagination takes over. After the perfect landing Zoey surprises Sam with a special treat to thank him for going on the adventure with her.
|
What was the special treat that Zoey gave Sam? A moon pie, of course! My kids have never had a moon pie and I thought it would fun to go on an adventure to make them together to celebrate Adam's birthday. |
|
My daughter loves being in charge of the mixer. |
|
My youngest son sifted the flour while my oldest son crushed graham crackers. |
|
The recipe called for us to roll the dough into an 1 1/2 inch log that needed to be chilled for an hour in the refrigerator. |
|
It was the perfect time read all of Adam's books! |
|
Later in the afternoon, we cut the dough into cookie-sized pieces. |
|
I didn't think our cookies looked moon-like. |
|
I reformed the dough. |
|
That's better! |
|
Moon pies have a marshmallow center. We chose to use marshmallow fluff! |
|
Marshmallow fluff is one of my daughter's favorite foods. She wanted to eat it right out of the tube. |
|
I changed the recipe's subtitle. |
|
The recipe called for only 1 tablespoon of marshmallow. It was hard not to add more! |
|
Another cookie was squished on top. |
|
My kiddos wanted to cover their moon pies with melted chocolate. |
|
My daughter thought dipping one cookie at a time was the easiest way to apply the chocolate. |
|
"Not just a pie," said Zoey. "A moon pie!" |
|
Thank you, Adam for tweeting your birthday to us! WE LOVE YOUR BOOKS and we can't wait to read more! |
I can't wait for Adam Lehrhaupt's next book with illustrator Scott Magoon, I WILL NOT EAT YOU. It will be released September 6, 2016! Also, Adam will have another book published in March 2017, I DON'T DRAW, I COLOR!Links:1.
Adam Lehrhaupt's Website +
Teacher's Guides2. PLEASE, OPEN THIS BOOK (trailer) -
YouTube3. WARNING: DO NOT OPEN THIS BOOK (trailer) -
YouTube4. Follow Adam Lehrhaupt on
Facebook,
Twitter5. Interviews -
Kate Louise Author Blog,
Robin Newman, Henry Herz,
Tara Lazar's Blog6. Audio Interviews -
Let's Get Busy Podcast (2013),
Let's Get Busy Podcast (2015)
Happy Birthday, Eric Carle - June 25
One of the greatest lessons I have learned during my 11 years as a stay-at-home dad is that if you are willing to cook it or bake it yourself it will probably be cheaper, healthier, or taste better than buying it from the grocery. Most of the time it is all three. However, this would not be possible without the hard-working food bloggers and food websites that share their recipes.
Countless times I have wondered...
Can make that myself? And every time I have learned that I can, because someone else must have wondered the same thing, invented a recipe, and shared it online. I have learned how to make homemade birthday cake, homemade whipped cream and homemade granola bars; all of which I like better than buying from the store. I wish I had the time and desire to spend the whole day in the kitchen. I could probably make everything my family eats from scratch. I know it is unrealistic to think that anyone could do that, but I do love learning new recipes to make things myself instead of just picking it up from the store. This week I can thank
Walter the Baker and Eric Carle for teaching me how fun, easy, and delicious it can be to make homemade pretzels.
This is our 5th birthday celebration for Eric Carle, author and illustrator of
The Very Hungry Caterpillar. This year we read
Walter the Baker. It is a story about Walter, his wife Anna, and their son Walter Jr. They make the most delicious sweet rolls in the town. They are so delicious that Walter Jr. is responsible for delivering sweet rolls to the castle for the Duke and Duchess to enjoy each morning. One day, the family cat spills the milk and Walter decides to use water instead to make his sweet rolls. The Duke is furious when his sweet rolls do not taste right and wants to banish Walter from the town. Walter pleads with the Duke and is granted a chance to redeem himself if he can bake a roll from one piece of dough that the rising sun can shine through three times. Walter struggles to come up with a roll and in a fit of frustration throws his last piece of dough up in the air. It twists and turns and falls into a bucket of water. His son Walter notices the dough and his wife Anna puts it in the oven to bake. As a result Walter the Baker bakes a pretzel and the Duke loves it!
Eric Carle shared on his blog that
Walter the Baker was a story "based on a tale his Grandmother told him" when he was a boy. However, he said, "I truly had an uncle named Walter who was a baker and who baked, along with all kinds of bread, cookies, cakes, and rolls; pretzels!" (
Eric Carle's Blog; A Pretzel Story)
I thought it would fun to make homemade pretzels just like Walter the Baker and Eric Carle's Uncle Walter. I found a
recipe online and we set to work.
|
My daughter and I read Walter the Baker and then got out the ingredients to make pretzels. |
|
She added the yeast to the warm milk. |
|
She stirred in the flour, brown sugar, and butter. |
|
Her brothers and sister quickly found out we were making pretzels. They helped stir in more flour. |
|
Everyone had a chance to knead the dough. |
|
Once the dough had risen we divided it into six parts. My son prepared a baking soda and water solution. |
|
They rolled and stretched their dough. |
|
The recipe called for the dough to be stretched to 30 inches. |
|
Then, we twisted the dough it into a pretzel shape. We had to have three holes for the sun to shine through. |
|
It wasn't as easy as we thought. |
|
But, she was having fun. |
|
They tried and tried. |
|
Eventually, everyone made a pretzel shape. |
|
We dipped the pretzels into the baking soda solution and placed them on a baking sheet. |
|
Then, they added some coarse sea salt. |
|
They soon learned that a lot of salt is not necessarily a good thing. |
|
We baked them for about 10 minutes and they turned out great. |
|
I think the Duke would be happy with our baking. |
|
We dipped the pretzels in butter to make them extra yummy and then it was time to enjoy. |
|
We recommend this book and we hope you try making your own pretzels. They were delicious and fun to make together as a family! |
Check out Eric Carle's Latest Book, The Nonsense Show (released October 2015) and LOVE from THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR (December 2015):
Links:4. Previous Birthday Celebrations from Happy Birthday Author -
2010,
2011,
2014, 2015
9. The Education of a Good Picture Writer - Eric Carle -
YouTube (a 1 hour long speech)
11. Eric Carle describes his illustration technique with tissue paper - via MacMillanKids on
YouTube12. Eric Carle reads THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR -
YouTube14. 45th Anniversary of THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR website -
Penguin16. The World of Eric Carle on
Facebook17. Interview 2015 -
Chicago Tribune
Happy Birthday, Steve Johnson - June 20
Reading and learning with my children is what defines me as father. I tell people all the time that writing this blog has made me a better dad and I believe that. It has inspired me to be active in my children's lives, taught me to feel grateful for all the experiences we have shared together, and keeps me excited for the possibilities.
So, how would I choose to spend my Father's Day? Of course, it would be reading and celebrating an author/illustrator birthday and I had the perfect book illustrated by Steve Johnson that would be fun for the whole family.
Steve Johnson has published over 45 books including
My Many Colored Days written
by
Dr. Seuss,
The Frog Prince, Continued written by
John Scieszka, and
One Frozen Lake by Deborah Jo Larson. He has collaborated with his wife, Lou Fancher, on most of his books. Their collaboration in children's books began in 1989 when they published
No Star Nights by Anna Smucker which was awarded an International Reading Association Children's Book Award for Young Readers. (
We celebrated Lou's birthday in September 2015. Click here to read the post!)Steve Johnson studied illustration and painting at The College of Visual Arts in St. Paul, Minnesota and Lou Fancher studied dance at the University of Cincinnati. Lou's dancing brought her together with Steve when he was photographing ballet dancers as reference for his artwork and Lou was at the ballet studio. Later, Steve offered her the painting he made of her and the rest is history.
|
Lou Fancher and Steve Johnson at the Mazza Museum Summer Conference 2015 |
Steve and Lou's artistic collaboration is very unique. It is a "fluid" arrangement. Both artists paint on the same painting. Both may start paintings in the same book. They say, "It just depends on who is better at it." Their artwork also changes for each book. For example, they used potato stamping in
Cat, You Better Come Home by Garrison Keillor, painted on fabric for
The King's Taster by Kenneth Oppel, and incorporated photographs of their own family for
BeBop Express by H.L. Panahi. They explained the reason for the variety in their work, "Our artwork is different for each book because the author's voice has been different in each one." Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher's next book is
A Poem for Peter: The Story of Ezra Jack Keats and the Creation of The Snowy Day by
Andrea Davis Pinkney. It is set to be released November 2016.
One of our favorite books by Steve Johnson is
The Salamander Room, written by Anne Mazer. It is a story about a young boy named Brian who finds a salamander in the woods and brings it home to live with him. Brian's mom asks, "Where will he sleep?" Brian answers, "I will make him a salamander bed to sleep in." With each of his answers, Brian is asked another question by his mom which transforms Brian's room into the perfect habitat. But where will Brian sleep? Brian has the best answer.
I wondered if I could take my children to the woods to find a salamander just like Brian did in
The Salamander Room. We asked a few friends where they would recommend going and the consensus was
Squaw Rock Loop Trail in the South Chagrin Reservation of the Cleveland Metroparks.
|
Our friends suggested this trail because of its accessible creek beds that would be just right for hunting salamanders. |
|
I had never looked for salamanders before, but my oldest son went on the field trip in first grade and remembered the park ranger overturning rocks to find them. |
|
My oldest daughter was in the creek bed less than five minutes when she called out, "I got one!" We all rushed over to see. |
|
I picked up the salamander with the leaves he was sitting on and placed him in a container for all of us to observe. |
|
My son identified the salamander as a Northern Two-Lined Salamander that is very common in Northeast Ohio. |
|
My oldest daughter had super-salamander-detecting skills. It seemed like every rock she looked under uncovered another one. |
|
"See it, Dad. Right there!" |
|
Two more salamanders! I couldn't believe how many we found. |
|
This was a fun activity for the whole family. |
|
A great way to spend Father's Day! |
|
We continued our hike on the Squaw Rock Loop Trail and found another place to explore. |
|
They loved navigating the slippery rocks to get to the other side of the Chagrin River. I was anxious that one of them was going to get hurt. Thankfully, there were just a few slips. No boo-boos. Just some wet clothes. |
|
This boy loves nature! |
|
So, does this boy! I found another spot that seemed like the perfect place for a salamander to live. It was like an outdoor salamander room. |
|
I found one! |
|
Happy Birthday, Steve Johnson! It was nice to meet you at the Mazza Museum. Thank you for sharing your birthday with us! |
Check out Steve Johnson's latest books,
Shh! Bears Sleeping and
Dr. Seuss: The Great Doodler:
Links:1.
Fancher and Johnson Website2.
The Cheese Printable -
HarperCollins3. Teacher's Guide for The Remarkable Story of Maria Anna Mozart -
Elizabeth Rusch4.
The Salamander Room on Reading Rainbow -
YouTube5.
The Salamander Room Reading Rainbow learning packet
Happy Birthday, Angela Johnson - June 18
Over the years, I developed a misunderstanding about when and how slavery ended in America. I could blame my school for not addressing it or a teacher for not teaching it or myself for not learning it. You see before I read Angela Johnson's
All Different Now I had never heard of Juneteenth. I did not know its significance. But, I do now and I have a much better understanding thanks to a picture book, a great city, and an amazing author.
Angela Johnson writes for a variety of readers. She has published over 40 books including
When I am Old with You, Just Like Josh Gibson, and two books illustrated by
Loren Long,
I Dream of Trains and
Wind Flyers. Additionally, three of her chapter books for older children
The First Part Last (2004),
Heaven (1999), and
Toning the Sweep (1994) received Coretta Scott King Awards. She described her experience writing for children with
The Brown Bookshelf, "I did not think it was odd to want to write poetry, picture books, middle readers, novels and board books and short stories. No one told me I couldn't -- so I did."
Before she was a writer Angela Johnson was a reader. Her family loved to read so much that her father made a rule that no books were allowed during meal time. One of her teachers read
Harriet the Spy to her in elementary school which inspired her to ask her parents for a diary so she could write. (
Ohioana Authors)
Angela Johnson attended Kent State University to become a teacher, but decided to leave school to pursue writing. To support herself she was a child development worker and a nanny. One of the children she took care of was the son of
Cynthia Rylant. Cynthia Rylant, who also has a June birthday, learned that Johnson was writing and asked if she could read some of her work. It took some time, but Angela got the courage to share. Cynthia Rylant thought her writing was good enough to be shared with her editor. Angela Johnson described the experience, "Soon after that she informed me of what she had done. I was shocked, but shocked even more when her editor called me a couple of months later to tell me he'd like to publish the story as a picture book." (
The Brown Bookshelf). Her first book was
Tell Me a Story Mama which was published in 1989 and later in 1991 Johnson received the Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award for the book.
In 1992, Angela Johnson was described by
Rudine Sims Bishop as "one of the most prominent African-American literary artists of the next generation" (
The ALAN Review). Now, almost 25 years later, Angela Johnson continues to write and inspire others with her literary art, but also assists writers and students at Kent State University as a writer-in-residence. Her latest picture book is
All Different Now: Juneteenth, the First Day of Freedom, illustrated by E.B. Lewis.
All Different Now: Juneteenth, the First Day of Freedom is a story about a day that starts the same as all the others. A day people feel the same as they did the day before. However, on this day everything will be different before its over. On this day, June 19, 1865, in Texas, Major General Gordon Granger made an announcement from a balcony in Galveston. The news spread to the fields. It was news that would make things different. It was news that came to Texas two and half years after the Emancipation Proclamation and almost six months after the 13th amendment was enacted. It was news that they were free. The last slaves in America would be living a life that would be all different now.
My family was given
All Different Now: Juneteenth, the First Day of Freedom as a gift
. (I love getting picture books as gifts!)
For this reason it was the first book I chose to read in my preparation for our author birthday celebration. It immediately struck me that Angela Johnson's birthday was so close to Juneteenth (June 19, 1865) and I wondered if there was a way to learn more about this important day in American history.
I discovered that the city of Oberlin, Ohio was holding a
Juneteenth celebration and it happened to be on Angela Johnson's birthday! For years the city of Oberlin has been celebrating Juneteenth with a festival, a parade, activities, and togetherness. The citizens of Oberlin are proud of their city's history. Their city was a key part of the Underground Railroad and the route to freedom, their citizens sacrificed their lives to stand up for the freedom for all, and their college has welcomed all people, regardless of their background to learn with them since 1835. This seemed like the perfect place to learn more about Juneteenth.
|
Oberlin, Ohio was an important city in the fight to end slavery. |
|
"Juneteenth has morphed into a more national symbolic celebration of respect for all cultures." (Angela Johnson, All Different Now, Afterword) |
|
Our first activity at the Juneteenth celebration was to ride a trolley. |
|
On the trolley, we learned about how african-american builders influenced architecture in America. |
|
It was a beautiful day for a trolley ride in the city. |
|
A fun and educational activity for all ages. |
|
In the city square there was music, food, and many vendors. There was lots to hear, smell, and see! The ribs smelled so good! |
|
The Oberlin Public Library had a table at the festival. I was happy to find All Different Now: Juneteenth, the First Day of Freedom on display! |
|
There was cornhole and many other games for my kids, |
|
And a parade at noon! |
|
Abraham Lincoln was there too! |
|
My kids were happy to get candy from the historic Oberlin Juneteenth clown. |
|
Thank you, Angela Johnson and Oberlin, Ohio for teaching my family all about the importance of Juneteenth. |
Links:1.
Angela Johnson's Website2. Biography -
Ohioana Authors3. Interview -
The Brown Bookshelf,
The ALAN review,
CCBC4. A Curriculum Guide to ALL DIFFERENT NOW -
CFmedia5. More about ALL DIFFERENT NOW -
SLJ6. Juneteenth Oberlin, Ohio -
Website,
Video (2014)
Happy Birthday, Deborah Freedman - May 6
I feel thankful as I write this blog post after a morning walk to school with my children. The end of last week was rainy as was the beginning of this week. Today the sun was out and the sky was bright blue. The air had the perfect touch of cool. Dew sparkled on the grass which prompted my son to ask me how it forms. The white puffs on the dandelions looked sticky from the moisture. We thought,
I guess we will have to wait to blow them. A group of rabbits darted under a bush. They were fast but we still saw their puff tails.
We leave twenty minutes earlier when we decide to walk to school. Despite having less time to get ready there seems to be less stress for everyone on these days. Less stress is something to be thankful about. Slowly walking with my children is something to be thankful about. Celebrating another author birthday with my family is something to be thankful about too.
Deborah Freedman is the author and illustrator of four, soon to be
five, picture books including
The Story of Fish and Snail and
By Mouse and Frog. A daily walk is part of Deborah's routine. She said, "The rhythm of walking helps with picture books." (Mazza Museum Keynote.) Another thing that helps is growing up with a strong family connection to field of children's literature. Deborah's aunt and uncle, Mary Ann and Norman Hoberman, created picture books together in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Mary Ann Hoberman went on to become a Children's Poet Laureate and an author of over 30 books. At the Mazza Museum Deborah described their influence, "Their books are a part of me now, part of my wiring."
Deborah attended Yale University to study art history and then went to Harvard Graduate School of Design to study architecture. She worked as an architect but started to play with books when her daughters were very young. She often made tiny, personal hardcover books for them and when they were older the books contained funny things her daughters said.
Deborah's daughters loved to draw too and when they got a little bit older they would tell stories about their drawings. This gave Deborah an idea, "What if I wrote a story about two sisters who loved to draw and the story behind their drawings? When they [my daughters] were really little I took their drawings and photocopied them and doodled around them and tried to make a book out of their actual drawings (see photo below), but...after playing with that for a couple of years actually it was limiting me. I realized I had to do the 'kids' drawings myself." (
Classroom Connections). All of this led to her first picture book,
Scribble in 2007.
Scribble is a story about two sisters whose drawings lead to fight, a black scribble, a story of a princess and a kitty, and a happy ending.
Blue Chicken was Deborah Freedman's second book and was the inspiration for our birthday celebration activity. This book starts with an almost finished painting on an artist's desk. The only thing left to paint is the sky and the barn. While the artist is away, the painting comes alive with a white chicken spying the artist's watercolor paints on the desk nearby. The chicken wants to help finish the painting, but the paint spills! The white chicken is no longer white, but BLUE! Paint splatters everywhere and the other animals are unable to avoid it. Blue chicken must figure out a way to clean up the mess and maybe, just maybe, his solution will also help with painting.
Deborah told the audience at the Mazza Museum that she used a straw to blow paint to make some of the illustrations for
Blue Chicken. The splatters and splashes were scanned and combined with separate drawings of the farm animals. She described this as "controlled chaos" as she didn't want to ruin her drawings if the paint didn't splash the right way. I had to try this! I wondered if we could combine
Scribble and
Blue Chicken into an afternoon of messy fun!
|
First, we drew guys... |
|
And then a chicken. |
|
After my daughter finished a drawing of a princess and while her brother was drawing a knight she asked if she could draw one more thing. I am glad she did. |
|
All the drawings were complete. |
|
Deborah Freedman also used pipettes to squirt paint, toothbrushes to make fine splatters, and paintbrushes for bigger splotches for the illustrations in Blue Chicken. (Classroom Connections). I had all of these tools plus many pieces of heavy watercolor paper for my children to create their art. |
|
I found small plastic pipettes in a science kit we had in the basement. It was their favorite tool they used during this project. |
|
After squirting on the blue paint they used the straw to blow the paint around. |
|
Make sure you put down newspaper because the paint will go everywhere. |
|
My daughter was having so much fun! The mess was contained until she started experimenting with flicking paint with a toothbrush. Her art looked awesome on the paper but her hands were bright blue. We joked, You are starting to turn into a blue chicken. |
|
My son really liked flicking the paint with a paintbrush. |
|
She flicked paint on her face! |
|
Her squirted paint on the floor with the pipette. (I needed to wash that rug anyway!) |
|
Their paintings were awesome! We let them dry and I started to scan their black Scribble drawings while my daughter was working on one last blue painting. Then, she called me back into the kitchen... |
|
Instead of blowing the paint, she sucked in!
We went to the bathroom, rinsed her mouth, and brushed her teeth. All the blue came off her tongue and teeth, but her hands were a different story... |
|
She really turned blue like Chicken! |
|
The bottle did say, "washes out with soap and water." Later, by the time she had her nighttime bath she was back to being a white chicken. |
|
I scanned all their Scribble drawings and their favorite blue splotch painting. Then, we put everything together into one piece of art. |
|
Do you see the blue chicken in middle of the paint? |
|
My son's knight stood with his spear in the middle of the blue paint splatter. |
Deborah, thank you for sharing your birthday with me at the Mazza Museum. We hope you have a wonderful birthday and wish for sunshine during your daily walk!
Deborah Freedman's next book, SHY, is available for pre-order with a release date of September 27, 2016:Links:1.
Deborah Freedman's Website +
MANY RESOURCES for Teachers and Parents
2. Follow Deborah Freedman on
Twitter and
Facebook3. Educator's Guide/Teacher's Guide for Deborah Freedman's Books -
Penguin4. Interviews -
Dani Duck,
AuthorTurf,
Henry Herz,
Christie Wright Wild Blog,
Seven Impossible Things Blog5. Deborah Freedman's Begins Drawing -
PiBoIdMo6. Deborah Freedman WNTH News Interview -
YouTube7. Deborah Freedman Video Interview -
Classroom Connections YouTube
Happy Birthday, Jeff Mack - May 2
AH HA! A new author birthday blog post! In the month of May? For real?
I am so thankful to start off this month celebrating Jeff Mack's birthday. Not just because he is a really funny guy (HA HA!) and a talented storyteller, but I remember last May when we didn't celebrate any author birthdays.
The month of May is so crazy for our family. (AAAH!) Baseball practices and games take up most of our evenings and the end of the school year is packed with many extra activities. (AAAH! AAAH!) So, I wish everyone a fun and stress-free start to the month of May. If you need me, I hope to find some time to put up my feet so I can read more books by Jeff Mack. (AAAH!)
Jeff Mack has illustrated over 25 books for children including
Hurry! Hurry! by
Eve Bunting,
Rub-A-Dub Sub by Linda Ashman, and his own,
AH HA! and
Good News Bad News. Jeff loved to draw monsters and other things that scared him when he was young, "I always had a tough time but my dad would give me a hand. He would show me how to draw a Dracula's face and I would practice it. After a while I got a lot better at it." (
Creating Cooperative Kids).
In the first grade, he began making his own books, "Our library had just two monster books:
Famous Movie Monsters and
Bigfoot. I wanted more, so I made my own. Usually they were in comic book form and starred the other kids in my class. At the beginning, it would seem like a normal day, but, by the end, everyone got eaten by monsters." (
Chronicle Books).
In second grade, Jeff's teacher allowed him to use his comic book storytelling format for a Halloween short story contest and when it was finished he was able to hang it in the classroom. His story was big hit which prompted him to make more comics for his classmates to read. (Mazza Museum Keynote).
Jeff Mack went onto study fine art and writing at SUNY Oswego at Syracuse University and Scuola Lorenzo De Medici in Florence, Italy. He started working as a painter, painting movie and music posters and then as a muralist and faux-finisher. But, Jeff really wanted to make books. So, he wrote a story, did all the paintings, photo-copied it into a book dummy, and "snuck it into his portfolio" which he dropped of at publishing houses during the "Drop Off Days". (Mazza Museum Keynote). The publishers thought his story and book dummy were "a little too weird", but the artwork in his portfolio caught their eye and led to his first book,
Icky Sticky Chameleon by Dawn Bentley in 2002.
For many years, Jeff illustrated books for other authors including the
Bunnicula and Friends early reader series by James Howe. Jeff said during his presentation at the Mazza Museum, "All of these illustration jobs led me to write my own stories." His first book that he both wrote and illustrated was
Hush Little Polar Bear in 2008. Later, writing his own picture books led him to write a few graphic novel-type early readers about
Hippo and Rabbit and the chapter book series,
Clueless McGee. Check out Jeff's latest picture books
Look! and
Who Needs a Bath?.
Our favorite book we read this week was
AH HA!. It is a very clever book. Jeff Mack tells the story of a frog and its multiple escapes with just four letters (actually just two letters, A and H)! He talked about picking just the right text for he book, "The book is too action-packed to be quiet and wordless. I wanted kids to have something to say out loud so they could express their emotions as they read. So I replaced the words [written in an earlier draft] with expressions made from the letters A and H. The pictures show the action, and the words let the readers know how the characters are feeling." (
Seven Impossible Things).
AH HA! starts out with a happy frog in a pond. (AAHH!) The frog finds a rock. (AH HA!) As it sits on the rock it is captured in a glass jar by a boy. Then, a dog knocks the frog out of the jar (AAHH!) and sends it flying back into the pond. The frog thinks it has found safety on another rock, but this is just the beginning of a story that is sure to make your family laugh out loud. (HA HA!)
I read this book before bedtime and my kids LOVED IT! I had to use it to celebrate Jeff Mack's birthday. Then, AH HA! I knew just what we could do and thankfully the weather was beautiful the next day!
|
First, we punched holes in the lids from two mason jars with a hammer and a nail. |
|
Then, we grabbed our frog-catching net and hiking sticks for a walk down to the pond. |
|
My children were shocked by all the frogs jumping in from the edge. |
|
They were determined to catch a frog. |
|
They were quiet but not quiet enough to sneak up on the frogs. |
|
They could see them everywhere and had many opportunities to catch one. |
|
They were just too slow. |
|
I think this frog knew we were trying to catch him. |
|
Finally, I scooped up a frog for them. But, it jumped out of our net. As it was hopping away I grabbed him and put him in the glass jar. My son twisted on the lid. |
|
He was so excited to see the frog close up. |
|
The frog...he was not pleased. (AAAH!) |
|
My daughter took a peak. |
|
Just like the book. |
|
Let me out of here! |
|
Maybe we misunderstood his AAHH! He didn't want to come out at first. Maybe he liked it in the jar. |
|
He started to hop away. |
|
But, my son wanted to help him get back to the pond. |
|
This time the frog wanted nothing to do with the glass jar, so my son asked to borrow his sister's gloves and carried him back to the pond. |
|
The frog happily jumped back into the water. AAHH! |
|
After the frog catching fun we read a few of Jeff Mack's books in the warm sunshine! |
|
Jeff, thank you for sharing your birthday with us at Mazza! We hope you have a wonderful and relaxing birthday! (AAHH!) |
Jeff Mack's next book,
PLAYTIME? will be available May 10, 2016 (only 1 week away!!):
Links:1.
Jeff Mack's Website2. Follow Jeff Mack on
Twitter and
Facebook3. GOOD NEWS BAD NEWS book trailer -
Chronicle Books YouTube4. Interviews -
Watch.Connect.Read.,
Seven Impossible Things Blog,
Chronicle Books,
Examiner Part 1,
Examiner Part 2,
Examiner Part 3,
This Kid Reviews Books,
The Last Draft Writers Group,
Seven Impossible Things (2015)
5. Animated Version of HUSH LITTLE POLAR BEAR -
YouTube6. FROG AND FLY: SIX SLURPY STORIES -
YouTube7. Jeff Mack feature from
MSLA8. Rockstars of Reading: Painting with Jeff Mack -
YouTube
Happy Birthday, Jon Agee - April 19
It was five years ago when we first celebrated Jon Agee's birthday with an
author birthday blog post. Many things have changed with our family since that first celebration, but something that hasn't changed is how much we love his books. I get excited every April to reread many of our favorites but I have found that I need a Jon Agee fix more than once a year.
A few years back, during one of the times I was craving a zany Jon Agee picture book, I discovered
The Other Side of Town. This book became an instant family favorite. We have read it countless times and check it out from the library quite often throughout the year. For Jon Agee's birthday, I challenged myself to come up with something fun so I could share with you how much we love this book.
Jon Agee is the author and illustrator of over 30 books including
The Retired Kid,
Terrific,
My Rhinoceros,
Nothing, and
Milo's Hat Trick. When he was a young boy his mother had a clear vision for his future. In an interview with
Authors Revealed he said, "My father tells me that my mother brainwashed my sister and I. We had no choice but to be artists...because she herself is an artist and she put a crayon in our hand and took every drawing we had and saved them and put them in boxes. I still have the little books I created when I was a boy."
Jon experienced success as an artist at the early age of 17 when one of his drawings was published in the New York Times. He went on to study painting, sculpture, and film making at
Cooper Union School of Art. Near the end of art school Jon was leaning toward exploring film making as a career, but thought many of his drawings and cartoons could possibly be published. He approached many editors but they weren't interested in the drawings themselves. However, they were intrigued by some of the ideas and suggested that he try writing children's books. At the time it was October and Jon "naively" thought he could write a story about Santa and get it published by Christmas. He wrote the story, received interest, and it was published, not that year, but the following year as
If Snow Falls (1982). (
Intersect Podcast).
His first book was followed up by
Ellsworth and
Ludlow Laughs. He received much praise for his fourth book,
The Incredible Painting of Feliz Clousseau including a blessing from
Maurice Sendak. Sendak told him he thought the book should win a Caldecott despite being up against one of his own books. (
jonagee.com). Neither Agee or Sendak won a Caldecott that year, but Jon did receive many awards for the book including an American Library Association Notable Book recognition and being named a Best Illustrated Book of the Year by the New York Times.
Whether it is his word play books on
palindromes or his latest picture book
It's Only Stanley, I find that the more our family reads books by Jon Agee, the more we love them.
The Other Side of Town is a story about a New York City taxi cab driver who picks up a strange little man wearing a green and pink outfit. The strange man asks to be taken to Schmeeker Street, but the taxi cab driver questions him, "You mean Bleecker Street?" The strange man insists on Schmeeker Street and shows the driver the way. They pull up to a wall and the strange man pushes a button on a remote control to open the way to the Finkon Tunnel. The taxi cab driver says, "You mean the Lincoln Tunnel after Abe Lincoln," but the man says, "No, the Finkon Tunnel after Gabe Finkon. He's famous on THE OTHER SIDE OF TOWN." Agee's funny word play creates a parallel universe that the taxi cab driver crosses into only to return to his home in New York to find things are not quite the same.
At one point in
The Other Side of Town, the strange man is reading the sports page and the taxi driver asks if he likes baseball. He replies, "I root for the Spankees." The taxi driver says, "You mean the Yankees?" Then, the strange man says, "No, the Spankees. They are the best team on THE OTHER SIDE OF TOWN." This is our favorite part of the book. If my kids hear someone say "Yankees" on TV it is guaranteed they say, "You mean the Spankees!"
I had this kooky idea to create my own OTHER SIDE OF TOWN baseball team based on our hometown team of the Cleveland Indians.
|
I had a Cleveland Indians jersey that we received free as a promotional item at one of the games last year. I also found pink and green fabric which are prominent colors in the book. |
|
I decided to call my team the Spindians. Do you mean the Indians? No, the Spindians. They play against the Spankees on THE OTHER SIDE OF TOWN. |
|
The most challenging part of this project was to cover the "I" in Indians so I could change the name. First, I sewed a piece of green fabric over the I. |
|
Then, I added the SPI letters I cut out of the pink fabric. |
|
I was surprised that this was working out the way I envisioned. I wondered what else could I do to make this jersey even more awesome! |
|
I covered the name on the back of the jersey. |
|
Then, added AGEE. (My oldest daughter said, "It would have been sweet if Jon Agee's birthday was on the 15th because of the number on the jersey.") |
|
I thought if I could make a jersey. I could make a hat, too. So, I made this logo that was inspired by the strange man's funny hat in the book. I glued the green and pink fabric with fabric glue and then glued the logo onto a navy blue hat. |
|
Now I have the perfect outfit to wear when I read this book. |
|
AGEE! |
|
I was beyond pumped with how this turned out. There was only one thing left to do... |
|
read the book with my kiddos one more time!! |
Pre-order Jon Agee's next book, LION LESSONS, available July 5, 2016:
Links:1.
Jon Agee's Website -
20 Questions Interview2. Author Spotlight -
Reading My Library3. Video Interview -
Authors Revealed (YouTube),
School Interview (Vimeo)4. Five Questions of Jon Agee -
The Horn Book5. Jon Agee introduces
My Rhinoceros -
YouTube6. Audio Interview -
Intersect Podcast7.
Happy Birthday Author Celebration 20118.
Orangutan Tongs Song -
jonagee.com9. Text Interviews -
Kirkus Birthday Source -
BTSB,
Children's Book A Day Almanac,
School Library Monthly,
Children's Lit, Mazza Museum Calendar,
Perma-Bound Author Birthday Calendar
Happy Birthday, Elise Parsley - April 10
Origami makes me anxious. It should be a relaxing activity. Right? One of the most common origami projects is the peace crane. It should be peaceful to make one. But for me, its not peaceful at all! I glaze over while following the lengthy step-by-step directions and always do something wrong.
I feel this anxiety when I do origami by myself. Imagine how I feel doing origami with children. It might be the most frustrating thing ever! My most epic failure as a teacher was thinking I could instruct over 100 fourth graders in the art of origami.
When I was planning this month's author birthday celebrations I made a note next to Elise Parsley's name --
alligator origami. What was I thinking?!? I thought it would be the perfect activity for her debut picture book,
If You Ever Want to Bring An Alligator to School, Don't!, because the alligator gets Magnolia, the main character, in trouble at school for littering the floor with origami.
However, while practicing origami so I could teach my children I started thinking,
If I ever want to do origami to celebrate Elise Parsley's birthday, DONT!. So, I started brainstorming and fiddling around with other craft activities when my son gave me a pile of his folded paper creations; a wallet, a chain of rings, a flower pot, a pocket, and something that looked like a torch. My wife said to him, "I have an origami instruction booklet in the basement. Do you want it?"
He said, "Why would I use a book? I just fold paper and it turns into something."
There was wisdom spoken in those words from my five-year-old. His passion for folding paper made me realize that I was being silly for fearing origami. I should just relax, fold paper, and turn it into something. Right? So that's what we did...but first I must tell you about Elise Parsley.
Elise Parsley is the author and illustrator of
If You Ever Want to Bring An Alligator to School, Don't! and the upcoming
If You Ever Want to Bring A Piano to the Beach, Don't! (available May 3, 2016). She studied drawing and creative writing at Minnesota State University in Moorhead, Minnesota. She admits that she had "no art background at all before college other than the casual drawing that everybody does." (
Publishers Weekly iHeart Radio). Thankfully, she had professors at the university that "took in mind what [she] wanted to do after school" which was illustrating children's books and helped her learn to "draw from scratch." (
MSUMoorhead on YouTube).
After college, Elise spent two and half years working on her craft, making mistakes, and adding to her portfolio. One the pieces she made for her portfolio was of an unhappy teacher standing with a paper airplane in her hair listening to an alligator tattling on a young girl. This artwork inspired her to write story about the alligator and the girl which led to one of the most amazing book deal stories ever.
Elise emailed a prospective agent and the agent liked her story and signed her on as client the next day. Then the next day, the agent sent the manuscript to publishers and an offer was made the following day to acquire the book! (
Publisher's Weekly). (Things rarely happen that quickly in the book business!)
If You Ever Want to Bring An Alligator to School, Don't! is about a girl named Magnolia who must bring something from nature to school for show and tell. She decides on an alligator and assures her teacher that he will be good. But, the alligator doesn't behave and Magnolia gets her name on the board for laughing at his funny drawings. Later, one of his paper airplanes lands in the teacher's hair as origami covers the floor. His shenanigans continue and Magnolia freaks out when he almost eats a classmate! Thankfully, Magnolia knows just how to salvage this horrible day. Well, almost salvage the day. She still has to go to the principal's office.
It was raining the day after my son spoke his words of wisdom about origami and we couldn't go outside to play. So, I thought we should give origami a try. We had an
Awesome Origami Kit with over 100 origami papers sitting unopened in our basement. (Imagine that!)
|
My children were very excited for this project. (Me...I was a little anxious, still.) |
|
First, we made an origami alligator head. It took some time to make, but it turned out awesome! The mouth chomps! (We watched an excellent video on how to make it. Not having to follow step-by-step paper instructions really helped!) |
|
Then, it became a free-for-all! We were folding things like crazy and our kitchen table soon looked like the floor in Magnolia's classroom. |
|
My son made this. He said it was a spaceship. It even had a movable piece on top. |
|
He also made a bird with a green feather. It looked so much better than my peace crane! |
|
Read this book and make origami! |
We had very peaceful time making origami but I was prepared with a backup activity just in case things went terribly wrong. There is a scene in
If You Ever Want to Bring An Alligator to School, Don't! where Magnolia gives the alligator three pieces of gum to keep him from eating her classmates. The gum doesn't stay in the alligator's mouth and ends up hanging from the classroom ceiling and on the chairs and desks. The way the gum hangs from the ceiling reminded me of making slime.
To make slime you will need:
1 cup of warm water
Food coloring (in this activity we used red food coloring to make the slime pink like bubble gum!)
Instructions:
Mix the entire bottle of glue with 1/2 cup of warm water in a bowl. Add a few drops of red food coloring and mix. Dissolve Borax in another 1/2 cup of water. Add the Borax solution to glue mixture and stir. The slime can be stored in an air-tight container so you can play with it again the next day.
|
First, we emptied the entire bottle of glue into a bowl. Then, added to a little bit of water to the bottle, shook it up, and added that to the bowl too. We wanted to make sure all the glue was out of the bottle. |
|
Then, we added a 1/2 cup of warm water to the glue and stirred. |
|
Then, we added a few drops of red food coloring to the glue and mixed. |
|
Lastly, we dissolved 1 tsp. of Borax in a 1/2 cup of warm water. |
|
The Borax solution was added to the glue and water mixture. |
|
Immediately it looked like the alligator's favorite gum! It was awesome! |
|
My daughter wasn't sure at first. She thought it was a little yucky! (Eventually, after playing with it for a while she really liked it!) |
|
What a mess! |
|
Alligator gum was everywhere even on the book! Good thing we were at home and not at school. We would have been sent to the Principal's office. |
If you are thinking that you
can't make origami and slimy pink alligator gum,
DON'T! You
CAN and your children will love it!
Elise, it was so exciting to meet you at the National Book Festival. Thank you for sharing your birthday with us. We hope you have a wonderful day! We can't wait to read the next Magnolia book!
Pre-order Elise Parsley's next two books; IF YOU EVER WANT TO BRING A PIANO TO THE BEACH, DON'T! (available May 3, 2016) and THE MAGIC WORD by
Mac Barnett (available October 4, 2016):
Links:1.
Elise Parsley's Website2. Follow Elise Parsley on
Twitter2. Video ART: ELISE PARSLEY -
MSUMoorhead on YouTube3. Elise Parsley at the 2015 National Book Festival -
Library of Congress on YouTube4. FROM QUERY TO BOOK DEAL IN 72 HOURS -
Publisher's Weekly5. IF YOU EVER WANT TO BRING AN ALLIGATOR TO SCHOOL, DON'T -
Story Time Kit from Barnes and Noble6. Interviews -
Barnes and Noble7. Audio Interview -
Publishers Weekly iHeart Radio
Happy Birthday, Cale Atkinson - April 9
I am really excited for the future of children's picture books! There are so many new and talented authors and illustrators creating amazing stories for us to read with our children. Our last three blog posts celebrated the birthdays of relative newcomers to the field of children's literature (
Penny Parker Klostermann,
Ame Dyckman,
Julie Falatko).
This week, we continue the trend with author and illustrator, Cale Atkinson. His first book came out less than a year ago and he has already followed it up with a second book. Plus, he has two more books scheduled for later this year! I am so excited to share with you a future superstar of children's picture books.
Cale Atkinson is the artist and creator of two picture books, his own
To The Sea and
If I Had a Gryphon by Vikki VanSickle. As a child, he and his brother "were always drawing, writing stories, or making movies." (
Canadian Animation). In an interview with
All the Wonders, Cale recalled making picture books with his father in elementary school, "He would write words and I would draw pictures with them. Or I would try to write my own." In high school Cale's interest turned to film making, but he made a huge decision not attend film school after graduation. Instead he decided to devote his time once again to his first love of drawing and storytelling. He said, "For the next five months I did my own version of schooling. Determined on developing my artistic skills I did nothing but practice, absorb art blogs/books/artists online and practice more." (
Animation Insider).
Cale's five months of hard work paid off. He made many connections within the industry and landed a job working for InLight Entertainment, a maker of children's video games. After InLight, Cale worked on his own before being hired by Disney Studios, where he worked for three years. Now, Cale describes himself as an illustrator/writer/animator. In addition to his picture books he has worked on a variety of projects including many stunning animated shorts.
Lil' Red from
cale atkinson on
Vimeo.
Cats Can Wear Suits from
cale atkinson on
Vimeo.
For Cale it is all about storytelling. He described his need to express himself, "So whether or not it is an animated short, whether its in a comic strip, whether its in a book. Whatever I can do to try to get these ideas and stories that are in me out. Picture books are a great way of doing that." (
All the Wonders).
Cale's first picture book,
To the Sea, was published in June 2015. The book came to be published much like Cale's career as an artist and animator. He put in the hard work to make it happen.
One day, he needed a break from a story he was struggling with and doodled a child in the rain with a whale. He admitted, "I don't know where it came from in my brain." (
All the Wonders) But, there was something Cale really liked about the child being alone in the rain with the whale and decided he wanted to tell the story. He said, "I just wanted to make it from start to finish...and put it out there, maybe for free...or maybe self-publish." But, Cale didn't have to put it out for free or self-publish. He sent the complete book to publishers and it was picked up by Disney Hyperion!
To the Sea is a book about friendship. Tim is a quiet boy at school and many of the other children pay little attention to him. Sam is a blue whale who takes a wrong turn, ends up outside of Tim's school, and no one except Tim notices. Tim and Sam quickly become friends and Tim wants to help Sam get back to the sea. One of Tim's many ideas doesn't go quite as planned, but together they learn that true friends are there when you need them most.
I recalled the image below when I saw Cale's illustration in
To the Sea of Tim pedaling his bike to pull Sam back home. When I first saw the image in my Facebook feed it had a inspirational quote added to the top. (Unfortunately, I couldn't find that exact image to share with you.)
|
I was moved by a couple of the lines from To the Sea and thought it would be fun to see if I could make Tim and Sam out of Legos and create my own inspirational image. Here is what I came up with. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. |
|
Please feel free to share these images. |
After reading
To the Sea we read Cale's latest book
If I Had a Gryphon by Vikki VanSickle and it inspired our birthday celebration activity. The little girl in this book got a hamster for a pet and after just a week she decides that it is not very exciting. She imagines what it would be like to have the mythological creatures from her book as a pet -- a unicorn or a sasquatch or a kraken! She realizes that those creatures would be exciting to have as pets, but could cause some huge problems. Maybe her hamster is not so bad after all.
I poured over the illustrations in
If I Had a Gryphon and noticed that the girl has the coolest bookmark hanging over the edge of her book of mythological creatures.
|
I zoomed in on the cover. Do you see the awesome snake bookmark? |
|
The best thing I found was this roll of cotton fabric strips in a variety of green and blue patterns. This roll saved us from cutting strips for each bookmark! |
|
I laid out the strips on the table for my children to chose their favorite one for their bookmark. |
|
My son wanted his bookmark to be 12 inches long. He measured and cut two strips. |
|
My daughter didn't want help cutting her fabric. |
|
My son placed the two fabric pieces together and cut a triangle shape out of one of the ends to make a snake mouth. |
|
Then he used fabric glue to attach his ribbon for the tongue. |
|
I asked him if he wanted to sew his bookmark using the sewing machine or use the fabric glue. He chose the fabric glue because he got to do it all by himself. |
|
He carefully pressed the two fabric pieces together. |
|
He trimmed the edges made the snake look neat. |
|
His sister worked hard on her bookmark. |
|
I laid the strips front to front and stitched along three sides, leaving one of the short ends open. |
|
I snipped off the top corners. (Be careful not to cut your stitching.) |
|
Then, I turned the fabric right-side-out. |
|
I cut the snake's mouth and glued the tongue inside. |
|
Then, I did a top stitch over the whole bookmark and hand-stitched a sequin eye. |
|
The bookmark looks pretty close to the one from the book. |
|
My big kiddos came home from school and saw the crazy crafting going on in kitchen and wanted to make a bookmark too. They wanted to use the sewing machine to sew their bookmarks. We added a layer of fusible interfacing between the two layers of fabric. My daughter was excited to use the iron for the first time. |
|
She measured to make sure the bookmark was the perfect size for the chapter book she was currently reading. |
|
Meanwhile, my youngest son was still making bookmarks on his own! |
|
She added scales to the second bookmark she made! (Just like her dad!) |
|
Just a few of our snake bookmarks! |
|
The bookmark looks perfect inside this fun book! |
|
My oldest son made one too! Here he is flipping the fabric right-side-out! |
|
He was proud of his finished project! |
Cale! Thank you for sharing your birthday with us at the National Book Festival! We hope you have a wonderful birthday! We can't wait to read your upcoming books!!
Vote for
To the Sea for Children's Choice Award! Book of the Year in the K-2nd category.
Vote Now! (Available until April 25, 2016)
Pre-order Cale's next two books, EXPLORERS OF THE WILD! (Available April 26, 2016) and MAXWELL THE MONKEY BARBER (Available August 9, 2016):
Links:1.
Cale Atkinson's Website2. Follow Cale on
Twitter,
Tumbler,
Vimeo 3. Interviews -
Marvel,
Animation Insider,
Canadian Animation,
KidLit Frenzy,
Bird Meets Worm,
Watch.Connect.Read.4. Audio Interview -
Let's Get Busy Podcast5. View a large gallery of Cale's Art -
T2 Children's Illustrators TO THE SEA - Book Trailer from
cale atkinson on
Vimeo.
Happy Birthday, Julie Falatko - March 31
Julie Falatko did not ask for us to celebrate her birthday. Much like Snappsy the Alligator did not ask to be in her debut picture book,
Snappsy the Alligator (Did Not Ask to Be in This Book). Julie was having a normal day when I sent her a Facebook message asking if it would be okay to celebrate her birthday. She agreed. And suddenly our family was talking about Julie's new book and throwing a party to make things more interesting! We hope it makes Julie happy.
Now
don't buzz off. We want you to read on. If you read this whole blog post, we know you will want to read Julie's new book. (Once you read Julie's book, you will understand why I wrote the opening paragraph like that.)
One November day in 2012 inspiration struck Julie Falatko while she was in the kitchen. She described the moment, "I was making dinner, thinking about how I like books that let kids know we trust them and think they're smart. And FWOOSH there it was, an idea, but more than an idea, the entire story, not just the plot, but the words, dumped into my head." (
Writing for Children While Raising Them - Tara Lazar). This is how suddenly
Snappsy the Alligator (Did Not Ask to Be in This Book) began, but for Julie there was a ton of writing that led up to this moment. As a child she loved writing and filling her journals (
KidLit 411). At the age of 8 she wrote her first story about "a family of ornery foghorns." (
Juliefalatko.com).
Julie pursued her love of writing in college when she studied English. After college, she spent time as a technical writer and copywriter and then her attention turned to books when she earned a library science degree. (
Flowering Minds). She realized that maybe she could revisit her childhood love of writing funny stories and possibly write books for children.
In 2011 she got serious about writing for children. She participated in many online writing challenges like
PiBoIdMo: Picture Book Idea Month and
12x12: 12 Picture Books in 12 Months. She brainstormed many picture book ideas, practiced and improved her writing, and polished numerous manuscripts.
By
April 2013, Julie had an agent and was on her way to becoming a published children's author.
Snappsy the Alligator (Did Not Ask to Be in This Book) was published on February 2, 2016. Julie will follow up her successful debut with two more books
The Society for Underrepresented Animals (Summer 2017) and
Help Wanted: One Rooster (TBD).
One March day in 2016 inspiration struck me while I was in my kitchen. I was making dinner, thinking about nothing. My son ran into the kitchen while I was reaching into the drawer to grab a pair of tongs. I tried to SNAP him with the tongs. (Just for fun. Not in a mean way.)
I said, "Snap. SNAP. SNAP!
SNAPPSY!" And FWOOSH there it was, an idea, but more than an idea, the entire activity idea, not exactly how I was going to do the activity, but the idea of making
Snappsy the Alligator using tongs. (Don't tell Snappsy. He would probably not appreciate knowing that I think his mouth looks like tongs.)
Snappsy the Alligator (Did Not Ask to be in this Book) is a unique book. Snappsy is an alligator and he is the main character of the book, but he wasn't planning on it at all. In fact, he is just walking along and a narrator starts commenting on his day and the narrator really has no idea what Snappsy is doing or feeling, but makes stuff up. As you can imagine this makes Snappsy pretty upset. His frustration grows and grows until the narrator makes fun of his house. That really "cheeses him off!" Then, the narrator goes as far as telling Snappsy that he is making the book boring. So, what does Snappsy do...well you will have to read the book to find out!
Back to the
Snappsy the Alligator tong activity. I really didn't know how I was going to do this. I brainstormed the idea with my wife and we came up with the idea of making a Snappsy sock puppet with tongs.
I ran into a roadblock with the activity right away. I didn't have any green socks. I couldn't find green socks at Target or at the thrift store. What was I going to do? Aha! I will dye them.
|
I don't know why I dyed so many socks. We were only making four Snappsies. (If you need a old, ugly, dyed green sock just let me know.) |
|
We went to The Kitchen Collection store and bought all the green tongs they had. I didn't expect such variety. (Don't have The Kitchen Collection store? Amazon has green tongs too!) |
|
The first step was to make the top of Snappsy's head. The part above his mouth. We stuffed the dyed green sock with batting. |
|
We needed the stuffing to stay put, so I hot glued a piece of felt inside the sock. The only way to get inside the sock was to roll it. |
|
Next, was the mouth. We cut two small slits in the side of the sock. |
|
Then, we threaded in the pair of tongs. These tongs were called "Zing! Toaster Tongs" and they looked remarkably like Snappsy's mouth. (Unfortunately, I could not find these on Amazon.) |
|
We glued on eyes, a collar, and a tie. At this point Snappsy looked a little bit like a duck. He needed some teeth. |
|
I used the little peg pieces from a Battleship game. I hope there are still enough pegs to play the game! |
|
I cut off the peg part of game piece and glue them to the toaster tongs. It was looking pretty good, but was not quite finished. |
|
My little ones walked in and said, "Hey! Can we do that?" |
|
Pick a sock. Any sock. Just a few to pick from. |
|
She glued the eyes on all by herself. |
|
She dressed her Snappsy. |
|
As they were working I made a tail. I cut up one of my extra socks and glued a piece of wire in the center to make it bendable. |
|
Then, I added two little legs. |
|
In the meantime, my oldest son came home from school and wanted to make one too. |
|
He cut Snappsy's tie out of an old shopping bag. |
|
I wanted Snappsy to have two bumps on his head like an alligator. My wife helped me with this part. We stuck a needle with thread through the top and pulled it until the center came down a little. Then, we anchored it behind the tie. I am sure there is a better way to do this, but it worked. |
|
Our four Snappsy sock puppets. Yes, my four-year-old daughter's Snappsy has three eyes and a crown. |
|
Snappsy the Alligator makes us smile. |
|
What would Snappsy the Alligator think of all this nonsense? |
|
Snapping our noses! |
|
Julie, you did not ask for us to celebrate your birthday, but we had to! We loved your new book! Congratulations on its success! And thank you for writing a book for us to enjoy as a family! We can't wait for your next two books! |
Links:1.
Julie Falatko's Website2. Follow Julie Falatko -
Facebook,
Twitter3. Interviews -
Flowering Minds,
KidLit 411,
Julie Hedlund,
Seven Impossible Things4. Julie Falatko and Tim Miller audio interview -
Let's Get Busy Podcast (All the Wonders)
5. Another PiBoIdMo Success Story; Julie Falatko's Debut Picture Book -
Tara Lazar6. Julie Falatko and Snappsy Video Interview -
WCSH News7. How to Draw Snappsy (from Tim Miller) -
Vimeo + More from
Tim Miller8. Storybook Spotlight Audio Interview -
Storybook Spotlight9. Snappsy Printable Activity Packet -
Penguin
Happy Birthday, Ame Dyckman - March 27
Jelly beans.
Marshmallow Peeps.
Cadbury candy-coated chocolate Mini Eggs.
More JELLY BEANS! (We just love them so.)
Our family loves these Easter candy treats so much that we often neglect the traditional solid milk chocolate bunnies. The Easter Bunny even stopped putting them in our Easter baskets. He must have noticed that they would sadly sit in our kitchen cupboard months later.
However, this year, my youngest daughter made a special request, "I hope the Easter bunny brings me a chocolate bunny."
I replied, "I am sure he will. You've been a good girl."
Her request gave me a hoppin' good idea when I read Ame Dyckman's
Wolfie the Bunny. The idea became an egg-cellent birthday celebration for Ame Dyckman and resulted in the most awesome Easter candy treat ever -- yes...even better than jelly beans.
Ame Dyckman is the author of three picture books. (Wait! We should say four picture books because her next book
Horrible Bear! will be available in about one week!) As a child, Ame fell in love with books thanks to many libraries. Her family moved around a lot and it was always important for her to connect with the library in her new hometown. She said, "Once, I tried to get library cards in both my real name (Amelia) and nickname." (
The Library Incubator Project).
The initial spark for Ame's writing career may have come in the fourth grade when she wrote
The Punchbowls stories that really made her classmates laugh. (
The Library Incubator Project). Later in high school she began telling people she wanted to write books for children when she grew up. (
Meg Miller). People told her "you'll never get published" and should try something other than writing for children. (T
he Stylin' Librarian).
After college she worked many different jobs -- a substitute preschool teacher, a brownie taste tester, an academic assistant, a costumed character, and a window display designer. (
Kathy Temean). Then, she decided to get serious about writing, "challenge" herself, and prove her critics wrong.
In 2009, Ame went to New Jersey SCBWI conference and signed up for the Agent Pitch Session. She had 5 minutes to convince an agent that her manuscript was a winner. And she did! The agent liked her manuscript, agreed to work with her to polish the story, and later Ame got an offer to publish her first book,
Boy + Bot. (
Miss Print, 2012).
Boy + Bot was illustrated by
Dan Yaccarino and published in 2012.
In 2014, Ame was awarded the
Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award for her book
Tea Party Rules illustrated by K. G. Campbell
. This award is given annually to "recognize and encourage emerging talent in the field of children's books." Ame certainly is an emerging talent in children's books!
After
Tea Party Rules her next book was
Wolfie the Bunny (2015), illustrated by Zachariah Ohora. It was inspired by Ame's daughter. Ame and her husband called their daughter "The Wolf Baby" when she was tired and grumpy. Ame asked herself, "What if a REAL wolf baby went to live with a family of non-wolves?" (
Miss Print 2015).
In
Wolfie the Bunny, Wolfie is found on their doorstep by the Bunny family. Mama and Papa Bunny are beyond excited to bring a baby wolf into the mix, but their daughter Dot sees things differently and says, "He's going to eat us all up!" But, Wolfie means no harm, except for maybe eating the family's supply of carrots. Dot is still not completely on board with having Wolfie as a brother when an incident occurs at the local market. A hungry bear makes a scene, Dot steps up as the BIG sister, and protects her little wolf-brother for the first time.
The day I picked up
Wolfie the Bunny from the library my daughter saw it and asked me to read it to her. After reading the book on the couch, I looked up at our mantle over our fireplace covered with Easter bunnies, and thought
The Easter Bunny will probably bring her a chocolate bunny, but maybe we can make something even better!I rolled this idea around in my head for about a day and decided that it was possible to make candy Wolfie the Bunnies. It would take three steps:
1. Make a model of Wolfie the Bunny out of
Instamorph.
2. Use the plastic model to make a candy mold.
3. Fill the mold with melted candy to create a Wolfie the Bunny treat.
|
We used all of these items to make our Wolfie the Bunny candy except for the sticks. I initially thought we would have Wolfies-on-a-stick, but decided against it. |
|
My daughters helped me make the Wolfie the Bunny model out of Instamorph. This stuff is cool! You warm water to 140 degrees, drop in the pellets, and within two minutes you can mold the Instamorph into anything you want. Then, after a few more minutes it is hard as plastic! (We first used Instamorph to celebrate Deb Pilutti's birthday!) |
|
First, we made a Wolfie shape. |
|
Then, we added a tail, arms, a face and a nose. |
|
Next, we needed to make the candy mold. I bought Amazing Mold Putty which makes molds that are food safe! |
|
In the box are two canisters of squishy clay-like substances. |
|
I squished equal amounts of the substances together. |
|
Once the two were mixed I pressed it over the Wolfie model. |
|
The instructions told us to let the mold rest for about 20 minutes. |
|
It worked! We had our candy mold! |
|
My wife helped make the first Wolfie! (Thank you!!!) |
|
This is a photo of the gray candy she added for the paws, tail, and face. |
|
It took about an hour for the candy to completely harden. |
|
This is how our first Wolfie came out of the mold. Notice his broken tail. We applied a little melted candy and stuck it back on. |
|
I used the food safe brushes, a toothpick, and black and white candy melts to add detail. |
|
The next day everyone had an opportunity to decorate their own Wolfie the Bunny. |
|
Of course, we had to make sure they tasted good! |
|
Happy Easter! Happy Birthday, Ame Dyckman! |
|
If the Easter Bunny forgets chocolate bunnies this year, we got him covered! |
Pre-order Ame Dyckman's new book, HORRIBLE BEAR!. Available April 5, 2016!
"Highly recommended for picture book collections." -
School Library Journal Links:1.
Ame Dyckman's Website2. Follow Ame on
Twitter3. BOY + BOT Trailer -
YouTube4. StoryMakers with Ame Dyckman and Zach Ohara (featuring WOLFIE THE BUNNY) -
KidLit TV5. Ready! Set! Draw! Wolfie the Bunny with Zach Ohara -
KidLit TV6. Interviews -
Ezra Jack Keats Foundation,
Miss Print (2015),
Miss Print (2012),
KidLit 411,
Inky Girl,
The Stylin' Librarian,
Henry Herz,
Meg Miller,
The Library Incubator Project,
Kathy Temean,
Nerdy Chicks Rule7.
Happy Birthday Author birthday celebration for Dan Yaccarino w/ BOY + BOT activities
8. Why Picture Books are Important by Ame Dyckman -
Picture Book Month9. Ame Dyckman Reads TEA PARTY RULES -
YouTube10. TEA PARTY RULES Trailer -
YouTube11. Ten Questions in One Minute with Ame Dyckman -
Vimeo12. WOLFIE THE BUNNY Trailer -
YouTube
Happy Birthday, Penny Parker Klostermann - March 8
Penny Parker Klostermann was asked if there is a common thread or theme in her writing and she responded, "My agent says I have a tendency to write books about things getting eaten."(
Let's Get Busy Podcast). I found this funny because you might think I have a tendency to plan author birthday celebrations that include food. But, it's true. We love food! We love books and we love to eat while reading books! This week's birthday celebration is no different, we made something we could eat, but it was unlike anything we ever made before.
Last year, Penny Parker Klostermann debuted her first picture book,
There Was an Old Dragon Who Swallowed a Knight, illustrated by Ben Mantle. Before writing for children, Penny was an elementary teacher for twenty-six years. Many of those years were spent as a physical education teacher where she often brought books and art into her gymnasium by creating games, activities, and decorations inspired by the books. (
Path to Publication - Iza Trapani).
In 2010, Penny's creativity continued after teaching when she took a job with a book distributor that required a lot of driving. As she drove, ideas for picture books would pop into her head. "I would record ideas or stories, or parts of stories in my iPhone. I would get home and write them down." (
Let's Get Busy Podcast). She decided to "get serious" about writing and immersed herself in SCBWI and online writing groups and creative writing challenges.
It didn't take long for Penny to experience success as a children's author. In early 2012, she submitted a manuscript,
Mars Night Before Christmas, and was awarded the Runner-Up award for SCBWI's
Barbara Karlin Grant. (
12 x 12 Challenge). Also in 2012, she wrote the first draft of
There Was an Old Dragon Who Swallowed a Knight. "I love cumulative tales...I had several ideas written in my 2011 PiBoIdMo list (
Tara Lazar's Picture Book Idea Month), but hadn't attempted one. I started out with a different character but couldn't find enough exciting things for him to swallow. So I ran through a list Tara has on her website -
500+ THINGS KIDS LIKE. Dragons! Kids like dragons! It fit the rhythm and I could think of all kinds of medieval fun! I was off and writing." (
Today's Little Ditty). The manuscript sold in the fall of 2013.
There Was an Old Dragon Who Swallowed a Knight has been a huge hit with young readers and their families. Klostermann took the familiar rhythm and structure from the
There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly rhyme and paired it with a hungry dragon, a knight who repeatedly says "It's not polite," and two giant dragon burps. (The book is so much fun to read!) It won the 2015 Best in Rhyme Award at the Rhyming Picture Book Revolution Conference and the Florida Sunshine State Young Readers Jr. Award by Florida Association for Media in Education. Look for Penny's next book,
A Cooked Up Fairy Tale, in the Spring/Summer of 2017.
The first time I sat down with my children to read
There Was an Old Dragon Who Swallowed a Knight I read the line, "There was an old dragon who swallowed a castle, swallowed it down to the last golden tassel." This gave me yet another idea for family food and reading activity!
|
Could we make a castle that we could eat just like the dragon? |
|
I prepared all the supplies when my youngest two children were at school. |
|
After lunch, we unwrapped two packages of strawberry wafers. These would be the bricks we would use to build our castle. |
|
We used pink frosting as our mortar and started building our castle around a cardboard box. |
|
This cardboard box provided a strong foundation for the rest of our castle. |
|
Ice cream cones were the perfect size and shape for the towers. |
|
The pink frosting held together each cone. |
|
We cut strawberry wafers into squares and added a few to the top of the wall. |
|
My children consulted the book to see what else they could add to castle. |
|
My daughter add blue frosting to the towers and my son added snowflake sprinkles that he thought looked like flowers. |
|
When I took this picture I realized we forgot to add a "golden tassel" to our castle! Whoops! |
|
Next, I thought we could make dragon-hats to wear. We cut out purple horns, small wings, and eyebrows and added them to a strip of red paper. |
|
We thought it was important to wait for the rest of the family to come home from school before we ate the castle. So, we practiced our dragon faces instead! |
|
Four hungry dragons! |
|
Beware of this dragon! He can swallow whole towers at once! |
|
Run! Run while you can! These dragon-ladies look "shady"! |
|
The four dragons ate part of the wall too! |
Penny, our family hopes you have a wonderful birthday. Enjoy some yummy treats! We love your new book and wish you more success in your next career as a children's author!
Links:1.
Penny Parker Klostermann's Website +
Activity ideas and printables!2. Follow Penny on
Twitter2. Interviews -
Henry Herz,
KidLit 411,
Path to Publication - Iza Trapani,
The Children's Book Review,
Today's Little Ditty,
Julie Hedland,
Tara Lazar3. Audio Interviews -
Let's Get Busy Podcast 4. THERE WAS AN OLD DRAGON WHO SWALLOWED A KNIGHT activity guide -
Random House5. An interview with Dragon from the book! --
Kid Lit Reviews6. Why Picture Books are Important by Penny Parker Klostermann -
Picture Book Month7. First-time Author Thrilled by the Success of Her Book -
Abilene Reporter News
Happy Birthday, Lynne Avril - March 6
It is time to paint!
Let's see...we will need a piece of nice white paper and a pencil to sketch. Of course, we will need brushes and paint. Maybe we will use
gouache today. We should have black india ink or a few black prismacolor pencils just in case we want add some lines to our painting. We can't forget styrofoam plates to put our paint on and a little bowl of water for our brushes. That should be everything. Wait! We need one more thing. Toothbrushes!
This week we learned that Lynne Avril uses a toothbrush when she illustrates her picture books. "My favorite tool, I think, is the toothbrush that I use to splatter paint with. If you look closely at my work, you will see lots of little splatters, and that is done by mixing gouache paint with
acrylic matte medium and flicking in onto the paper with the toothbrush." (
Simply Messing About).
Flicking and splattering paint sounded like the perfect way to celebrate Lynne Avril's birthday.
What should we paint? Sometimes knowing what to paint is tough, but Lynne Avril helped us with that too. She certainly knows how to cook up a delicious painting!
Lynne Avril has illustrated over eighty books for children including
Every Cowgirl Loves a Rodeo by Rebecca Janni,
I'm Gonna Climb a Mountain in my Patent Leather Shoes by
Marilyn Singer,
The Penny Pot by
Stuart J. Murphy, and
The Pirate of Kindergarten by George Ella Lyon. In 2014, at the
Mazza Museum, Lynne spoke about her path to becoming a children's book illustrator. She credited her father with being her first art teacher and also a sixth grade teacher who helped her see herself as an artist when she allowed her to stay in during lunch and after school to do watercolors. Later, she studied art at the University of Montana, but she struggled to find herself as an artist after college.
|
"I always carry my sketchbook with me." |
At the age of thirty-seven, Lynne was the mother of two children and doing a variety freelance work including typesetting for local print shops. One day someone at one of the print shops told her that they had received a call from a local company looking for a children's illustrator. Lynne said, "Since, I am game for about anything, I went to the office of Josten's Learning Corporation in downtown Phoenix...I had three things to show: one birth announcement for my son, one for my daughter, and one I did for a friend's kid. As luck would have it, I got hired on the spot." (
Idle Illustration). The job she was hired for was to create black and white illustrations for eighteen books!
Shortly thereafter, in the early 1990s, Lynne started sending out her work to publishers in New York. The initial response was positive, but they wanted to see illustrations with color. "So, I went out and bought some watercolors and brushes, sent out more samples." (
Idle Illustration). A sketch from her journal was one of the pieces that led to her first book with Simon and Schuster,
Three Two One Day by Debbie Driscoll (1994).
A huge opportunity came to Lynne Avril when she was one of a few illustrators being considered to illustrate a new series of Amelia Bedelia picture books by Herman Parish, the nephew of Peggy Parish. The challenge was that she needed to imagine Amelia Bedelia as a child! Lynne presented what she thought Amelia Bedelia would have looked like as a young girl but with a contemporary look and feel and she got the job!
In 2009, Lynne published
Amelia Bedelia's First Day of School. Since then, Lynne has illustrated five more
Amelia Bedelia picture books, many
I Can Read readers, and even
chapter books, which have Amelia Bedelia at a slightly older age. Lynne admits that sometimes it is a challenge to switch back and forth between the different books.
I was really excited to try the Lynne Avril's toothbrush painting technique with my children. Our first attempt was making shamrocks for St. Patrick's Day.
|
I drew a shamrock on tracing paper and then my children traced it onto a piece of watercolor paper. |
|
My daughter mixed yellow and blue gouache paint with a little bit of water. |
|
She was pretty excited to make this shamrock because they made some at preschool this week. |
|
After the green paint dried, we mixed acrylic matte medium with yellow gouache. |
|
She used her thumb to flick the paint. |
|
More splatters! (THIS IS SO COOL!) |
|
We outlined our shamrocks with india ink. |
|
Our first attempt went well and since it was fun I thought we should try another project. It was actually an idea I had earlier in the week when I was reading through my notes from Lynne Avril's presentation at the Mazza Museum. I wrote, Painting is like cooking. If you want to make something yummy, you have to put something yummy together. I did a search and found a similar quote from Lynne Avril on Molly Idle's website, "As far as color, to me that's like cooking -- making something so delicious you want to eat it." (Idle Illustration). This gave me an idea. Let's paint and use our toothbrushes to make a delicious painting of something delicious! |
|
What is more delicious than chocolate chip cookies!?! I thought we could take some creative liberties with Lynne's quote, Painting is like BAKING (instead of cooking). |
|
He is getting so big! He was able to scoop out the dough all by himself! |
|
We got out all the painting ingredients while the cookies were baking in the oven. We hoped these ingredients would help us make a delicious painting. |
|
This bare spot on the wall above our stove has bothered me for quite some time. I thought this might be the perfect place to hang our painting when it was complete. |
|
I took pictures of all the yummy ingredients we used to make the dough for our chocolate chip cookies. Then, I printed them out and traced them onto tracing paper. |
|
I transferred them to piece of watercolor paper. |
|
My children decided which items they were going to paint and went to work. |
|
We took turns painting on the same painting. We had to be patient. |
|
Later, I painted a purple background and my son and I added blue and white flecks with the toothbrushes. |
|
This is the matte medium we used for the splattering. I purchased it at Michael's craft store. It wish I would have bought it on Amazon. It would have been cheaper! |
|
After the paint dried, I added lines with black pencils. |
|
I wrote on the labels of the packages. |
|
I wrote the quotes from Lynne Avril too. |
|
Delicious cookies and a delicious family painting! |
Lynne, it was a pleasure to meet you at the Mazza Museum. Thank you for sharing your birthday with us and for teaching us about toothbrush painting! We hope you have a wonderful birthday!
Links:1. Lynne Avril's Portfolio Page -
Portfolio Solutions2. Interviews -
Idle Illustration,
Simply Messing About,
Ben Clanton's Squiggles and Scribbles,
3.
Amelia Bedelia's Website4.
Every Cowgirl Needs a Horse Activity Guide -
Penguin5.
Amelia Bedelia's First Vote Activity Guide -
Greenwillow Books6.
Amelia Bedelia Makes a Friend Maze -
Greenwillow Books7.
Amelia Bedelia Goes Wild! Teacher's Guide8.
MORE AMELIA BEDELIA PRINTABLE AND ACTIVITIES
Happy Birthday, Susan L. Roth - February 29
My youngest son is a scraps collector. Often he comes home from school with a folder full of paper scraps left over from his cutting activities with plans of making something with them. At first, I thought this was a little weird, but came to appreciate it when he told me about the scraps. He would say things like, "These pieces look like a beard," as he put them up to his face, or "I am going to make a butterfly out of these."
One day, I picked him up from school and he said his hand hurt. I was concerned and asked what happened. As he opened his hand he revealed a handful of sequins. He said, "I held on to these all day." He told me that a girl in his class had something break on one of her boots which caused sequins to spill all over the floor. I guess the clean up caused quite a commotion in the classroom. However, my son didn't take the sequins to the trash can like all the other children. He wanted to bring them home because he thought he might need them for a future project.
This week, I looked forward to celebrating Susan L. Roth's birthday with my son after I read this on her website, "I have to confess that the unused pieces [of paper] usually find their ways, arranged by color, into one of the 14 big baskets in my supply room. How can I throw out a perfectly good piece of beautiful bright blue rice paper even if it is only one inch by one inch big and bent at the corner when it could make perfectly good eyeballs?" (
Clean Dirt, Susan L. Roth).
Susan L. Roth has illustrated over 50 books for children including
Cinnamon's Day Out: A Gerbil Adventure,
Princess, and
Pass the Fritters, Critters. When she was young her parents encouraged her to be creative by keeping the house full of art supplies and made a point to display her artwork. (
Eduplace). Susan went on to study art, printmaking, and art history at Mills College in Oakland, California. After college, she became a teacher and a mother. She said, "When my children were young I often told them stories. As an artist, it seemed only natural that I should start illustrating some of my stories." (
Susan L. Roth's Blog).
In 1984, Susan published her first book,
Patchwork Tales, with author and friend, Ruth Phang. This book and their second book,
We Build a Climber were illustrated with Susan's woodcut prints. These are the only two books Susan made this way and discovered she preferred working instead with paper collage. "The wood cut process has at least three parts -- drawing, cutting, and printing. I'm so impatient, I think I like the immediacy of collage. And not only the immediacy. For example, if you work in watercolor, you can't make even one mistake. But in collage, you can make a little mistake and you can fix it much more easily. And I like the construction aspect of it." (
Baltimore Sun). Now she only cuts and rips paper for her illustrations and stands by the commitment of using no pencils, pens, or paints. "I feel as if even a pinpoint of India ink would be a betrayal and a sin, a misrepresentation of my chosen, truly loved, medium." (
Cut it Out, Susan L. Roth).
Susan L. Roth's birthday is on Leap Day! I wanted to celebrate this unique author birthday by cutting and tearing paper.
What should we make? I thought it would be fun to make animals and make them look furry by making small snips along the edges. I got this idea when I saw the white cat in Susan's book,
Princess.
What should we do with the animals? I thought we could make a book and they could be the characters.
What would the book be about? It only made sense for it to be about Leap Day.
I had an idea for a Leap Day story, but I needed some illustrators. I told my children at lunch one day this week, "I wrote a story while you were at school about an elephant, a rabbit, a kitty cat, a kangaroo, a lizard, and a rhino. It would be cool if the pictures were made of paper like the books we read by Susan L. Roth, but I don't know anyone who could make them for me. Do you know anyone?" My youngest son took the bait hook, line, and sinker and said, "We can. Let's do it right now." I told him that we should probably finish our lunch first, but as soon as lunch was over we were making animals out of paper.
|
My daughter chose to make a pink cat. She looked at a picture of a cat on my phone for reference. |
|
My son worked on making an elephant and a rhino. |
|
My daughter snipped the edges of her cat to make it look furry. |
|
My son was quite pleased with the ear he made for his elephant. |
|
My daughter's pink cat. |
|
My son's rhino and elephant. |
|
Susan L. Roth's favorite paste is nori, which is made of rice and water and found at Japanese grocery stores. I was unable to get nori in time for this celebration, but I found a recipe to make homemade rice starch paste. I purchased the rice starch at Whole Foods Market. Susan L. Roth likes nori because the paper can be "rehydrated" with a warm, wet cloth to allow editing of her artwork. |
|
We made a batch of rice starch paste. My daughter added the rice starch to the hot water. |
|
My son whisked it together. |
|
She pasted together her rabbit. |
|
At this moment, my son had no idea that he was making the main character for the story. |
|
I made a kangaroo and a lizard. |
|
My little scraps collector made an elephant. |
That night, after the kids went to bed I set to work. I scanned all their paper collage artwork and began constructing a book on the computer. Susan L. Roth doesn't assemble her artwork on the computer, but for the sake of time and sanity I needed this tool. The next day, my daughter and I made a few finishing touches while my son was at school. When he came home we shared the book with him and now we share it with you!
|
Elephant's Ele-Fantastic Leap Day!
Download the book PDF Version or EPUB Version (iPad/iPhone -- Apple iBooks)
or
Watch the book in this YouTube Video. It is read by my children and a family friend! Enjoy! |
Links:1.
Susan L. Roth's Website2. Interviews -
PaperTigers,
Cynsations,
Lee and Low,
Writing with a Broken Tusk Blog,
CLCD3.
Hands Around the Library Website4. How to Make Nori/Rice Starch Paste -
McClains5.
Biography6. Children's Book Illustrator is a Real Cut-Up on the Job -
Baltimore Sun
View Next 25 Posts