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Tell me and tell me true, what do the following have in common?

From the title of this post you have no doubt concluded that they all share the same illustrator.  However, had you asked me prior to my recent meeting with French artist Benjamin Chaud, I don’t know that it would have necessarily occurred to me.

Over the years I’ve noticed Chaud’s work, but only in the vaguest possible sense.  You see, I’m a big fan of the Pomelo books by Ramona Badescu, published by Enchanted Lion Books here in NYC.  Each title stars an odd pink elephant-type of character.  Pomelo is a strange little fellow, and I do mean little since his best friends include snails and dandelions.  He also sports a hopeless crush on a frog in a case of unrequited pachyderm/amphibian love.  Kermit and Piggy have nothing on Pomelo.  The books that have made it to American shores include:

But my favorite by far has to be . . .

Because, quite frankly, if you want the kookiest opposite book of all time, this is it, folks.

Well, I was pleased as punch to learn that Mssr. Chaud was in town for ten days, visiting the States and the kids that are here.  I swear, when Herve Tullet moves to Brooklyn he’d better embrace a role as host for all his incoming countrymen.  Publisher Claudia Zoe Bedrick invited me to nosh and meet Benjamin and so we did!  At Le Pain Quotidien, no less.

So what does your typical French artist do when visiting New York City?  Well there’s MOMA, of course.  And Central Park.  There’s Rockefeller Center and bookstores like Book Court and, naturally, NYPL’s current exhibit The ABC of It.  But the best part was hearing about his visits with the kids.  Chaud took a trip to The Lycée Français de New York, a bilingual school for kids of all ages.  While there he met with 106 “very enthusiastic” children and created art with them.  And here we can see the results of his visit to Book Court:

As you can see, Pomelo comes easily to the man’s pencil tip.  So easy, in fact, that he had time to create some fun little off-the-wall images of Pomelo in his own shoes:

I love these.

Talking about Pomelo naturally lead to a discussion of the differences between French and American picture books.  Claudia had some interesting things to say about the changes made to the aforementioned Pomelo’s Opposites when bringing to the book to the States.  We talked about changing certain images from “good” and “bad” to “right” and “wrong”.  Or why the opposite of cucurbit made the final cut.  And we talked about Pomelo himself and his journey.  Since his true author is Ramona Badescu this was all conjecture, but we talked about what it would mean if in his last book he went so far as to die.  And then we got to thinking about picture book characters in series and if any of them have ever died.  At the time I couldn’t come up with any, but since then I was able to think up one.  The Sally books by Stephen Huneck followed a Labrador on various adventures, finally ending with Sally Goes to Heaven.  But it’s a bit of a rarity.

So we talked about the approach of death in various books for small children.  The European picture books have a comfort level with death and dying we lack here in the States.  Here in the U.S. you can discuss death, but only if it is the ONLY topic at hand.  In other countries, death can be far more of the narrative.  It was an illuminating conversation, worthy of a post in and of itself.

In the end, I bid farewell to Benjamin Chaud and thanked him for his time.  With the latest Pomelo book out this year (Pomelo’s Big Adventure) as well as a sequel to last year’s The Bear’s Song (you can see it in my recent Chronicle librarian preview) he’s certainly slated to become better and better known.  And for that, I am well and truly pleased.

Thanks to Claudia for the meeting and to Benjamin for being willing to meet.

She’ll have a book contract within a week.  This was undoubtedly the most popular video of the past week, making the rounds amongst folks who (A) like cute French kids (B) like Winnie-the-Pooh and (C) are aware that Pooh books are strikingly lacking in “singes”.  Many thanks to BoingBoing for the link.

But really, this week 100 Scope Notes had all the good videos.  In fact, if you read your 100 Scope Notes regularly (as I know you should) then you’ve probably seen all of these already.  Like this young woman reading Fox in Socks faster than any human has ever been able to before.

What really stands out to me while watching that video is how remarkable Seuss’s writing is, was, evermore shall be.  He did something so original that it can never be effectively replicated.  Now I need to run off and read some Fox in Socks.

Oh, how adorable.  I’ve only attended the ALA Media Awards since they got huge.  But Travis managed to find an old C-Span video of the award announcement from way back in 2001.  A full ten years ago.  How time has changed things.  And did I hear Lisa Von Drasek screaming “Yes!” when Casey at the Bat was mentioned as a Caldecott winner?  I think I did.  In any case, these are always fun to watch, if only to hear the reactions from the audience.

Fabulous find, Travis!  Thanks to 100 Scope Notes for the link.

In this next one, I saw on Swiss Miss that a photographer had taken a lot of neat photographs around New York, many in Bryant Park behind my library.  I then discovered this video of how he made the photos.  The first one shown here is in the Bryant Park fountain.  Apparently they took some in my library as well (undoubtedly when the guards were looking the other way).  Here’s a video on how they were made.

Thanks to Swiss Miss for the link.

Booktrailer time.  Carolrhoda Books (in conjunction with Lerner) put out this great little quick look at how Stephen Gammell paints his newest creation Mudkin.  Gammell.  There is no one on this good green earth that kind paint like he can.  No one.