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After taking a look at our selection of hot new releases and popular kids' books ... it's more than likely we're suckers for picture books about love, kindness, and compassion.

Where Are My Books? Written & Illustrated by Debbie Ridpath Ohi .    Simon & Schuster BYR        5/12/2015 .                          .978-1-4424-6741-5 .                         .40 pages       Age 4—8 …

Today, Kid Lit Reviews is pleased as a fat whale flopping in the ocean to welcome Spencer. Spencer’s story has been memorialized in Deborah Ridpath Ohi’s first solo picture book, Where Are My Books? (Simon & Schuster). Spencer has an interesting story that may have happened to you or your child. One-by-one his favorite picture books …

Inspired by a GalleyCat post about the best gift you can give a writer, author and illustrator Debbie Ridpath Ohi drew a Will Write for Chocolate cartoon (embedded above) illustrating our simple gift idea.

Give the writer in your life some extra time to write: “There are countless ways to give the writer in your life some extra time: let them borrow your office on the weekends; buy them a stay in a nearby bed and breakfast; promise to babysit on a weekday evening; purchase a mountain of gift certificates to your local coffee shop; volunteer to do their household chores for a day; buy them a spot in a weekend retreat; in short, do anything it takes to help your writer find a few consecutive hours of peace and quiet to write. They will never forget that gift.” continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Celebrate Ganesh Chaturthi today with Saffron Tree, who highlights two “lovely stories” wrapped in one book – The Story Lady by Shruthi Rao and Blanket of Stars by Rachna Chhabria.

The Sambat Trust has recently launched its seventh library in the Philippines – many congratulations.  There are some photos of very happy children…

Author Mitali Perkins has announced the winner of her 10th Teens Between Cultures Prose competition; and in case you missed it, here’s the link to the Poetry Competition winner too – definitely take the time to read these winning entries.

Cynsations has an interview with Debbie Ridpath Ohi  (whom we welcomed to the PaperTigers Gallery in August) – and there’s also a giveaway of Debbie’s just-released I’m Bored with a hand-drawn doodle… Quick!  There are only four days left…!

And I learned something new from The Book Chook – I, who love elephants so, how come I never knew 22 September is Elephant Appreciation Day?! – phew – thank you, Book Chook.  She has lots of elephant activities on her post.  So what’s your favorite elephant book?

If you are a regular devotee of the kidlitosphere, you have no doubt come across Debbie Ridpath Ohi‘s inspiring writing and cartoons, whether on Inkygirl or another of her various and varied blogs, or indeed her website.  We are delighted to welcome Debbie to our online Gallery, with a selection of artwork that includes the first page spread from her short story for the Tomo anthology, our current Book of the Month; illustrations from her imminent picture book I’m Bored (written by Michael Ian Black and published by Simon & Schuster on 4 September…); and a selection of personal pieces.

Here’s a taster from our Q&A, in which Debbie’s excitement about illustrating I’m Bored is infectious:

So hard to choose just one part! The most exciting in terms of specific moments:

My meetings with Justin Chanda (editor/publisher) and art director Laurent Linn at the Simon & Schuster offices in NYC. I remember that for the first few minutes, all I could think was OHMYGOSH OHMYGOSH I’M AT SIMON & SCHUSTER!!! To talk about a book that *I* was illustrating!! But then I realized that I needed to focus, so forcibly dragged my thoughts out of gush nirvana and back to the meeting.

Seriously, though, I learned so much from Justin and Laurent, and it was incredibly exciting to see I’m Bored progress from early sketches to the final proofs.

Another highlight for me: the first time I read Michael Ian Black’s manuscript. I laughed out loud and was so delighted….and then it hit home. *I* was going to be illustrating this story.

Yeay!  And we are excited that Debbie has two more books with Simon & Schuster in the offing.  So head on over to Debbie’s PaperTigers Gallery now – and keep an eye out at your local bookstore on 4 September – we’re sure you won’t be bored and you may never be able to look a potato in the eye in quite the same way again!

Edited and with a Foreword by Holly Thompson,
Tomo
Stone Bridge Press, 2012.

Ages: 12+

‘Tomo’ means ‘friend’ in Japanese and the purpose of this Anthology of Teen Stories is to offer friendship to Japan following the Great East Japan Earthquake of 11 March 2011: specifically, the book is dedicated to the memory of those who lost their lives and to “all the young people of Tohuka”.  Author Holly Thompson (The Wakame Gatherers, Orchards) has gathered contributions from creators of prose, poetry and graphic narrative, as well as translators, whose shared connection is Japan.  Their work makes for a remarkable collection.

Many of the contributors’ names such as Alan Gratz, Wendy Nelson Tokunaga, Debbie Ridpath Ohi,  Shogo Oketani, or Graham Salisbury may already be familiar to readers; others such as Naoko Awa (1943-1993) or Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933) will be less so, though famous in Japan.  A great deal of Tomo’s success lies in its blend of expertly translated older stories with contemporary, new writing, and this is true also of the stories’ content.  Many modern Japanese phenomena colour the stories, such as the particular fashion of Harajuku girls (“I Hate Harajuku Girls” by Katrina Toshiko Grigg-Saito) or the Purikura photo sticker booths (“Signs” by Kaitlin Stainbrook), yet these sit easily alongside more traditional stories such as the magical Ainu fable “Where the Silver Droplets Fall”, transcribed and translated into Japanese by Yukie Chiri (1903-1922) and translated into English by Deborah Davidson.  The anthology is all the richer for its varied array of writing, and its success is also in a great part due to the skill of the different translators involved.

The thirty-six stories are divided into sections: Shocks and Tremors, Friends and Enemies, Ghosts and Spirits, Powers and Feats, Talents and Curses, Insiders and Outsiders, and Families and Connections.  The opening story, “Lost” by Andrew Fukuda, is the gripping account of a girl regaining consciousness in a hospital bed following the Kobe earthquake in 1995; the other four stories in that opening section, including Tak Toyoshima’s graphic strip “Kazoku”, all have the raw immediacy of being set in the aftermath of the March 11^th disaster.

Among the other stories, readers will find stories to suit every mood: thought-provoking tales of conflict, spine-tingling ghost stories (I’m glad all these happen to have fallen to my reading in hours of daylight!), ostracism and friendship, romance, magic and surrealism.  Yearning to belong is a thread running through many stories, and the intensity for those characters seeking their identity is heightened where they are part of a bicultural family.  Nor does the collection flinch from addressing racial prejudice or the internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War.

As with all good short-story anthologies, Tomo needs to be read slowly in order to savour the intense individual flavors of its contents.  Framed by an extract from David Sulz’s translation of Miyazawa’s thought-provoking poem “Be Not Defeated by the Rain” as well as Holly Thompson’s moving Foreword, and a glossary and note on the book’s contributors (a rich mine for future reading), Tomo is a very speci

by Debbie Ridpath Ohi

Debbie Ridpath Ohi writes and draws for young people. She is illustrator of I’M BORED by Michael Ian Black (Simon & Schuster Books For Children, Fall/2012) and has a short story in the upcoming teen fiction anthology TOMO (Stone Bridge Press, 2012). Her blog for kidlit/YA writers & illustrators: Inkygirl.com. Twitter: @inkyelbows.

Kidlit author and illustrator Debbie Ridpath Ohi’s writer and booklover comics often tickle my funnybone, but this one particularly did! I hope you enjoy it. If you’ve never read Debbie’s comics before, you’re in for a treat!

"Books or Me"--comic by Debbie Ridpath Ohi

Used with permission from Debbie Ridpath Ohi at Inkygirl.com.

A team of judges (including Loren Long, Justin Chanda, Mac McCool, Steve Bjorkman, and Alice Pope) spent two hours perusing dozens and dozens of portfolios and picked one grand prize winner and two honor recipients.

National Novel Writing Month begins on November 1, 2009. All around the globe, writers and wannabe novelists are getting ready to write.

And here is an inspirational cartoon from Debbie Ridpath Ohi.

I love comics that are about writing, reading, or all of those things. So it was lovely to stumble across Debbie Ridpath Ohi’s comic strip Will Write For Chocolate. Her strips are entertaining and funny, and have something for book lovers and something for readers. And, you can subscribe to her comic blog, so you automatically get each new comic as she posts it. How great is that?

“Reading Addict,” Will Write For Chocolate, by Debbie Ridpath Ohia.

For book lovers, check out Alike In All Ways? and Eva’s Book Purge part 2. Don’t you just identify with them? I do.

For writers, check out Sven’s review, Email Submissions, and The Critique.

And then check out the archives; Debbie has archives up all the way back to Dec 2005. (Click on the small comic to make it larger.)

Enjoy!