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Happy Illustration Friday, fellow creators!

We’re ready to announce this week’s topic, but first please enjoy the wonderful illustration above by Vanessa Brantley-Newton, our Pick of the Week for last week’s topic of GROW. Thanks to everyone who participated with drawings, paintings, sculptures, and more. We love seeing it all!

You can see a gallery of ALL the entries here.

And of course, you can now participate in this week’s topic:

POINTY

Here’s how:

Step 1: Illustrate your interpretation of the current week’s topic (always viewable on the homepage).

Step 2: Post your image onto your blog / flickr / facebook, etc.

Step 3: Come back to Illustration Friday and submit your illustration (see big “Submit your illustration” button on the homepage).

Step 4: Your illustration will then be added to the public Gallery where it will be viewable along with everyone else’s from the IF community!

Also be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter and subscribe to our weekly email newsletter to keep up with our exciting community updates!

HAPPY ILLUSTRATING!

Submitted by Marijke Buurlage for the Illustration Friday topic GROW.

Encyclopedia Pictura is the creative association of Isaiah Saxon, Sean Hellfritsch and Daren Rabinovitch that has been producing striking, playful work since its inception. One of their early shorts, “Grow,” shows off the power of a simple, clever idea executed well:

The team has produced several music videos including work for Björk and Grizzly Bear. Here are a few stills from Grizzly Bear’s “Knife” video, which features their multimedia, practical/digital effects combination approach to direction:

There is a load of interesting behind the scenes footage and photos also on their website, such as this video:

Their claim of working in “film, art, game design, community building, and agriculture” is not a bit of bombast. From their about page:

From 2008-2011, EP led an effort to build a unique hillside neighborhood and farm called Trout Gulch. They lived and worked there along with 15 others. In 2012, they co-founded DIY in San Francisco, with Vimeo co-founder Zach Klein and OmniCorp Detroit co-founder Andrew Sliwinski. Saxon also volunteers as Media Advisor to Open Source Ecology.

They are passionate about gardening, farming, construction, villages, augmented reality, science visualization, social ecology, technological empowerment, adventure, and country living.

DIY is both a feature film in development as well as more recently a new and growing online community that encourages young people to become “Makers” and share their work, gaining confidence in their creativity and earning digital badges for their profile as they go. DIY meets kids where they already are, on connected devices, and encourages their natural creativity while learning real-world, off and online skills. The DIY “anthem”:

The Do It Yourself/Maker attitude is perhaps the most valuable thing that is being nourished as young people challenge themselves to new experiences inspired by the site.

When a person grows up understanding that they can create and mold the media and environment around them, they don’t have to resign to an existence of passively consuming at the corporate trough. An individual’s confidence in their own creativity is an essential survival skill for the future.

We’re all familiar with the benefits of eating a healthy diet, but it seems the importance of eating seasonably is less well-known.  Those who already grow their own will agree when I say that fruit and veg are at their best when freshly picked. But there’s more to eating seasonably than this.

For a helping hand click on the images below to see when different fruit and veg are in season:

Autumn

Winter (coming soon)

Spring (coming soon)

Summer (coming soon)

Secret Seed Society, child-friendly recipes and tips for growing and cooking with kids for a healthier, happier future.

Yield a crop of pumpkins!

This is from a picture book that I illustrated called THE GOODBYE CANCER GARDEN, written by Janna Matthies. It recently won the 2011 Best English Language Children's Book at the Sharjah International Book Fair - wow! And it's also been chosen for CCBC Choices 2012: The Cooperative Children's Book Center top children's book picks for 2012. It's being translated into Arabic and Danish. I hope I get copies of those!

Cancer affects so many families these days. This is such an important, hopeful book about one family's way of responding to Mom's breast cancer recovery. What an honor to illustrate.

“The Earth will renew the foliage it sheds.”

- Irish Proverb

A belated entry for the Family topic - a family of trees, growing together:



KL Bailey Art

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The February Carnival of Children's Literature is up today at Anastasia Suen's blog, Picture Book of the Day. Head on over and check it out.

I have new appreciation for carnival hosts after I hosted the January Carnival of Children's Literature. It takes some work, but it's a fantastic way to discover wonderful blogs and to meet new people. If you're ever interested in hosting, just get in touch with Melissa Wiley at Here in the Bonny Glen. Melissa recently created a webpage that explains all about the Children's Literature Carnival and contains an archive of every carnival so far.

There's a new carnival in the works for booksellers at the American Booksellers Association Omnibus blog. The first Carnival of Independent Bookselling is about why you decided to become a bookseller (if, of course, you are a bookseller at an independent store). Submit your post through Blog Carnival's submission link, or send an e-mail to sarah-AT-bookweb-DOT-org. Submissions are due by March 21, and the carnival will be posted on March 25.

So, after I posted yesterday, I saw that I had missed 2 very important updates!

1. The new issue of The Edge of the Forest is up! Check it out! Lots of awesome articles, plus 2 reviews by yours truly (My Last Best Friend by Julie Bowe and Reality Leak by Jodi Sensel-- both are great reads!)

2. The new Carnival of Children's Lit is up over at Wizard's Wireless. My contribution is actually my Geek Buffet post about the Xela Awards... check it out!

And now, a review of 2 books off the big scary list! (And a break because they're both Adult Nonfiction)

And, now (drumroll, please) Wizards Wireless is delighted to present the January edition of the Carnival of Children's Literature! (Cue wild applause).

The posts this month have been exhaustively reviewed (by me), thoroughly discussed (I talked to myself about them), and are in keeping with the finest standards of all carnivals of children's literature posted on this blog (this is the first one).

And now onto the highly anticipated topic: children's book awards. Awards are listed in a completely random order, carefully determined with help from the Wizards Wireless dartboard.

• Little Willow and the Cybils Middle Grade nominating committee for their list of favorite characters (and characteristics) in the 2007 Middle Grade Hall of Fame at Bildungsroman.

• Jules at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast for sharing her Cybils ‘07 shortlist retrospective: the shortlist that rocks and what it was painful to leave out.

• Susan Thomsen at Chicken Spaghetti, who reviews the book The Whale Scientists, which was nominated for the Cybils in the middle-grade and young-adult nonfiction category.

• Catherine Derrow at Read Barefoot with Catherine who highlights the book One City, Two Brothers which received a Cybils nomination in the fiction picture book category.

• MotherReader, who provides an awards reaction round-up: now fully edited for your enjoyment. And don't miss Mo' Reactions- her exclusive mini-interview with Mo Willems featuring his thoughts about the awards he recently acquired and some great new pompous children's book titles.

• Jen Robinson, for sharing her response to the ALA Youth Media Awards and her excitement about the ALA and YALSA Notables lists at Jen Robinson's Book Page.

• Kyra Hicks at Black Threads in Kid’s Lit who discusses getting a seat at the Coretta Scott King Book Award table and shares statistics and information about the awards.

• Susan Kusel at Wizards Wireless (hey, it's my ceremony, I can give myself an award) for taking a Caldecott adventure through the titles of 70 years of winners and for sharing why she has never been so happy to be wrong (her reaction to this year's Caldecott medalist).
  

• Becky for providing commentary on the 2008 Awards and lots of reactions at Reading With Becky.

• Lisa Chellman for talking about her love/hate relationship with the Newbery Awards at Under the Covers.

• Laura Baas for providing links, information and predictions for the ALA Awards 2008: Newbery, Caldecott, and many more at Library & Literary Miscellany.

• Sam Riddleburger for testing our knowledge of the Caldecott medal with his Kidlit Trivia Quiz: Caldecott edition.

Moving right along to our next category: Other Awards and Lists.

The awards go to:

• The Brown Bookshelf, for 28 Days Later, which shines the spotlight, honors and promotes African American authors and illustrators.

• Jill Tullo for discussing and linking to a wide variety of children's book awards that celebrate diversity at The Well Read Child.

• Wendie Old for sharing a lovely story at Wendie’s Wanderings about when her book To Fly, The Story of the Wright Brothers received a Boston Globe/Horn Book honor.

• Heidi Estrin for talking about the process of the Sydney Taylor Book Awards and how difficult it is to choose just a few delectable chocolate babies.

• Becky for putting the spotlight on the Librarians' Choices list and telling us all about the process at Becky's Book Reviews.

• Abby Johnson at Abby (the) Librarian for talking about the Rebecca Caudill Young Readers' Book Award, which is selected by children in Illinois.

• Candice Ransom who asks for the envelope, please at Ellsworth’s Journal and discusses the Gryphon Award for books for transitional readers. And find out what book she wishes had won the Newbery in 1981.

• Terry Doherty for discussing a big week for awards and for compiling an amazingly thorough and detailed directory of state and regional awards programs in North America at Scrub-a-Dub-Tub, The Reading Tub® Blog.

• Tricia Stohr-Hunt who shares an excellent award-worthy list of outstanding science books published in 2007 at Open Wide, Look Inside.

• Megan Germano at Read, Read, Read, for talking about how Christopher Paul Curtis has redeemed himself in her eyes with Elijah of Buxton.

• Anastasia Suen for her review of Rough, Tough Charley at Picture Book of the Day.

We're not done yet! Our next category is Thoughts about Awards.

The awards go to:

• Kakie Fitzsimmons of Farmer's Hat Productions for talking about the behind-the-scenes work that goes into creating award winning books, and sharing the tangible results of the awards and rewards for children's book series Bur Bur and Friends.

• Chris Rettstatt for derobing children’s literature awards and talking about the mystique and mystery of the people who pick the prizes.

• Catherine Derrow for talking about Children's Book Awards at Read Barefoot with Catherine, including her favorite books that won the Newbery Award, the new Odyssey Award and several titles published by Barefoot Books.

• Gregory K. for writing an appeal for categories! We need more categories! at Gotta Book. Head over and offer your suggestions.

And last, in the coveted Blogger Award category, we are proud to feature these terrific new honors invented by creative bloggers.

The awards go to:

• Kelly Herold, for The Pens and Pencils Award at Big A little a, in celebration of superb office supplies.

• Sarah at The Reading Zone for sharing the details of the Mulbery : a children's literature award she created with her sixth grade Language Arts class.

• Jennie at the Geek Buffet for ruminating on the Alex Awards (adult books that appeal to teens) and turning the tables to create the Xela Awards for teen books that appeal to adults.
  

• Mary Lee at A Year of Reading who was inspired by the devotion shown by Laura Amy Schlitz (recently crowned Newbery winner). Mary Lee hands out the To the Ends of the Earth Award to the extraordinary and unsung heroes in her school.

Keep meaning to submit a post to the January Canrival of children's literature, but haven't done it yet? Here's your last chance!

The topic is book awards. See this post for more details.

To submit a post to the carnival, go to Blog Carnival. Or e-mail your post to: wizardwireless [at] gmail [dot] com. The deadline is January 18 (tonight!) and the carnival will be posted on January 21.

It’s that time of year, when children’s literature aficionados all over America beginning panting in anticipation of the Association for Library Service to Children’s announcement of its awards for children's literature, most famously the Newbery and Caldecott Awards – so that we can spend the rest of the year crowing or complaining about the results.

As a writer and academic (for lack of a better term) reader, I love the Newbery and Caldecott awards. As a public librarian and pleasure reader, I loathe them. Why the contradiction?

The Love

For credibility’s sake, every industry needs to recognize its gold standard. In a society whose popular conception of children’s literature is limited (it sometimes seems) to media tie-ins, books turned into blockbuster movies, and treasured classics, the Newbery and Caldecott remind not just children’s literature professionals but the reading public at large that there is bigger/better/more available.

Likewise, when the National Review announced its list of the 100 Best English-Language Novels of the 20th Century, there was outcry about the list's bias toward books published before 1950, as if nothing good has been written in the last half of the century. Big-name awards like the Newbery and Caldecott remind us that marvelous new literature is being published every year.

The Hate

There’s plenty of criticism of the Newbery and Caldecott in terms of the award criteria and judging. There are complaints about bias toward realistic fiction, serious fiction, historical fiction, fiction about girls, fiction about European-Americans, fiction in general. There are complaints about the awards going to books without obvious child appeal. There are complaints about the criteria, which limit winners to American authors and seem to eliminate books dependent on the marriage of text and illustration.

These criticisms are not baseless, but the method of judging is not the main source of my irritation. After all, there are tons of other children’s book awards (e.g., Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards, National Book Awards, regional kids' choice awards), albeit not as well-known and awe-inducing. No, what bugs me is how the public too often responds to those shiny gold and silver stickers on the winners’ covers.

I hate the perception, held by far too many, that Newbery and Caldecott winners are the best books, period. They are excellent books. They are some of the very best. Some are gems that will be loved 75 or more years down the line. But “best”, the superlative “best”, is a matter of human opinion. The gold medal can only be given to one book per year, and it's a difficult decision made by a different committee every year. It is not the decree of some great, all-knowing literary god.

To infer that these select few books are the only books worth reading from a given year is a tragic mistake. And a ridiculous one, I would think. But then why do I have adults coming to the library telling me they want their children to read Newbery and Caldecott winners above and before all others “because they are the best ones”? Because I have.

I’m also bothered by school assignments that send children to the library specifically for Newbery and Caldecott winners. Of course I want children to appreciate great literature along with whatever else they read. But teaching children that these winners are “the best” is a double-edged sword. Maybe they’ll gain appreciation for the craft of writing and illustration. Or maybe, when they struggle through one of the more difficult winners, they’ll wonder why they hate the “best” books so much. Maybe, they wonder, it’s because they’re bad readers. Maybe it's because they don't understand what makes a good book. Or maybe it's because adults just don't get it.

There are plenty of books on those award lists I don’t care for. I understand that it’s not because I am a bad reader or because the books shouldn’t have received the award, but because I just don’t like them. I know that as with any other book, “best” or not, it comes down to my personal taste. But I worry about children generalizing about those gold and silver stickers. Sometimes when I booktalk The House of the Scorpion or Princess Academy or Holes, I tell the child: “Don’t worry about these stickers on the cover. This book was so exciting/funny/fascinating, it kept me up half the night.”

The school assignment that has driven me craziest this season is a Caldecott-related assignment for a local school’s second grade reading classes. Students were to choose a Caldecott book to read. The problems as I see them:

1. Since the Caldecott Medal is for illustration, not every Caldecott-winning book has words! (Case in point: 2007’s winner Flotsam, by David Wiesner.)
2. Even though every Caldecott winner is a picture book, not every one is appropriate for a second grader to read independently. Parents saw Kitten’s First Full Moon and told their children they must pick something harder, until I hopped up and down and begged them to understand the nature of the Caldecott. Meanwhile, St. George and the Dragon is too difficult for many second graders to read on their own.
3. “Because the Caldecott Medal is for illustration, students will design a new cover for their chosen book” (I quote the assignment to the best of my recollection). After all, what better way to appreciate great illustration than to – not imitate it – but redo it entirely.

If we’re teaching kids to appreciate Caldecott-winning books, shouldn’t we follow the award committee’s example and focus primarily on the art? At best, it leaves me scratching my head. At worst, I want to knock heads together.

That’s enough complaining. All I can do as a librarian is help my patrons understand that the Newbery and Caldecott Medals are not the be-all and end-all. All I can do is help them understand what the awards mean, and what they do not.

Moving On to Predictions...

I’m rarely able to predict Newbery and Caldecott winners, in part because I don’t read new books exhaustively enough. For example, while I predicted Flotsam as last year’s winner, I hadn’t read any of the Newbery Medal winner/honors at the time of the awards.

The only book I have a strong feeling about this year is Elijah of Buxton. Once again, Christopher Paul Curtis has beautifully written a story of equal parts humor and deadly seriousness, a work of historical fiction I think has real child (not to mention, adult) appeal. I fully expect it will have one of those gold or silver stickers gracing its cover come Monday morning. Fuse #8 has a nice review of it here.

Wizard’s Wireless is hosting this month’s Carnival of Children’s Literature on the topic of children’s book awards. You can submit your link at BlogCarnival.com. The deadline to submit an entry is January 21.

The second list of Cybils (Children's and YA Bloggers' Literary Awards) finalists have just been announced. Click here for an index of all the finalists.

Here are the categories that were announced today:

• Young adult fiction
• Non fiction picture books
• Graphic novels
• Middle grade/young adult non fiction
  

The Cybils (Children's and YA Bloggers' Literary Awards) finalists have just been announced in the following four categories:

• Science fiction and fantasy
• Fiction picture books
• Poetry
• Middle grade fiction