I am freaking out...
I have to go to the dentist when I finish work in minus 2 hours and have a back tooth pulled...
I should stop griping because it's a tooth not a limb...
...but I won't, especially as when the tooth was filled a few months back the dentist didn't give me enough Novacaine and it hurt, hurt, hurt. And in case the tooth fairy reads my blog, I'd like chocolate coins please, dude.
And for those who don't subscribe to Daily Science Fiction (and thus didn't receive the email containing my story last week), you can now read
Exit Stage Life online. Or maybe read,
This Always Happens Here by Richard Larson, because it's awesome and has snow globes.
What is a children’s book without illustrations? One that doesn’t get read, most likely. To children, illustrations are an enticement to read the words, not the other way around. Who can blame them? As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Illustrations, however, can be more than a trick to get kids to read, they can be time capsules, windows into the artistic trends of the times. I’m sure I’m not the first to argue that children’s illustration can be viewed as legitimate instead of pop art, but some are still suspicious that because their intended audience is so immature, the art must also be immature.
Here are a couple examples of beautiful children’s book art that I feel could be found on any museum wall.
As examples of artistic style, or of folk traditions, children’s illustrations can be the most revealing, which is why The Memory of the Netherlands includes so many examples of children’s books as examples of their culture.
If you squint at this last one, you can imagine that the dentists are fist bumping each other over the boy’s healthy teeth.
The University of Alabama also has a large online gallery dedicated to book bindings by artistic style. If you always wanted to know what Art Nouveau means, check it out!
Special thanks to Fed By Birds for pointing me in the right directions to find this neat stuff.
…
Yikes. Good luck this after, Cate. A small consolation is that you can channel it into one of your stories.
Ouch. Teeth pulling is true horror. I had poor enamel on my "baby" teeth, and had most of them yanked by a dentist who didn't believe in painkillers.
(Lovely story, by the way. You know how I feel about extra doors.)
Thanks, Deborah. Luckily it was a different dentist this time and she was lovely.
That's sadistic, Aaron.
I hope you're home and mellowed out on chocolate-flavored painkillers by now. I've had two teeth pulled in the past and it's always horrible. Speedy recovery to you!
Sadistic, but it explains my pension for horrible things...
Hope you're okay today. I've never had a tooth out but I imagine it's not a pleasant experience (some good ol' British understatement for ya there).
Cate,
Hope it went well. And yeah, loved that snow globe story. Oh, and my copy of Full Fathom Forty came today! Looking forward to House of Snowflakes ...
I'm cringing at the thought of the pulled tooth...perhaps it's best consicered as research for a scene in a horror story you're working on (though it would be hard to beat that scene in that Dustin Hoffman movie...)
I may never eat chocolate again, Kate
It's bloody awful, Mike. And, I know have a hit list full of people who said it was easy, you won't even notice it etc etc... Man are they in for a heap of woe.
Thanks, Simon
Me too, Alan
Sorry about the doc -- dentists are the devil, clearly.
But I did love the story. Both as a metaphor and as, well, what it is. Gave me that jolt in my middle.