Yes, again. (Or: "What's a Parent to Do? Ferris Bueller, McGoogle, Digg & Twitter 101")

More. Here. Now.

READ ROGER and the NYT and the plight of the parent who didn't grow up with twitter, texting, the internet, comcast, podcasts, you tube, myspacefaceyearbook, digg, twitter, mcgoogle....oh, the list does go on, don't it? Gosh, we didn't even grow up with cellphones. So, here's the thing:

The list will get longer. R U reading? They are. They're just reading differently, mom and dad...and it's still the written word. How do we just add a little (or a lot of) good art and literature? We can do it, we can do it, we can do it if we try...

Where is Matthew Broderick when you need him? Speaking of Matthew...

Ferris Bueller knew a thing or two about getting around and thinking different: he saw the world in his own zany/polka/arty way (am I pushing it here? I don't think so). Mr. Whole New Mind himself, do you suppose? I bet Ferris would be a lawyer now, with graying temples and a good sense of humor and a couple of kids who are driving him utterly crazy and keeping him up at night. All those kids of his would be fast texters, surely. All capable of going to law school and reading lots of long and weighty tomes, just like their dad. All good. 

We can do it if we try. The art and literature are out there; we just need to make sure it's coming through, in print and on screen and otherwise. They'll get it. I know they will. It's already started, and it's just going to get better.

Ah, yes...

This is what we're talking about. 

One more shot of my old backyard, segueing into the topic at hand: footprints, signs of life in the universe...Laura Atkins, of Tocka's World of Children's Literature (see blogroll, at right) is wondering what I've been wondering...and Publisher's Weekly is in on it, too...and, I'd venture, a few hundred (nay, thousands?) of authors and illustrators are thinking these things.

Previous posts on this very site are in agreement with David Levithan, who predicts--see the Publisher's Weekly article--that: "...books will not go away but may become more valuable, collectible objects..." 

Change is inevitable, yes? 

Let's usher in a marvelous new age of literature, one that will serve the hearts and minds and imaginations of today's youth, and tomorrow's. Let's embrace moving forward, and do it with grace and wisdom. So many new ways to bring art and books to children. What could be better?

Haleiwa: when this was your backyard as a kid, it's hard to top...

Those wonderful parents of ours just provided us with two weeks in heaven. Home again, we are, and missing our old backyard in Haleiwa, the wonderous cousins & co., and the incroyable folks who made it all happen. None better. 

One more time: Happy 50th, Mom and Dad. You are incomparable, and we love you so.

Time to get back to books and art and our soon-to-be released first video...almost live (okay, taped a few weeks ago), from Manhattan, it's art.books.children! Yes, I know you are waiting with bated breath. So am I. As soon as the cutting room floor is swept up, said video shall arrive. 

Aloha!

midsummer alighting

We are lucky enough, this summer, to be spending a good bit of time with family...and, for us, that means zipping around the northeastern edge of the continent and skipping over the Pacific to an island with many happy memories...my sister and I were both born there. Our wonderful parents celebrated their 50th Anniversary in June, and the way they celebrate is to treat the family to time in Oahu. Their generosity and love are legend. They are our heroes, in so very many ways: they have given us the most exemplary blueprint for family, and we are forever grateful. 

It is good to be going back to the land of red dirt and tropic lightning...

ooooo, how we love Haleiwa. And Manhattan, Southampton (shells, above), Maryland, and Pennsylvania...and we wish we could've popped by West Point (there is nothing so grand as the Hudson River Valley), Groton Long Point, and something in D.C. besides Dulles. But there was not space enough nor time. 

Thus, the posts this summer are sporadic. There hasn't even really been time to unpack (which sort of satisfies the gypsy in me). We do hope to send word from Oahu, though--perhaps, tied with Germany, our favorite "no place like home" on earth.

When you grow up as an Army Brat, there are a lot of places you get to call home. It's a good thing.

"...where on earth is she going with that?"

If you've been following artbookschildren--or just got here--you might be wondering where on earth I'm going with all of this...I submit, herewith, a mission statement of sorts:

It's about how art and literature will be delivered to children in the future. Not the future tomorrow...for that, just take a glance at some of the varied, erudite, and exceedingly knowledgeable folks on the lower right, at blogs elsewhere. 

Read Roger, 7 Impossible Things, the Longstockings, + others...they'll all give you the best possible vantage point on children's literature today, methinks.

It's the day after tomorrow 

that I care about. 

In 5 years--

and 10 years, and 20--

how will children receive 

good art, great literature, 

thought-provoking ideas:

how can we, the grown-ups, provide it 

in the best possible way?

In 5 years--probably much sooner, actually--the world of

children's literature will be quite different: a bold new universe with exceedingly wonderful literary vehicles with which to reach the young. 

Let's reach them in the best possible way, shall we, with 

the best possible material? 

They are the future.

Let's do the best we can for them.

 

Tucked Away...The Swedish Cottage and Puppets in the Park

On Sunday, the 22nd of June, came across this little wonderful gem in Central Park. Perfect place for a puppet show, yes? Marionettes, no less. And right across from The Shakespeare Garden. Very Cool.

Also caught the first half of Hamlet @ Shakespeare in the Park. 

Ophelia's hair was a fabulous red. 

Unfortunately, I had serious jet lag and the only other thing I really remember is that Horatio (?) had a coat that deserves a shot on that wonderful blog, The Sartorialist.

Passing Strange Day: Stew II

Yes, it's "Passing Strange" day on art.books.children.

Because.

On Passing Strange. Stew,

here, shortly after a performance of "Passing Strange."

Stew, (please see artbookschildren post, yesterday), was discussing...outside of the Public Theater...the play, it's genesis, Berlin, and a few other topics that made me wish I had a pencil and paper or a flip or something, for God's sake.

And now, I see, Spike Lee will be filming Stew's glorious work of art. Cool. Looks like it was announced yesterday evening? Hey, remember: Stew won that highly coveted "artbookschildren Sublime Art of NYC" award first. (Okay, so he also snagged a Tony a few weeks ago, too...)

Go, Stew! Thanks for all the art.

Just thought of the things I loved best about Stew's post-show comments: that he & his collaborator, Hiedi, refused, at every stage, to change the production for anybody else...Stew noted that his producer acknowledged the genius of this/was it after Tony Tony Tony or before? I can't quite remember...And Stew mentioned that he looked forward to returning to Berlin and that Broadway was a happenstance, and not in the original plan. Or something like that. Oh, to have had a flip in my pocket. Made do with my little red Kodak.

The important thing: This is Why the Show is ART, pure and simple, ART like the stuff at the Metropolitan or the MOMA or in the vitrine of the New York Public Library. Stew and Heidi stuck to the vision. They didn't compromise, equivocate, or sell out: they didn't forget that the journey was the thing, not the destination. Let's hope Spike only serves to enhance this process, and stays true to the vision. Glancing at this article, I think we have a chance.

And thanks, Nathaniel and Viv, for steering us to the right theater. Genius.

Stew. Sis. Eliasson. Belott. Winnie: The Sublime Art of NYC Awards, Summer '08

photograph: detail from "Books, books, books, books, books, books, and books." 

Brian Belott, 2005-2007

Just in from New York and the long tail of Long Island...

So much to say, so little time...a few highlights, for now:

Best Street? Elizabeth. Wonderful goodies. Not too glitzy. Clothes, toys, le labo olfactory brilliance, art, coffee.

Best Art Books? Belott, above, and more, at the MOMA. Prints and Illustrated Books Galleries. Next exhibit? Wunderkammer.

Best Play/Playwright/Performance Art & Best Coming of Age Story? "Passing Strange." Stew is a genius, and anyone who has not seen this play that can possibly get to the theater to see it should get there, right now asap do not wait. Again: genius. Wunderbar. Please go. Please.

Best Place to Eat on the Eastern Seaboard? Red Bar. Corollary: Best Dessert you never knew you were missing, but you are: Baked Alaska at Red Bar. (Note: You'll have to hop on the Jitney for this New York treat.)

Best Picture? Linda Elizabeth and Vivian Catherine photographed in front of Olafur Eliasson's magnificent Brooklyn Bridge Waterfall.

Best Sets, also: Best Place to be when it Rains? The top floor of the Polo Mansion with Tim DeN. (If you get there, check out the best leather picnic bag on the planet: you probably need it, if only to sneak a few portions of Baked Alaska out of Red Bar...)

Best Characters? The real Winnie and Piglet, ensconced with their true friends in a gorgeous vitrine (right next to a magnificent Gutenberg Bible) in a heavenly room at the breathtaking Fifth Avenue branch of the New York Public Library.

Best Museum Moment? At dusk, watching, from the rooftop of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a magnificent red/gold sun set upon Manhattan and just to the right of Jeff Koon's "Sacred Heart (Red/Gold)." Up there, there is a nifty Martini Bar that serves ice cold water (!) and additional, more artistic libations that are just perfect for the end of a long hot summer day (I can promise you that it is the most delicious way to end eight hours spent zipping through the Met like Eloise looking for Skipperdee and finding, instead, enough glorious art to make your head and heart and internal gyroscope spin without cease.) Yummy, yummy, yummy.

I like New York in June, how about you?

Tasha Tudor and Pumpkin Moonshine

Pumpkin Moonshine was sort of an ur-book for me. Just about the first one I can remember, that is. It is soft and glorious and charming and memorable. I wanted to live where Sylvie Ann lived, and wear a bonnet like Sylvie Ann, and somehow inhabit the same colors she inhabited.

Tasha Tudor brought genius and charm--and an incredible work ethic, from what I remember hearing from booksellers-in-the-know--to our world.  

We shall miss her.

The Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards 2008

Once again, the magnificent Katherine Tillotson contacted us with good news: The Horn Book Awards have been announced, and several of our favorite people are included.

Congrats to Peter Sis, Shaun Tan, Sherman Alexie, Edwin Fotheringham (a long time favorite of art.books.children)...and all the wonderful others...can't wait to look into several of these books and add them to the library wing (a girl can dream, right?) of our house.

Read all about it, here.

Maira Kalman, Maira Kalman, Maira Kalman

Just too wonderful, 

too wonderful 

for words.

Here is the TED version of Maira.

Here is Maira at 

the New York 

Public Library, 

via the 

New York Times.

Here is Maira courtesy of 

the Julie Saul Gallery.  Please be sure to look at the exhibits.

If I am in New York, and I am walking down the street, 

and I wear a nice hat, do you think that I might bump into Maira?

 

It would be like bumping into a dream.  

Pretty Pictures and Dream Whip.

  

Maira Kalman, Maira Kalman, Maira Kalman.

Felicia Hoshino

Made me cry. Well, looking at her artwork made me cry. Like a baby. Her work is luminous: it is rendered beautifully, in a masterful way that is vivid and touching. I wish you could see it in person, as we did, year before last, during the always-remarkable Reading the World, at USF.

A Place Where Sunflowers Grow, written by Amy Lee-Tai, and illustrated by Felicia Hoshino. Yep. It's the art from that book that made me cry (I'm still a little embarrassed by it: when I went up to congratulate Felicia, after she gave a delightful presentation, I couldn't talk & got all choked up. I think it was truly the beauty of her work--the soul that is contained within--that readily shines through. When you see that sort of thing, it is not bad to be so moved. It is good. Amy Lee-Tai's story, greatly inspired, is an important one, and I think every child would benefit from knowing it.) 

I am sure that many great things will continue to come from Felicia. I can't wait.

Just for a taste, check out her wonderous website.  

And, pleasepleaseplease, don't miss the Michiya Hanayagi Dancer, on the website. Fabulous.

Photo above is from The Presidio, which is a hop skip and a jump from USF. You can take a spin through it's marvelousness when you come out to attend Reading the World, 2009. See you there.

In a Blue Room: Jim Averbeck and Tricia Tusa

Short post of the day.

"In a Blue Room." Poetry. Art. Bedtime. Sweet music to the eyes and ears.  

Classic.

For a good read about this, please go to the fabulous, masterful blog Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast...

Written by Jim Averbeck and illustrated by Tricia Tusa: absolutely great work. A superb addition to any young child's library. 

Buster Keaton Influx and Catherine Brighton and Elizabeth Bird and Katherine Tillotson

In at least one of our blog posts, there's reference to "Life Like Tales," the piquantly charming, sweetly elegant dance that was choreographed for UCDavis last spring (okay, and the choreographer's last name is Thorne, full disclosure here). I mention this only to illustrate our "Buster Keaton Influx." For Christmas, all the choreographer really wanted was books about Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin.

For those who know me, this meant that Buster & Charlie were soon busily making their way through our door, in twos (because some of the books were so delicious there was one for the home library and one for the choreographer's library).

Anyhow, we had a big Buster influx in December. He's quite a guy, and it's probable that I will list the Buster books at a later date. But, in the hopes of making this quick, here goes:

Thanks to the magnificent work/eye of Katherine Tillotson, who noted that we would find interesting thoughts on Fuse #8 about possible nominations for the upcoming award season, we, again, bumped into Buster...and thought well, here is a Buster Keaton Zeitgeist, surely...so...

please take a look at this wonderful review of Catherine Brighton's "Keep Your Eye on the Kid: The Early Years of Buster Keaton" by Elizabeth Bird--Fuse #8, herself!--who says, "Droll, witty, beautiful, and factual, it fulfills every requirement you could have of a picture book biography, rewarding us every time we read and reread it. Truly amazing. Truly fantastic."

Which is enough to make me want to run out and add Catherine Brighton's Buster book to the Keaton et Chaplin library we started in December.

If you want to know why the Struwwelpeter that has been hanging around our house since 1989 illustrates this post, well...you shall just have to go read Elizabeth's review of Catherine's Buster.

Now, I am thinking that the amazing Joan Vigliotta (of course) brought this book to our attention months ago...but I am often late to book club (big surprise there!) and I think I missed the intro. So, kudos also to Joan.

And to think that I got on the computer to order a pair of walking shoes from Zappos for the upcoming (ohlordyIamsoveryhappytobegoing) trip to NYC. And to think that I thought this would be a short post.

One last ramble: I noticed, in December, that Buster's unusual name could be sourced to his father's friend, Harry Houdini. Fuse #8 covers this. I mention it, though, because it all seems to tie into the Buster Zeitgeist (re: New York Times, Steampunk Article), and "Life Like Tales," and...

off to find some shoes. Here's hoping I won't be boiling the leather halfway through the trip to New York. Know any good delis near Cooper Street?

Oh, YUMMY

Please do take a little moment to look at this wonderous food blog that was just on blogs of note (thanks, Eric, for pointing it out).

A food blog by an illustrator?  From Spain!  What could be yummier?

I think you will love the art.  I do.

Saint Joan and Saint Beverly, Amen.

This blog wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for two patron saints: St. Joan and St. Bev.  

St. Joan, because she nudged me several years ago (with the most delightful nudge ever, an invitation to join the best book club I could possibly imagine being in...thank you, Joy Look Book Club, for being the most excellent of most excellents of...you get the picture).  That nudge--and the amahzing (as Seth Rudetsky likes to say) book group that Joan thought up--brought me back (from far-away design & style land) to my first (after the fam) love: children's books. There will be lots more about Joan Vigliotta later, if it's okiedokie with her, but we'll start with a link to the Mother's Day post on sweet her.  Thank you, St. Joan, with lots of well-deserved adoration and stuff.

And what of St. Bev?  She's the gal who said to go on and do this blog (or whatever web-wide stuff it was I was thinking of doing--I wasn't sure at the time, and it's all still evolving).  She's the amazing person who said, basically, "you go girl, I know you can do it, I know it will be good."  She's the kind of friend everyone with an idea needs. The incomparable Dr. Beverly V. Hock is also hugely instrumental in the gloriousness that is Reading the World.  And if you haven't bought your ticket to go see it yet, you best get started...it is the event that I never, ever want to miss.  More on this here.  

We hope to be interviewing the fab Dr. Bev in the near future.  And, if we are very, very lucky, we may be able to take a quick video tour (or several dozen) through Joan's amahzing house: how fabulous is her house?  Well, let's just say that several of the best authors & illustrators in the universe (yep, universe) have been speechless in joy and amazement at the gloriousness (there's that word again) of it. Amen.

Lane Smith and Molly Leach and Jon Scieszka

Whew, there's cool stuff out there about Lane Smith and Molly Leach. Why wouldn't there be? How much cooler can you get than those two?  

"The Stinky Cheese Man" was my favorite, favorite book to read to the kiddos when I got to go into the library and be the library reading lady, many years ago. I'm still not sure the grownups at our good Catholic school appreciated my taste in books, but the Stinky Cheese Man himself was new and he rocked and he had the kids rolling in the aisles.  Still does, I am sure.  To top it off, Lane & Molly (& their friend, Jon Scieszka) have done lots of other good things since then. Including, because my kids would not forgive me forgetting this, "The Time Warp Trio." More on all of this, later.

For now, check out Lane Smith's website...a cool blog entry about "John, Paul, George & Ben,"and a great article about book design by Mr. Scieszka, in which he has a good talking to with Molly & Lane. 

The illustration is from an old book, and is by Walter Trier.  Happy Father's Day to all you Dads out there.  Gotta love the fig leaves, yes?

Good Fortune

Have been meaning to get this in...a few weeks ago, our dear friend Andrew Ogus sent an email about a book he highly recommended. If it was worth the email, it must be worth a read. (Andrew has terrific taste in books.) To quote:

"...wanted to draw your attention to...

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles,

by Jennifer I. Lee...

Hilarious, fascinating, and well written...

She proves that fortune cookies originated in Japan,

and discovers the best Chinese restaurant in a

strip mall in Vancouver. Highly recommended!"

So, there you go. Another book to add to the summer reading list! A thousand thanks to Andrew O.

Note: Jennifer has a blog: it looks pretty tasty, too.

on the sea of memory

By Jonathan Cott.  

I can't put this book down, and keep re-reading certain chapters.

I think this is a very, very important book. There is so much that is informative and illustrative and poetic about our memory and it's capabilities and...this was going to be a short post.  Here is where you can find out for yourself and get it.

{Quite sure there will be more on this later, here.}

Photo by Julia Cameron.

Artisitic and Intellectual Freedom and the Santa Cruz Fire. Of course.

Last night, we came home from Davis and--after we had gotten over the Sunol grade, i.e., starting down the hill into San Jose and environs--the sun, I am not lying or exaggerating here, people--was the color of a magenta-doused-maraschino cherry.  It was threatening (in that I couldn't stop looking at it and was driving on 280).  It was beautiful, but strange.  And Andrew, upon looking at it, said something to the effect that it was not a good color (it was a good color, I assure you, if you are photographer or illustrator or you just plain like color).  What he meant was that it didn't bode well, and he was right.  The sky, at the time, looked just a bit overcast and smoggy...but, as we drove further into San Jose, it became increasingly overcast and smudgy and--eventually--sadly foreboding. (Just as Drew saw the sun.)  The closer to the Santa Cruz mountains we drove, the deeper and smudgier the sky became...going from a dingy light gray to a biliously hovering almost-india ink color. 

It got worse. When we got off the highway and turned toward home, I thought it looked like a bowl of clear water into which someone had dumped a nasty huge shovelful of mud. {In truth, pardon my saying so, this is what it really looked like: a toilet into which a particularly gnarly diaper had been unloaded.} It was really beyond awful. 

And the whole time the magenta maraschino sun floated overhead, sometimes plopping into an inky browned-out cloud, but always re-emerging to glow ominously, bloatedly, within this poor sick sky.

It was the second Santa Cruz fire that did it.  You could barely breathe outside, the air was so scratchy. (This morning, there is a layer of soot on our cars. We live an hour away from Santa Cruz.)

Later, as the sun went down, I went back outside to check one more time: the sky looked the way a sky would after a village had been burned and ransacked by the Visigoths or the Nazis or Genghis Khan.  The best thing to do was close up the house (which had been done already), turn on the a.c., and go to bed.  And be glad that you are not trying to evade the Visigoths, or the Nazis, or Genghis Khan and his horde.

What does this have to do with art? Okay. Let's see. Thank God for intellectual and artistic freedom, and the fact that we don't have to worry about our village being burned down if we don't co-operate with the huns. There you go. If that seems far-fetched, put on your thinking cap and realize that, at this very moment, somewhere in the world, someone with great vision is not allowed to speak or write or draw in freedom. 

We can, and it is a way of life that I don't want to take for granted.

Photo is of Mary Steichen; good sky, huh?

I am, Clearly, a Beginner Stonemason-Word-Fitter. Whatever.

From hipwritermama:

Like stones,

words are laborious and unforgiving,

and the

fitting

of them together,

like the fitting

of stones,

demands great

patience

and

strength of purpose

and

particular skill.

Edmund Morrison

Our Favorite Choreographer and NYC

This has everything to do with art books and children, because one of our children, who loves books, and is an incredible artist, is on her way to the big Apple right now and we are absolutely thrilled for her and cannot wait to visit (soon) and want to wish her all best, and cheers, and what have you. A grand adventure, for a grand girl. Here's to you, Vivian Catherine!

Great Article: Why don't we do it like the U.K. does it?

Hardbacks vs. Paperbacks, etc... And elsewhere, in the NYT, an article about e-books. With the interesting little tidbit that at least one of the publishers is sending out reps with these, and not the real-live books, because real-live books are too heavy.

Books will always exist, but isn't it clear--when the reps are carrying e-books--that there are big changes afoot, ones we must not ignore, ones that could bring many more books to children? We just have to mix it up a bit, and hope that the kiddies also get the real-live books to keep, lovingly, in their bedrooms.

Look, when you are on a four hour car trip six years from now with a three year old in the backseat, I want to know: will you have stacks of real-live books skittering all over the floor of the van, or will your ruddy-cheeked darling be reading a play-doh-colored, indestructably-lego-like e-book of her own? The giant bag of books is not going to win, do you think? Even the reps don't want it.

My older kids, now in college, used to have gray gameboys that felt like small bricks (old school gameboys, yes). How I would have loved those gameboys to be be e-books: portable, worthy of attention, and loaded with information. We had books in the car, too. But most of them didn't fit in my purse, and those clunky old-school gameboys did. Guess what came along with us when we got to our destination?

Bring on the play-doh-lego-style e-book.

Godspeed, Parker

Piping down the valleys wild,

Piping songs of pleasant glee,

On a cloud I saw a child,

And he laughing said to me:

'Pipe a song about a Lamb!'

So I piped with merry cheer.

'Piper, pipe that song again.'

So I piped: he wept to hear.

'Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;

Sing thy songs of happy cheer!'

So I sung the same again,

While he wept with joy to hear.

'Piper, sit thee down and write

In a book, that all may read.'

So he vanished from my sight;

And I plucked a hollow reed,

And I made a rural pen,

And I stained the water clear,

And I wrote my happy songs

Every child may joy to hear.

William Blake

what is art.books.children?

Art.books.children is interested in 

children's books and art, 

& the people who write, illustrate, 

and care about these things.

Like you, for instance.

We like to think about the best art in 

the children's book world,

and where the children's book world is going. 

If you're reading this on the web, 

guess where we think a lot of it is going?

There's no attempt, whatsoever, at this time,

to include anyone other than great authors and illustrators

and thinkers,

and stuff,

and a few other things we think 

might appeal to you, because... 

as Eloise knows:

getting bored 

is not 

allowed.