How can I deny it? My days are filled with as many random and wonderful things as creators can put into their books.
Last week found me aboard a ferry crossing the Maine waters bound for Peaks Island.
For that day I was helping plan an art show, a book launch, and a conservation fundraiser focused on the book Nest, Nook & Cranny by Susan Blackaby and illustrated by the queen of the tender line, illustrator Jamie Hogan. Tender? How can you deny it? Look at this illustration!
A percentage of the event proceeds will go the The Peaks Island Land Preserve and their stellar president and Renaissance man, Garry Fox led us off into the Peaks Island woods to choose a nature walk for the event. Critters (including this polka dotted one) abounded.
Mark your calendars for October 16th and Jamie Hogan will be back to you with the woodsy details.
Check out Jamie’s (always engaging) blog about the Peaks Island woods and our particular day in them –including me getting peed on by a toad, no less.
Tol is the Korean celebration of a child’s first birthday. In the celebration, the baby’s family plays the prophecy game, toljabee which predicts what the baby will be when she grows up.
And what will the book Sara Mee be? That was the topic of tea with Anne Sibley O’Brien. Has the Korean community found her book yet? Is it time to connect with Anne’s extensive Korean contacts?
We set our sights (first) on a children’s museum event that creates a ‘photo booth’ for babies and toddlers to dress in the beautiful tol dress and sit behind its plentiful table. Here is the table as it appears in Anne’s illustration:
Sometimes you do not find story on the page, but by the mere glance at an astonishing object. This striped anthropod greeted my morning…
…and by the afternoon, I had crossed the expanse of the bay, tarried down a lane, entered what seemed to be an ordinary clapboard house, and encountered this shiver.
This beauty sent a shiver up my spine straight into my brain. That shiver hovered there between my flight instinct and my imagination daring not to choose. The arachnid (armed with needle and silk thread) is the creation of Mike Libby of Insect Lab.
Mark and I had the glory of seeing the workspace where Mike transforms the structure of deceased anthropods shipped to him from afar into works of exquisite clockwork using the gears and widgets of time pieces past.
We witnessed a beetle’s bustling transformation…
…and the marvels of finished creatures ready to move into their glass domes…
Our pictures hardy do justice to these creations. You should explore them in the Insect Lab Gallery. It is always an honor to explore an artist’s space from widgets, to skeletal scribbles on the desk leg, to stray wings and grasshopper leg on the workstation, and to the children’s books that speak to the Insect Lab mindset…
We talked long and hard about how Insect Lab’s creations do not have a back story and how Mike has resisted any association with existing (and tempting) stories. Instead, Mike hopes to inspire story with his anthropod beauties. How? That is another story.
Curious City has been quite honored to spend the summer helping to build an audience for LISTENING TO LIT by working with the grand folks at Audiobook Community to produce Sync. The program pairs the download of a current YA with a corresponding classic.
It is not too late to take advantage of the free audiobook downloads of the titles above. Two new titles appear every Thursday and two titles disappear so mark your calendar!
Really pleased with this trailer we created for Sandra Dutton‘s middle grade novel Mary Mae and the Gospel Truth. This is the first trailer where we did not use voice. The accent of the character needed to be quite specific and was just geographically (a tad) unattainable. We set the mood with music and type rather than voice.
The script and direction was a beast to arrive at. The book is such a sweet balance of science and religion and of loyalty and exploration. How to create that in a trailer script? Sandra nailed it, though, and I love the result.
All the photos were set up by me and shot by Mark Mattos using a local actress, Jane Ackermann (who just happens to live next door). Love the serendipity of day to day at Curious City.
I am quick of mind, but slow of pen so I may have not gotten these quotes perfect…
Here are things overheard at ALA Annual Conference that made sense or made me laugh…
“Comics and superheroes open all the absurd possibilities of the world to children.”
–Alex Simmons, Kids Comic Con & Color of Comics
“Kids of color need to see superheroes of color…see themselves holding great power.”
–Alex Simmons, Kids Comic Con & Color of Comics
“It is about time that we see beautiful babies of color showing up in board books on a regular basis.” –Charlesbridge Publishing on the board book American Babies
Proud as pie to have worked with the folks at Audiofile and Audiobook Community to create this free YA Lit audiobook download program for these hazy days of summer. More about the YA audience building program here.
Proud to being a launch event for Moon Watchers this weekend. Prouder still that we will be turn the event elements into an event kit for public libraries to celebrate Ramadan and Eid this Fall.
In an event that explores Muslim family traditions, author Reza Jalali and illustrator Anne Sibley O’Brien will host a series of activities related to their new children’s book, MOON WATCHERS: SHIRIN’S RAMADAN MIRACLE.
Curious City is honored to have been the Book Consultant for Raising Readers for the last six years. What an organization. What an impact on the educational future of the state of Maine. 1.3 million books given to Maine children. Thank you Libra Foundation!
How can I deny it? My days are filled with as many random and wonderful things as creators can put into their books.
