Ripple Blog on Wednesday!

This is my donated drawing for Kelly Light's fantastic Ripple blog. The idea is simple and great: illustrators donate original art dealing with the oil spill disaster, Kelly auctions them off, and ALL proceeds go to help the bird and marine life of the area. This month is Great American Illustrator month and she's already sold some amazing cards from folks like Mo Willems, Frank Dormer, and Jarrett Krosoczka.

My card goes up for auction this Wednesday, July 21 at 6:30 PM EST.

Above is a slightly enlarged view. The actual card is ink on 2.5 x 3.5" watercolor paper. It's called A Day at the Beach. For details on how the bidding works, go to the Ripple blog and look at the right side column.

Around the World via My Studio

This summer, I'm hard at work on the art for my next graphic novel, Around the World (due out in 2011). The first of the three stories in the book that I'm drawing involves the unstoppable Nellie Bly. Above is a picture of the 6x4' bulletin board in my studio (I love that thing).

Heather, the book's amazing designer (she also designed Storm) made this incredibly useful mini-version of the rough sketches for the story with temporary placement of the dialogue. This way we could all get a sense of how the story was working. As I drew each page, I started marking them with scraps of post-it notes.

Here it is about a week and a half ago... which means that now I've finished drawing the whole Nellie Bly segment. So now I'm painting and finishing all of the pages. When that's done, I'll start on the second of the three stories. Then repeat.

OK, break over...

Bryant Park sketches

More Good News Plus Victorian Bears

More good Storm in the Barn news:

Storm took the gold in the graphic novel category of ForeWord Reviews' Book of the Year Awards!

And has been included in the master list for the Kentucky Bluegrass Book Award!

Moleskine Ape

And this just in... Storm in the Barn is in the Top Ten of Graphic Novel Reporter's Core List of Graphic Novels for Teens. That's pretty darn cool.

New York Events This Week

Here's a picture of little Mabel. Do you like it? Do you like it like it? Well, it can be yours if you go to the ABC's Not a Dinner and (Mostly) Silent Auction next Tuesday. There's mingling, the announcement of the E.B. White Award winner, David Weisner's keynote speech, and an auction of work by a gaggle of children's book illustrators. If you see me, be sure to say hello.

And don't forget I'll be in Brooklyn this Saturday for the Graphic Novel for Kids Spectacular event at WORD! It will live up to its name!

A BIG Thanks to SCBWI-NE!

I had a really, really great time at the SCBWI-New England conference this past weekend. I gave two workshops; one about my approach to writing graphic novels and one about my approach to illustration. It was an interesting experience for me because I had to examine what it is I do (mostly on an intuitive level) and organize it in a way that people other than me could hopefully understand. The feedback I received was very good, so I think it went well.

On Sunday I gave a joint 4-hour Illustration Academy workshop with Yolanda Scott (editorial director, Charlesbridge), Ann

Stott (art director, Candlewick) and author/illustrator David Hyde Costello (click on the link for a look at David in his studio). We couldn't have done it without help from Casey Girard who made everything run smoothly. It was an intense experience for all of us, but I think it also went very well. Heck, I was inspired.

And you can't beat the finale that Yolanda and David worked out... a literal showstopper of a number about the combination of words and text.

David, who is as cool and nice a guy as you could possibly meet, brought an extra uke for me. It added to the shall we say celebratory atmosphere that rocked the Courtyard Marriott on Friday night. SCBWI people are a very social bunch.

Thanks to Casey for the pix. More pix and general round-ups can be found at the conference Twitter page.

In addition to my co-Illustration Academy team, I met and/or re-met a ton of fantastic people including but certainly not limited to Jo Knowles, Frank Dormer, Cynthia Lord, Kate Messner, Abigail Halpin, Mitali Perkins, Cynthia Leitich-Smith, Dawn Metcalf, Kelly Fineman, Jennifer Morris, Kat Black, Deborah Sloan, Michelle Henninger, Anne Sibley-O'Brien, Anna Boll, John Bell, Jennifer Carson, Anindita Basu Sempere, and a host of very cool attendees. Thanks to everyone for making this such a blast.

One of my favorite things about the conference was that I had the chance to meet for the first time in person two authors that I've had the honor to work with: Ann Stott (Always) and Jeanne Birdsall (Flora's Very Windy Day).

SharkBoy

Onward and Upward

WORD!

Happy May, everybody! Just wanted to post a heads-up for the New Yorkers in the audience...

I'll be appearing at WORD in Brooklyn on Saturday, May 22nd at 1 pm as part of their Graphic Novel Spectacular for Kids event! Also appearing are Eric Wight, Jarrett Krosoczka, Chris Giarusso, and Frank Cammuso! This should be an A-1 blast, so I hope to see you there.

Gaucho!

Tell It to the Walrus

Free Library Fest This Weekend!

If you are anywhere near Philadelphia this weekend, swing by the Free Library Festival! It's huge! It's fun! It's literary! I'll be there talking about the making of The Storm in the Barn and signing books on Sunday at 12:30!

Slim

International Children's Book Day!

I thought I'd celebrate International Children's Book Day with a look at a couple of titles of international appeal.

You can't escape Alice in Wonderland at the moment. And although I haven't seen Tim Burton's movie yet, from the trailer, it's clear that Wonderland gets the thorough Burton treatment in its disturb-o design. Dark and creepy seem to be where most illustrators go when illustrating Alice, and while I love many of these interpretations (Tenniel, Rackham, Blair), I think my favorite version of Wonderland comes from the great British illustrator, Helen Oxenbury.

Her version of Wonderland is bright and sunny, dare I say welcoming. It doesn't sugar-coat the text or make the characters less odd, but it presents a fully-realized Wonderland that has the added benefit of being a place that the average little girl wouldn't run screaming back up the rabbit hole to escape. And of course, because it's Helen Oxenbury, it is beautifully drawn with a delicate approach to watercolor that makes a very difficult medium look effortless. So while I like dark and creepy as much as the next guy, this is the version of Alice in Wonderland that actually makes me want to sit down and read the book.

Years ago, FSG editor Janine O'Malley gave me a copy of Olof and Lena Landstrom's Will's New Cap and I will forever be in her debt. Simple in the best and most difficult way and hilarious to boot, the Will books (and everything else by this team) are the kinds of books that fall under the category Just Buy Them. You can't go wrong.

So those are my picks. It's a beautiful spring day, so grab a good book and go find a nice cork tree to sit under.

Update: Apparently ICB Day was yesterday... well, this still stands.

A Review... plus a squirrel

Here is a fine review of Two of a Kind posted by an eight-year old reader named Sonia. It is always good to get feedback from one's actual audience. Good work, Sonia!

Spilling Ink!

This week sees the release of Spilling Ink: A Young Writer's Handbook by Anne Mazer and Ellen Potter. I was pleased as punch to contribute a series of drawings for this amazingly detailed and highly entertaining look at the writing process. I think this book will be invaluable to any young writer in your life and I really wish I had something like this when I was growing up.

I'm not alone in this opinion. Bruce Coville calls it "wonderful, funny, wise" and Nancy Springer deemed it "outstanding".

Anne and Ellen have launched a fantastic website that is going to be an ongoing resource for writers and teachers. The site also features a Creativity Blog that will host a series of guest bloggers. I was honored to be their first guest. Read my post here.

And leave a comment to be entered into a drawing for a free copy of Spilling Ink signed by Anne and Ellen!

Slow Burn

The Latest from the Ring

Check out how The Storm in the Barn fared in the Anita Silvey-judged 1st round of the Battle of the Kids' Books...

(spoiler: Yes indeed, Storm had a spectacular editorial and design team in its corner.)

Squid