I was driving along a frontage road and passed under one of those electronic billboards that rotate through a number of advertisements and affirmations. As I went by, it flashed a message that felt connected to a work I just sent to my agent so I pulled a quick U-turn to take a picture of it.
“Thoughts become things.”
This thought is often on my mind (see: Invisible Things), but it has been forefront since earlier this month when I wrote about the necessity for increasingly imaginative works in kids media as an antidote to the fast, cheap and out of control content social media offers. Anyway, now I’ve put those thoughts in a story and boy do I hope to share that with kids soon.
Anyway, another thing that has been on my mind is blogging. As of writing this, I have blogged every day (but one) in January. I opened with my 2025 affirmations post, and it felt fitting as I sat double-parked, waiting for the billboard to cycle through its various ads before returning to THOUGHTS BECOME THINGS, that I would be treated to a number of affirmations. Here’s a sampling:
They are all lovely messages, but that last one felt really specific to me. When I finally did turn around, I was, in fact, only a few blocks away from an honest to goodness multi-warehouse rummage sale. I parked my car, paid my seven dollars admission fee, went in, and almost immediately realized I was supposed to be somewhere else (d’oh!). I did have about fifteen minutes to spare before my next appointment so I did a quick dive through the kids books section and came away with 12 new (old) books. Enough fodder for more blogging.
A couple months ago I posted this reel highlighting Lian Cho’s Substack as a great one to follow. I still believe that! Case in point, today’s newsletter:
Lian did a Q&A and I was dellighted to learn our creative practices have something in common. From the answer to “Do you have any practical advice for being unafraid at drawing?”:
And, look! Lian answered my question about preserving the life in your sketches:
Which brings me to today’s topic. How do *I* deal with preserving spontaneity? Like Lian, I try to keep my sketches loose but like Lian says, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. One place in JIM! where I feel it worked was here:
The sketch that preceded it? Regard:
Let’s see them side by side:
I wouldn’t normally move to final ink without a more complete underdrawing/sketch, but for this scene I made an exception. At this point in the story James Marshall is in the midst of an existential crisis. I felt the moment required a very loose, very energetic illustration. This would be the only drawing in the book I drew freehand, and it’s one of my favorites. Still, I know this technique won’t work for every project and I know some editors and art directors like (or need) to see tighter sketches, so what do I do about the rest?
I never went to art school so I never had a professor to drop this bit of excellent wisdom:
“At the end of the day, nobody is going to put your painting right next to the model and compare it. Nobody is going to see what you’re seeing right now so just focus on doing your best.”
It’s a reminder to me that I shouldn’t dwell on comparing the two. Sketches and finals are different creative practices with different purposes, as long as you are doing your best, it doesn’t really matter. Thank you for sharing that advice, Lian! (Also, your figure drawings are incredible.)
Fuse Eight n’ Kate have done it again with another great episode. There’s a lot of good humor, so much I worry there might have been a gas leak in the studio, but also a good deal of inspiration. So much that I’m inspired to write about one of two things. Either: 1) my unfortunate history of working in graphite where I made a piece so successful, it was stolen from me or 2) a deep dive (no pun intended) into which animals can or cannot swim, via this paper by zoologist and natural historian Darren “@tetzoo” Naish.
from: Testing the flotation dynamics and swimming abilities of giraffes by way of computational analysis. Henderson, Don and Naish, Darren (2010)
I’m also tempted to dig into my collection of folktales and see if I can track down some version of this Jumping Mouse story.
All these decisions and distractions are a clear sign that I should probably be working on a revision I’ve been putting off so I’m going to hit publish and come back to one of these ideas later. If you want to have a say in which topic I pick, you can click on one of these buttons. It won’t do anything, but everybody loves buttons.
Yesterday was the American Library Association Youth Media Awards and, as happens every year, there was a stunning display of beautiful and important works by talented and intelligent human artists presented by enormously dedicated book people culminating in a celebration of those books deemed most significant, BUT, if I may, I’m going to talk about me for a minute.
SO THERE I WAS, at my desk, the ALAYMA livestream playing on my phone, wondering what I was going to blog about. Suddenly it was time for the Geisel Award, the prize given to the “author(s) and illustrator(s) of the most distinguished book for beginning readers published in English in the United States during the preceding year.” It’s the award for what’s commonly called “beginner books” (think Cat in the Hat), but somehow I always (erroneously) equated it to a humor award. I was wondering if maybe there should be a humor award and if it should be called “The Jim” and then suddenly I heard the announcer say “and the award goes to TOWED BY TOAD”.
I felt an immediate, intense thrill. This was a surprise to me, I’m active on social media in #kidlit circles (less and less as it gets harder and harder these days) and have gotten to know a lot of talented, intelligent, human artists but I’m more likely to call these people (wonderful as they are!) “fellow authors” or “kids book colleagues” than I am “friend” (parasocial relationships etc etc). Still, I doubt I’d have been any happier if I was in person at a banquet celebrating Jashar’s win. What I can say with certainty is that I really admire Jashar and I really, really like TOWED BY TOAD.
I had, actually, meant to throw out an appreciation for this book for a while, so here we are! Let’s dive in. First, the endpapers:
Of the seven elements of art (line, shape, form, color, space, texture, and value), Jashar’s ability to draft appealing shapes impresses me to no end, but TOAD really has me thinking about how well Jashar handles color. It’s so good. That yellow on the endpaper is just perfect.
Another perfect thing, the skunk’s face on this next page. Also, the skunk’s name.
There are also these small details in the book that are integrated so seamlessly into the illustrations. Like the transponder on this traffic light. It’s extra, but not superfluous. Does that make sense? I don’t know, I just really admire it.
I also admire this part with the powerlines above Toad’s repair shop. It’s a cacophony of cables but it reads so well.
And it’s not all style over substance. The part I might most admire in TOAD is this little detail at the beginning of the book. This little fly in the frying pan. I love how this open up a space for the reader to imagine what Toad has for breakfast. What do you serve with fried flies? Weevil waffles? Grapefruitfly?
Similarly, the various motorists all have stories you can imagine. The one I’m most intrigued by? The taxi cab duo. Behold:
If you ask me, the dog in the back seat looks more the “cabbie” type. He’s even got the cap. PLUS, he looks like he came out of GO, DOG, GO! So why is he in the backseat? The fox, meanwhile, looks like the male lead in a romantic comedy who is on his way to the airport to catch his lady love before she boards the plane for Tuscany but he’s hopelessly late. I could be taking this fiction too far, but the pictures do compel reading.
And speaking of reading, the text is friendly, inviting, reads as clearly as the pictures and carries a real sweet message. It’s honestly such a good book and I’m very happy it got recognized today.
I’ve decided the last Monday of the month is going to be Zine Monday here at the blog. Every Monday going forward, I’m going to showcase a favorite zine from my collection. First up is this extremely limited edition Simpsons zine by a young person named Tilly (via @zinetent).
Bought this online in 2019. If I recall, each copy had a unique hand drawn character on it. I love this Homer!
It’s a gallery of Simpsons characters rendered in a combination of finger painting, marker and stickers. Here’s Homer. His mouth is stamped by, I think, a closed fist:
Marge is a foot.
Bart is also a foot. Maggie and Lisa are open hands.
There’s the usual gang of suspects, Sideshow Bob, Krusty, Mr. Burns… each as delightful as the last.
The zine has a dustjacket made out of yellow construction paper.
Okay. It’s quirky, it’s cute and all that but it’s a remarkably successful example of form matching content. There’s just something so perfect going on here with the subject, the media, and the physical object itself. It’s not so gritty as some of my other favorite zines (that grittiness being almost a requirement to rank in my favorites), but it is loaded with handmade charm and that puts it way up there in my collection.
A quick intro: Do you remember #IllustrationFriday? It was a project where once a week (on Friday) the Illustration Friday moderator would post a theme word. Illustrators, cartoonists, graphic designers from all over the internet would post a piece of work from their collection that best matched that theme onto their blog and submit a link to the main Illustration Friday website (don’t go there now, it’s all crypto currency and Russian brides). The result was a long, long list of art, the perusing of which would take up my entire Friday. It was fun and inspiring and it’s one of the things I miss most about the old internet. As I’ve seen more and more creative people grow disillusioned with existing social media platforms (Bluesky excepted), I’ve seen some wondering if they should maybe try blogging. If you’re one of those people, I invite you to write a blog post on the theme of “Book Inscriptions” and share the link in the comments below. Here’s mine:
Marjory Ruderman posted about inscriptions over on her blog and that got me thinking about the books in my collection that are signed and how I feel about them. In short, I’m a sucker for any book inscribed by its creators. I will admit, it kind of bugs me to have a book signed by either only the author or only the illustrator so I tend to pick up books inscribed by author-illustrators. For example:
This book is inscribed to “Sophie” and I kind of love that. Sophie is one of my favorite names and it seems, here, particularly well suited to this book. Besides which, I don’t figure I’ll ever find a book inscribed to a “Jerrold”. Also of note is Molly Bang’s handwriting. Isn’t it lovely? Interesting penmanship always catches my eye. Speaking of which, guess who’s signature this is?
Give up? It’s no other than Levar Burton’s!
I have no idea how long it takes Levar Burton to sign his name but I got this book as part (if I recall correctly) of a Hurricane Katrina relief fundraiser and I imagine he must have signed several hundred of these as the donation perk. His poor wrist!
Here’s another favorite. A book I picked up from an Andrea Tsurumi book signing and which I had inscribed to my students:
I used this book fairly regularly, either for lessons about environmental stewardship or marine biology, both of which were always a big hit in my classroom, but the fact that I met an ACTUAL author always impressed the kids.
I’ll wrap this up with my most recently acquired inscribed book, one I picked up just last weekend at a used bookstore up in the redwoods. SHAKE, RATTLE & ROLL by WHO NEEDS DONUTS? author illustrator, Mark Alan Stamaty.
I’m always delighted to find a signed book but this one was extra special because the inscription came with a doodle!
But what I like most about this is that there’s some kind of a story going on here. At some point, someone named Eero (great name!) claimed this book from someone named Tim Ferguson (another great name!). Eero wasn’t worried about the provenance of this book and preserving the authenticity of the original inscription. Eero’s bookplate, with its inscrutable squirrel-beaver, is pasted right over top of the previous owner’s name and claimed the book as their own.
This made me think of that Maurice Sendak anecdote where a parent wanted their kid’s copy of WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE signed, but the kid was less than impressed and only said to the master of children’s illustration, “Don’t crap up my book!”
THIS, actually, is my greatest worry as I get closer and closer to JIM’s launch. I have been practicing not just my signature, but my tag line as well. I’ve been toying with the idea of writing “Viola Swamp is watching you!, -Jerrold Connors” and “The Stupids say Hello! -Jerrold Connors” but those aren’t my characters and it feels weird to tack them on to my signature. At the moment I’m thinking “Hooray for James Marshall! -Jerrold Connors” but I’lll probably just wing it when the time comes and hope I don’t crap up anyone’s book.
