#BlogFriday: INSCRIPTIONS

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.