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.

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.

See you in February.

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.

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.

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).

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.

Well done, Tilly!

From my YouTube just now:

lol, definitely one of the greatest birthday cards I’ve ever received.

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.

Starting a tradition of celebrating my birthday by posting the greatest single comic panel of all time:

FOX ALL WEEK is on Fuse 8 n’ Kate!

I am thankful and honored Betsy paired this book with mention of my own but the star of the show is undoubtedly Fox. I won’t spoil the ending of the podcast by revealing what rating Kate and Betsy gave this book, but I will say I loved hearing how Kate described Marshall’s Fox (Kate had asked for a book where a Fox was the hero of the story):

“So, foxes are usually portrayed as the villain and I feel like we see different sides of this fox to make him a more three-dimensional character. Sure, he’s deceiving in the first story when he lied about being sick but we also see him being remorseful when he admits to lying about smoking cigars. We see him being helpful when he makes dinner for his mom and sister, we see him make mistakes—like giving away his grandma’s chocolates to a complete stranger. And finally, we see him being supportive of his friend who got braces. So, I think this is better than seeing a fox as a hero, we see the Fox as being a relatable character instead.”

So good.

To add to the discussion, here’s a link to 2014 James Marshall Fellow Sandra Horning’s blog post where she dives into the dummies for FOX ALL WEEK, taking special note of what Marshall considered a perfect funny ending.

The mystery of who Edward Marshall is is uncovered in another of Sandra’s blog posts, here. (I could tell you who Edward is, but what fun would that be?)

I’m offering four hours of my time for the #KidlitForCeasefire auction. I’m calling it a mini-mentorship, but I’m happy to tailor the four hours into any type of sessions that meet your needs.

From the auction description:

Four hours of Zoom time with Jerrold Connors, creator of Donuts for Everybody, author-illustrator of the upcoming James Marshall biography, JIM! Six True Stories About One Great Artist. The Zooms can be based on Jerrold’s popular and groundbreaking “Dummies for Authors” class (a course that teaches authors how to make physical drafts of their works in progress), or they can be centered on the winner’s needs. Where ever you are on your publishing journey (from querying, to subbing, to actively debuting), Jerrold can help elevate your work with joy, creativity and intention.

I will only add that the last time I offered this, my auction earned less than Kim-Hoa Ung’s Giant Pencil, a humiliation that was immortalized in this video. Please don’t let me suffer this fate again. Bid now! Bid early! Bid often!