A small departure from picture books on this blog, making room for a book celebrating tiny arrivals! If you visit the online home of Cicada Books, you might have to do some jaw-lifting. Their eye towards the visual is a unique voice, and their books reflect that.
And please. Stop a while at the Discovering Kings Cross pop-up book, cause whoa.
But this one! In this world of pinning and Instagramming and having cameras on our darn eyeglasses, do you think the physical art of baby book-making is dying?
I don’t know. But if I had a baby, this is how I would want to scrapbook all of their bitty things. Tangible! Messy! Lovely and dear.
Baby Journal is just that. A compact home for all of your firsts with a little love.
There are pages for filling in, pages with recipes and lullabies, and pages with pockets for anything you want to add. It’s bound with an elastic strap, so all of the special things stay tucked inside.
For handwriting? Or mini-pictures? Or thumbprints? It’s up to you.
Yasmin Smail’s gorgeous colors and textures will beautifully frame the story of yours. Such a treasure!
(I know. Adorable.)
Baby shower coming up? Pair this with one of my favorite board books and you’ve got a fantastic gift for a new mama. Adorable analog memories!
I have been looking forward to this book for a very, very, very long time. As long as it took Manfred to grow into a big old red monster from just a wee thing. (And once you know him you will assume like me that it took days and years and eons for that to happen.)
You see, Tara is one of those insta-friends. We’ve never met in real life, but she better prepare for a crushing hug of love once we do.
And in celebration of this grand opening, I went straight to the source. And so for you, enjoy this conversation with the creators of The Monstore. But beware…
NO RETURNS. NO EXCHANGES.
Who did you create first, the kids or the monsters?
The one thing I was most excited about with this project was getting to draw monsters. As soon as I got the email from Simon and Schuster asking me to do the book I started sketching out pages and pages of monsters of various sizes and shapes in my sketchbook. Then I ended up going back and picking out the ones that I thought best represented Manfred, Mookie, and Mojo. The rest ended up being the background characters.
After that I designed the kids and the manager. The manager was probably the toughest because I had a different idea as to what I thought he should look like and the publisher had another. I originally pictured him being much bigger so that he could keep all the monsters in line but the publisher wanted something different so I ended up going in the opposite direction and making him small. I think he turned out great. He’s a great character. Kind of mysterious.
And the way that James drew the manager, it gave me an incredible idea for a sequel. But I may be getting ahead of myself.
How long did it take to arrive at your style for the illustrations?
It didn’t take long to come up with the style for the book. It’s pretty much the way that I draw and design characters. The textured coloring was something that I had just started experimenting with because I wanted the book to look more picture-booky and less comic book style. I ended up creating some custom brushes in photoshop that gave me a nice textured effect and I left off most of the outlines so it felt more painted.
To me, the illustrations have a cool 3-D effect that I’ve not seen in other picture books. It’s just one of the things that makes THE MONSTORE unique.
{Carter here. Here’s a great example of that 3-D effect Tara mentioned. See how Manfred is busting out of that frame?! He can’t be contained!}
Do you have any favorite moments in the book?
I’m pretty happy with all the pages. There are so many great moments and things happening. It was a fun project to work on for sure. One of my favorite pages in the book is where the monsters are crammed inside the house. There are just so many fun things happening on that page. One monster flying a underwear kite, another eating the tree, and a third tossing a roll of toilet paper out the window. It’s contained chaos.
Keep your eyes peeled for the little eyeball character I named “Peepers,” he tends to hide in various places through out the book.
It was so cool when James told me he names all the characters he draws, not just the three monsters I mention in the text. It helps him to give each monster a distinct personality. So when my girls and I got the book, we started naming every monster. There’s a girly balloon monster they named “Kiki” and a monster who looks like he has buttons up his chest, so my youngest calls him “Elevator”. I think they are more creative than I am! My girls were also better at spotting “Peepers” hidden on the pages than I was!
This book is a fun house! You won’t know if you’re walking right side down or upside up. The colors will leap off the page and super soak your brain. It’s vibrant, funny, and a heck ton of surprising. James’ illustrations are the perfect complement to Tara’s wacky words, and you should put this in your nightly rotation pronto.
And maybe knock five times under the last box of sour gum balls at your local candy shoppe. You just might find The Monstore!
Also? I LOVE that the title on the spine is written from the top down. Three cheers for fewer library shelf-induced neck cricks. Am I right?!
BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE!
Do you want a copy of this?! (Answer: YES.) Well, great, cause I’m giving a copy away! Just leave a comment on this post by Tuesday, June 11th at 12:00 PST, and I’ll draw a winner!
And if you can’t wait to play the odds, check this opportunity out! If you call Tara’s local indie (908-766-4599)to purchase a copy, they’ll ship it out to you signed and personalized!
{The cover image at the top of the post links to IndieBound, and Tara wrote an awesome post about other places to get The Monstorehere.}
I was in Seattle a few weeks ago. You remember the library, right?
I went to Pike Place Market, because of course, but also because flying fish and dudes in galoshes are a spectacle worth checking out. And I also wanted to get up close and personal with some bluefin tuna eyeballs.
There’s a real reason for that, trust me. But they didn’t have any tuna, so this happened:
There’s not a real point to that story except that I adore that tweet (and those two Favoriters) and it’s what I did just before I wandered into Lamplight Books.
It’s like I stole something. Fifteen dollars? Sixty quarters? It still has that magical, musty smell of hidden secrets. And it was mine in a fraction of a split second. That fast.
Because…behold:
I’m in love. From the texture of a porcupine, to the form of mountains and weeds, to the repetition inside a squash, design is everywhere.
Design is a Dandelion ends like this, with truth and a charge:
Design is everywhere. It is for everyone. All you have to do is to learn to see it. Open your eyes and take a big, long look.
I’ve been looking forward to this book for a long time, mostly because that cover is SPECTAZZLING. But also cause I follow Greg Pizzoli on Twitter, where he is clever and quippy and shares things like THE ENDPAPERS. And then this is what the publisher teased us with, so I was pretty much in love with this book right away:
With perfect comic pacing, Greg Pizzoli introduces us to one funny crocodile who has one big fear: swallowing a watermelon seed. What will he do when his greatest fear is realized? Will vines sprout out his ears? Will his skin turn pink? This crocodile has a wild imagination that kids will love.
Yeah. SO INTO THAT. The Watermelon Seed hits stores TOMORROW, May 14th, so you might want to go ahead and get in line. After you meet Greg, of course.
So I’ve also been looking forward to this post for almost as long. I’m thrilled to have Greg Pizzoli in for a visit. Welcome, Greg!
I call him “Kroc”. Sometimes my editor calls him “K-Roc” or “The Krocster”. Boy, does he hate that.My background is in printmaking, and I built a silkscreen shop in my studio, which is how I generate a lot of my work. I think my preference towards limited and deliberate colors comes from the printmaking. It could be laziness, but I’m going to say printmaking.
Even the first sketches of this book were in just a few colors. It just made sense to make the whole book feel like a watermelon. Plus, he’s a crocodile, so the green is already there.
Everyone at Disney*Hyperion was very supportive of my trying out different inks and paper choices to get the feel just right. We did CMYK v. Spot color tests and there was just no comparison. I think it would be tough to get that pink, and that green with CMYK. At least for me. We tried a few different paper stocks, too. I’m super picky.
Basically you make a drawing in black and use that to make a stencil on a screen. Doesn’t matter how you make that drawing – by hand on tracing paper, with construction paper, in Photoshop – whatever you can use to get a drawing in black. Your screen, which is a frame of aluminum with a fine mesh stretched across it, is covered in photographic emulsion, and you expose the screen to light. Wherever the light hits the emulsion, it hardens and becomes water resistant.
BUT if you put your black drawing between the screen and the light source, the emulsion that is blocked by your drawing (which remember, is black, thus very light blocking-y), that emulsion stays soft. And you can wash it out with water. So everything that wasn’t blocked by your drawing is water resistant, and your drawing washes out of the screen, making a water resistant stencil in the shape of your drawing. You make one of those for each layer, or usually, color. WATERMELON was offset printed obviously, but I did a lot of screenprinting textures, etc to make it feel very printy. The spot colors definitely help there, too.
I’ve been teaching screenprinting for about 4 years at The University of the Arts in Philly. It’s where I met Brian Biggs. He took a continuing ed class I was teaching in 2009. He introduced me to my agent. I dedicated a book to him, but it hasn’t come out yet. I still owe him big time. I still teach! I love it.
Humor usually keeps me interested in whatever I’m doing.
I like to work with texture for sure, too. And shapes. Shapes, yeah, shapes are good. I know this is great interview material here. Breaking news, Greg Pizzoli “like shapes”. Today on Buzzfeed, 23 shapes Greg Pizzoli likes most.
Anyway . . . I was really into shapes and texture with THE WATERMELON SEED, and the next book I’m doing with Hyperion (NUMBER ONE SAM, Summer 2014) comes from a similar place. We’re doing spot colors for that one, too. But four this time, which opens up a lot of possibilities in terms of overlapping layers and colors.
Like most people, I like lots of stuff. I never get tired of looking at Eduardo Munoz Bachs posters. He obviously had a lot of fun making his work. A lot of people you’d suspect probably, Sendak, Ed Emberly, Tove Jansson, Charles Schultz, etc.
I’m really lucky to have so many talented buddies in the Philly area, too. I host occasional drink ‘n’ draws at my studio and Zach Ohora, Matt Phelan, Bob Shea, Tim Gough, Amy Ignatow, Brian Biggs, Lee Harper, Gene Baretta, Eric Wight, and several others have come by. It’s a good time. Sometimes we do this thing where we each draw for five minutes and then pass the paper to the right and draw on top of that drawing for five minutes, until we get all the way around the circle or run out of beer. You can imagine just how bad these things look. Joe Strummer, Iggy Pop, David Bowie. They’re my heroes.
No way! I love coffee. I think I quit for a while last year and it just floated around my online profile for a bit. I did stop drinking as much. I am down to like 2-3 cups a day which feels great for me. I was drinking like 8-10. Oh yeah. I’m nicer now.
Greg Pizzoli, people. Is he awesome or what?
So yeah. That’s pretty much my favorite thing on the internet right now. Did you catch the part where the period at the end of the sentence becomes a spotlight for good old K-Roc?! I love that detail.
The Watermelon Seed! Greg Pizzoli! Thanks for hanging out here! We love your book. And you are top notch, too.
Get ready. You may never have seen anything like this before. Have you ever read something that you feel like should be in a museum and not in your hands? And then you realize that’s the whole point of the perfection and portability of picture books, but still your mouth hangs open in awe?
This is one of those books.
The Enduring Ark is a retelling of the flood story from Genesis, and this line from the first page enveloped me in its storytelling.
You may have heard this story before, but great tales deserve to be repeated – and so let me tell it here again, in my way.
And so it goes, this age old story with a breath of new words. Spare text, stunning imagery. The strong lines hold bold saturated color. And I’m dearly smitten with the two crabs!
They found all forms of creatures: large and small, fierce and tame, with feet, and fins, wearing fur, scales and feathers.
The book itself can be read page by page, left to right, as you are quite familiar with. But it also extends out like an accordion, the story literally unfolding before you.
Tara Books, of Chennai, South India, calls themselves a ‘collective of dedicated writers, designers and artists who strive for a union of fine form with rich content.’ This accordion-style scroll painting is the Bengali Patua style, which historically has been used to visualize mythological stories and aid the narration of a storyteller. What a sublime medium for their mission to unite fine form with rich content, right?
Also interesting? On the cover, the artist is named before the writer. Perhaps it’s because the words are a retelling? Or because the design of the book is what makes it extra special? I’m not sure, but I found that really lovely.
The Enduring Ark releases on May 14, 2013. If you are a fan of book design, fantastic story, and clever engineering, don’t miss this innovative book!
Big thank to the publisher, Tara Books, for providing a copy of this book for review. Why not connect with them on Twitter or Facebook if you think their work is magical, too?!
Remember Salina Yoon and her heart-tangle-upper Penguin and Pinecone? Well, she’s back in a big way this week. Tomorrow, April 16th, she has two brand new books out in the world, and trust me: they are spectacular. Penguin’s back in a new adventure, Penguin on Vacation. He’s sick of all the snowy cold, and sets off on a beach adventure. Don’t miss it!
And then there’s this one. I got a sneak peek of Pinwheeland let me show you this thing!
Die cut cover, in the shape of a pinwheel. A hint at the ingenious things to come!
What you might not know about Salina is that she is a master of novelty board books. The engineering to make these books tactile and animated on top of just utter gorgeousness? Her brain. Her artistry. Brilliant.
Pinwheel’s pages have a dial on the edge of the page. Those bright triangles lead you in a twirling direction, and when you do, the magic happens. On this particular page, those scales shimmer and change colors as if you were under the sea with them, swimming into a different beam of light with each flick of your tail.
So here, the train’s lights alert you to its journey. And see her words? Simple, lyrical, and beautiful.
But then. Just when you think you understand how this book works, this happens. A carousel horse! Pops his head out of the page and bobs up and down, up and down, up and down – until you are ready to turn the page …
…where there’s a kite dancing in the wind. Of course there is!
Pinwheel is a knockout. {And no, I didn’t really mean that to be a die-cut pun, but hey why not?! It’s kinda a good one!}
Its design is the story. Pinwheel asks you to interact, discover, and enjoy – and it’s a pleasure from the first spin to the last.
And if you are like me, and can’t get enough of this little treat, check out Salina’s Kaleidoscope. It’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen in a novelty book, I’m sure of it.
When I first heard of this book at SCBWI LA last summer, it was some art on a slide at the front of the room. I was in the back row, and I was hooked. I’ve been waiting for it ever since, and I love that its release was in eager anticipation of baseball’s opening days.
{Sidenote: Cano + Jay-Z? Interesting collaboration. I’ll always be a Chipper Jones girl myself. Middle school scrapbooks and everything. Really.}
But this book. It’s a visual juxtaposition of baseball traditions in America and Japan. A global pastime.
On the left, a kiddo goes to the park with his Pop Pop, and on the right, he hangs out with his ji ji.
{Sidenote again: I had the world’s greatest Pop Pop – no offense to our bright eyed young’n in this book. He always called that Chipper Jones fella Skipper.}
The sweet story arc socked me in the gut a little, because of my own fondness for family trips to the baseball stadium. Aaron Meshon’s saturated colors that are full of life vibrate with the energy of a game. The American blues and the Japanese reds contrast beautifully on each spread, too.
One of the reasons I love baseball so much is its balance of sheer intensity and quiet, and the roar of a rallied-up crowd. The composition of the illustrations echo that rise and fall – some are fully rendered to the edge, color spilling off the page. Some are contained in a quieter space, bordered by white.
And I love this – a subtle repetition of a circle, the stitched up sphere of a baseball. It even shows up on the back of the title page. I’m blanking on my librarian vocabulary – the verso, is it? That part where all the important cataloging information lives.
It’s here, too. Those cheeks!
And this – baseball is exhausting.
So get this book. It’s a home run. (And a slam dunk, too – even though that’s the wrong sport.)
I’ve been meaning to write about this book ever since I met Salina at an event in December. December!
2013 has been a time warp, but at least I’ve been surrounded by lots of great books.
I love that tiny Penguin and his dapper orange scarf Salina drew for me. (She’s just as adorable, too.) And this might be one of my favorite title pages of all time. The bed of pine needles, the heart…sweet, sweet foreshadowing.
Salina’s compositions are all striking, with a calming sense of space and subtle mood-building color palettes.
Remember the Rule of Thirds? Salina’s ground to sky ratio is a beautiful example of it. And I love that she chose the cool and crystal clear sky to be the dominant feature. It’s a wide open space, but Penguin still feels chilly and at home.
Every shivering pinecone needs an orange scarf right? Which is certainly a lovely thing to use as clothing for a penguin, but doesn’t it also magnify how freezing Penguin’s world is? It makes sense, but it also plunges the reader into that arctic blast.But since pinecones don’t live in the frigid air, Penguin sets off with his friend on a sled to return him home.And this spread. So pretty, and so sweet. There’s that bed of cozy needles from the title page, see? The contrast in worlds here is magnified by the color. Penguin’s home was cool and blue, and Pinecone’s neighborhood is warm with yellows, browns, and greens. Later, Penguin returns in search of his friend, and this left hand side of the most perfect spread is a mashup of their two worlds’ color. And I can’t show you the right. Cause, spoiler alert! But it’s spectacular and you just have to see for yourself. Trust me.
It’s easy to fall in love with Penguin and Pinecone, and since you probably already have, be on the lookout for two more of their adventures! Penguin on Vacation is coming in April, and Penguin in Love is coming before the end of the year. So dear, so perfect, so chilly.
I have no children. I have board books. Is this weird? Maybe. But these in particular are little graphic design studies. I will not literally try to chew them, but they are definitely droolworthy.
Do you know Alexander Girard? He was a midcentury designer, specializing in color and textiles. I’m crazy about the Nativity set at that link. And while most people have heard of Herman Miller, Girard was the designer that sizzled up their furniture line with his palettes. He said this, which made me fall in love a little: “People got fainting fits if they saw bright, pure color.”
He did it anyway.
So this little book is a huge celebration of his style, color, and desire to make you faint and fall in it.
How about Charley Harper? He took a vibrant love of color from the natural world, and distilled that into his pictures. I adore that on first glance, whimsy and delight dances around, but a longer gaze reveals storytelling ingenuity. He said, “When I look at a wildlife or nature subject, I don’t see feathers, fur, scapulars, or tail coverts—none of that. I see exciting shapes, color combinations, patterns, textures, fascinating behavior, and endless possibilities for making interesting pictures.”
And this tiny treasure explodes with his search for endless possibilities. And it’s lovely.
Was I right about that whole droolworthy thing? I know.
I’ve mentioned my bookshelf issues before, right? As in not nearly enough space to put all the books? In my head, picture books are so skinny! They’ll take up no space at all, right? But rather than on shelves, I have stacks. Everywhere.
Well, this book bowled me over when I first laid eyes on it. You’ll see. But the stack it was in? Covered by a throw pillow on the couch. Not anymore, I promise. Please send shelves.
Anyway. Let’s talk about this book, because I think you will adore it.
An intriguing title that gives away the delightful dichotomies to come – unusual instances, and a billion bitty details to love.
The cover hints at all of this, with its mossy greens and a muddy red – complementary colors on the good old color wheel. As far a part as they can get from one another, and a great use of contrast in design framing a book all about sometimes absurd differences.
I adore the way the green line of the cover dangles down along the stark red endpapers! Love.
Inside, each spread contains one glorious illustration holding all of those billion bitty details. And each spread holds only two contrasting words which can explain or guide or drive the pictures. You figure it out, you get into the story, you make sense of the contrasting duo.
It’s like Eva Muggenthaler gave your imagination a diving board and didn’t tell you that the pool was so deep that you’ll shoot out of the other side of the globe. Extreme? I don’t think so.
A hint! Such a tease.
Wonder and ooh and ahh with this one. This is one of those books that needs to stay out all the time, not ever stuck on a bookshelf. And definitely never ever ever under a throw pillow.
PS – Valentine’s Day is charging forward. Do you need a good book for your sweetie? Check out my Top Ten over at Design Mom!
Yasmin Smail’s gorgeous colors and textures will beautifully frame the story of yours. Such a treasure!
