These Pigs Could Be Yours

It's time once again for the 19th Annual Children's Book Art Silent Auction. It'll be held Wednesday, May 29, 2013, 5.50-7.30pm during BookExpo America at the Javits Convention Center in New York City. Above is this year's contribution: my reworked/revamped family portrait, which I featured here a while back...

Pistachio Gets his Easter On

My rabbity cat Pistachio in one of his two favorite baskets.

The Apothecary is now in paperback

The Apothecary by Maile Meloy - with a whole bunch of my illustrations - is now out in paperback. It’s a pretty thing, I think, and it appeals to my magpie sensibilities.

Eagle-eyed readers (and even skylark-eyed, robin-eyed, and swallow-eyed ones) will notice that I tweaked the original jacket painting. Actually, it was more of a small-scale demolition job wherein I tore down the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge, erected a new stretch of old-fashioned buildings and sprinkled some children on top of them. On second thought: maybe I just turned the bottle a bit so as to get a fresh vista, taking care not to jostle the bird in the process. At any rate, I like this version better.

And it’s nice to share some pictorial real estate with Garth Williams, whose drawing was adapted for that shiny sticker in the corner. Did I mention the book won (well, tied in the middle reader category) The E. B. White Read-Aloud Award from the American Booksellers Association?

So by all means go get a copy at...
Indiebound
Books-A-Million
Amazon
Barnes and Noble

GOODNIGHT MOON Rearranged

Today is the 60th anniversary of the untimely death of Margaret Wise Brown. For want something better to do to commemorate this, I’ve taken all the words from GOODNIGHT MOON and rearranged them...

GO, NOTHING MOOD 

The moon was over
a toy-house there,
and quiet little noises
were everywhere. 

A room full of chairs
and nobody was sitting
and two old bears
and three little kittens
and a lady cow whispering,
Goodnight, goodnight,
on a green telephone.  

Hush-mush...
Hush-mush... 

Brush the old bears
and comb the young kittens,
and brush and comb
and pair red mittens. 

And there,
in a great balloon,
a little mouse, who,
jumping and jumping,
socks the stars
and clocks the moon. 

A balloon to the moon,
little mouse,
over chairs and room
and red mittens and house. 

A picture of air
and a bowl of light
and a lady cow whispering,
Goodnight
goodnight
goodnight
goodnight
goodnight
goodnight
goodnight
goodnight
goodnight
goodnight
goodnight
goodnight
goodnight
goodnight
goodnight
goodnight
goodnight
goodnight...

New, Old Pig on the Block

Going to the ABFFE’s (Mostly) Silent Children’s Art Auction and Reception to Support Free Speech for Young People at BEA tonight? If so, you can bid on - and maybe even bring home with you - this little piggy.

He looks sort of familiar, eh? That’s because I took a color xerox of a painting I did a dozen years ago, mounted it on illustration board, then started to retouch and, I hope, improve on my earlier work. I had based the original on a photograph of Abraham Lincoln’s son Willie, but thought the proportions needed adjusting to make him less human and more pig-like. I also fleshed out his surroundings, gave it all a warmer tone, and pretty much repainted the whole thing.

Bitterblue is here!

Bitterblue is here! Actually, it’s been here since May 1, but I’ve been too busy to herald its arrival. Last fall and winter I made about 16 illustrations for the book - and I’ll show how some of them came about in subsequent posts. Although they have a “woodcut” feel, all of them are ink on scratchboard. Pick up a copy from...

• Indiebound
• Amazon  
• Barnes and Noble 

“It no have pictures in it.”

From Kristin Cashore’s blog:

The response of my two-year-old niece, codename: Isis, when she saw the ARC of Bitterblue: "It no have pictures in it."

Well, guess what, Isis? You're going to like the final version of the book better, because it does have pictures in it. The lovely Ian Schoenherr, who most recently did the art for The Apothecary, has created maps, castle diagrams, various Appendix illustrations, endpapers, the cover page, ornamental chapter openers, and, probably my favorite illustrations of all, double-spread part openers (the book is in five parts) for Bitterblue, and the final result makes me SO HAPPY.

If you "like" the Graceling Realm page on Facebook, you'll have access to some of the art, which is slowly being revealed there.

The process of working with my publisher and Ian on the art was fascinating. It was surprising -- and delightful -- to realize how involved I needed to be, and lots of fun, too -- I enjoyed every minute of it. Often, it wasn't until I saw a sketch that I realized there was some physical aspect of a space I hadn't bothered to explain to Ian, because I'd internalized it so much that I'd forgotten that other people wouldn't necessarily be imagining it the way I did. I had to re-learn that we all see different things when we read words. And it's really helpful to have a visual artist picking your book apart and trying to interpret it. Ian found some inconsistencies no one else had caught -- like a clock tower I'd slapped onto the wrong bridge -- just in time for me to change them in the text. And every time one of his sketches came in, I sat there speechless, overwhelmed by how lucky I was to have an artist who was making my world so beautiful. Feeling, deeply, that Ian was making my world more beautiful than I had ever managed to make it.

Thank you, thank you, Ian, for what you've done for Bitterblue. I'm certain Bitterblue herself would love the art too.

The Apothecary: Terrific Book?

The Apothecary is an E. B. White Read-Aloud Award finalist! More here.

Trick Bird

Good words about The Apothecary from Fuse #8.

Ann Patchett on The Apothecary on Martha Stewart

Check this out - The Apothecary talk starts at about the 3.26 minute mark.

The Apothecary on The Martha Stewart Show

The Apothecary was just featured on The Martha Stewart Show!

The Tennessean’s Celebrity Column tells all about it:

Nashville local and New York Times best-selling author Ann Patchett dropped by The Martha Stewart Show to promote her new local bookstore, Parnassus Books, and share her top 5 picks for books this holiday season.

“The best thing about owning a bookstore is recommending books,” Patchett told Stewart in the episode, which airs at 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. today and again at noon Monday on the Hallmark Channel. “I’ve been forcing books on people my whole life, and now I can do it professionally.”

As for the books she thinks people should read this time of year, Patchett suggests The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson, Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman, The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal, One Writer’s Garden by Susan Haltom and Jane Roy Brown, and The Apothecary by Maile Meloy.

Audience members walked away with all five books, as well as Patchett’s latest book, State of Wonder.

Parnassus Books is at 3900 Hillsboro Pike in Nashville.

Book Signing on Friday, November 25th

I’ll be signing copies of Maile Meloy’s The Apothecary - and my other children’s books, too - this Friday, November 25th from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Clinton Book Shop. They’re located at 12 East Main Street in Clinton, New Jersey.

And, as usual, while you're in Clinton, get some breakfast, brunch, or lunch nearby at The Fine Diner - owned and operated by my beloved sister and brother-in-law.

An Illustration from The Apothecary

This is one of my favorite illustrations from The Apothecary and one of the ideas that came to mind when I first read the manuscript.

But sometimes the most simple ideas are the most difficult to execute. I couldn’t get the sky or the waves “right” and kept painting over and over again, getting nothing but more unhappy.

When I was in almost tearful despair, my cat Buzz jumped on my scanner and sent it clattering to the floor, and so I decided to see if it still worked by scanning my frustrating picture. And then I started tinkering with the image in Photoshop and within a few minutes I finally got the “feeling” I’d been after since that first read. My Photoshop skills are pretty rough, though, so I spent the next few days copying in ink and paint what I’d done on the computer.

The Apothecary on PW’s Best Books 2011 list

Hey! Publishers Weekly put The Apothecary on its list of Best Books 2011: Children’s Books...

Meloy’s first book for young readers is a wonderfully imagined alternate history, set as cold war tensions between the U.S. and Russia are reaching critical mass, and a secretive group of apothecaries conspires to protect the planet from all-out destruction. With magic, history, adventure, romance, and smart writing, it’s truly a story with something for everyone.

Wired Wild About The Apothecary

More about The Apothecary at Wired - including this nice comment...

Oh, and one more thing: the cover and interior art, by Ian Schoenherr, is gorgeous and pitch-perfect. There’s one image at the beginning of each chapter (and just a few scattered illustrations elsewhere); each one hints at something that will come later in the chapter, but without being too explicit. It’s a delicate balance, drawing the reader forward without giving away too much, and Schoenherr does a superb job. One look and you’ll see why Meloy said one of the most rewarding things about writing a kids’ book was getting to have illustrations in it.

The Blue Horse Auction is Underway!

If you’d like to take this blue horse back to your stable, now’s your chance:

He’s up for auction and can be found on The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse Charity Auction website and on Ebay.

The auction ends Wednesday, October 26, 2011, at 9:01 p.m. (Pacific Daylight Time) - which is just after midnight October 27th on the East Coast.

Bid early. Bid often. Support a worthy cause. Help a horse out.

NYTBR Likes The Apothecary, Too

The New York Times Book Review devotes a whole page to The Apothecary in the issue of Sunday, October 16, 2011...

Meloy weaves fantasy into a fine work of historical fiction, bringing to life the cold-war era when everyday life was permeated by fear of nuclear disaster and Russian spies lurking everywhere. More important, though, she brings to her first book for young readers the same emotional resonance that has won acclaim for her adult fiction, grounding her story in the intricacies of family love, friendship and loyalty, blended here with the complicated fluctuations of adolescence.

The review even reprints one of my interior illustrations. The cropping - or, rather, the lack of cropping - leaves something to be desired (all of my deliberately unfinished stuff around the edges is revealed), but I’ll take it.

Wordstock Interview: Maile Meloy

A great behind-the-scenes discussion of The Apothecary from the Wordstock Festival via GeekDad via Wired.com.

“And there's illustrations! SO MUCH PRETTY.”

“I have so much love for this book, guys!”

- Harmony’s Radiant Reads.

“A gem of historical fiction”

More love for The Apothecary from the Los Angeles Times.

Maile Meloy on Writing & The Apothecary (& Me!)

Early sketch for The Apothecary jacket, September 2010

From another interview with Maile Meloy, this time all the way from Australia:

Ian Schoenherr did the beautiful illustrations, and he’s incredibly talented. He really captured the texture and the fantastical element of the book, and because he has a wonderful realistic, technical drawing ability, the magical aspects feel real. He was the perfect illustrator for it.

Maile Meloy Interviewed About The Apothecary

A terrific little interview with Maile Meloy (that mentions me!):

Q: The Apothecary features some great illustrations by Ian Schoenherr; what do you think is the best way for a writer to collaborate with an illustrator?

A: I think it should be just that: a collaboration. I had put clip art at the beginning of each chapter, with a picture of something that would appear in that chapter. Ian used a few of those objects, and continued the idea that the opening image should build suspense about the chapter, but he went way beyond my little boxed images. I was limited by what I could find in photographs. He chose perfect moments and scenes from the book to illustrate, and his paintings wrap around the text, across the top or bottom of the page. They’re so beautiful, and Ryan the designer and Cecilia the art director showed me the sketches as they came in, so we could have a dialogue about it. There’s a character in the book with a wooden leg, and in the manuscript it was just a peg, but Ian drew an articulated leg with buckled straps, a boot, and visible nails to hold the sock up. I started to say, ‘Oh, that’s not the right kind of…’ and then I shut up and went back and changed the text. His leg was better.

A Blue Horse?

For better or horse worse, I’m becoming a specialist in painting forlorn animals in old clothes - as seen here, here, here, and here - and now here:

“Blue Horse in Black and White” by Ian Schoenherr (2011)

I painted this sad creature for a good cause, though:

The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse Charity Auction is a silent auction to benefit the NEA Foundation’s commitment to help improve arts education in schools across the nation. The initiative was inspired by Eric Carle’s picture book The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse, which celebrates imagination and artistic freedom.

The directive was to create “a piece of original artwork featuring [my] interpretation of a horse in any color, size, shape or medium of [my] choosing, inspired from [my] reading of The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse” on an 8 x 8" canvas (on which the legend seen in the picture was printed, by the way; my lettering isn’t that good).

I guess I interpreted this directive broadly.

Anyway, this could be yours, once the online auction begins on or around October 17, 2011. The site www.BlueHorseAuction.com will be up and running once all the entries are received and photographed. I’ll post a reminder and more details as they come.

Fondness for The Apothecary

Some nice comments about The Apothecary from...

The Picky Girl: “this is an absolutely beautiful book”

Beth Kephart: “a book that (if the preview pages on Amazon are accurate) features some very beautiful illustrations by Ian Schoenherr.”

Forever Young Adult: “We already know that you can make something cool by putting a bird on it, but this cover is so much more than a hipster cliche. I love the old school style, which beautifully captures important elements of the book. This cover is the reason why book frames should be invented, because it needs to be on my wall STAT.”

Publishers Weekly Gives The Apothecary a Star

Publishers Weekly just gave The Apothecary a starred review. And they even liked the pictures!

With evocative, confident prose and equally atmospheric spot art from Schoenherr, adult author Meloy’s first book for young readers is an auspicious one.

Little Raccoon in Strange Company

This bit of nostalgia from my well-evolved childhood friend, Carl Zimmer.

Dreamy About The Apothecary

Nice comments about The Apothecary at There’s A Book:

Book Dreaming is just that. It’s a feature I’m going to use to highlight those books that make you dreamy or possibly just end up making you dream about them. It could be anything from newly released books to ones that are already out that I can’t get out of my head to those I can’t seem to get my hands on soon enough!

Today’s Book Dreaming pick is The Apothecary by Maile Meloy and Illustrated by Ian Schoenherr...

Trailer for The Apothecary

I just got an advance copy of The Apothecary - and it looks great. And now there’s a way-cool trailer for the book, which uses a few of my (MANY!) illustrations.

Not since the oak-tag flip-book I made of a motorcyclist jumping over garbage cans in the 6th grade has any of my work been semi-animated.

A Kiwi Reviews The Apothecary

A great review of Maile Meloy’s The Apothecary - all the way from New Zealand:

This is a stunning new book about magic aimed at Intermediate junior secondary students with reading ages 12-15 years.

Set in the era of the early Cold War in the year 1952 when McCarthyism was starting to take root in America and nuclear testing was starting with first the Americans then the Soviets and later the British. Spying was rife.

Into the story comes an American girl Janie whose parents are script writers for a new British series on Robin Hood. She goes to a private English school and comes in contact with Ben, the son of an apothecary or pharmacist in modern lingo. The father has a powerful book called the Pharmacopoeia which contains magic potions that can transform humans into birds, make people tell the truth and even vanish.

Soviet spies want the Pharmacopoeia and Janie and Ben are caught in a spy action story that ends up at the Soviet testing site of Nova Zemblya. To tell you any more would ruin it, but just imagine if it was possible to negate the effects of radiation with a potion made from plants.

I loved this novel as it was so original. I would describe it as an historical Science fiction adventure fantasy. Is that possible? Read it and find out.

Headless Child Reviews The Apothecary

Take a look here.