American Library Association’s Mid-Winter Conference in San Diego

On Saturday I attended the American Library Association’s Mid-Winter Conference in San Diego. The exhibition hall was filled with librarians, publishers, writers and illustrators enjoying the displays and (like me) loading themselves down with free ARCs, posters and publisher’s catalogs as well chatting with each other. Emphasis among the publishing houses seemed to be on YAs, but I particularly enjoyed the picture book displays. I was gratified to see my own book, Signed Abiah Rose, on display at the Random House booth.

It’s always nice to see familiar faces at such an event—Candace Ryan and Mina Javaherbin were there, Caroline Arnold was signing Polar Bear’s World, and Sherry Shahan was dressed in pretty purple 60s hippy attire in honor of her book Purple Haze, which she was there to sign. Arthur Levine and Dan Santat were chatting and checking out the booths. Everyone seemed to be having a good time. There was the occasional piece of cake or petit four or glass of champagne to energize those of us with tired feet or sore shoulders from toting heavy goodie bags.

It was a fun and enlightening day and a good chance to speak to librarians and publishers alike, and then of course Monday the ALA youth awards were announced! Here’s a few of the awards. I enjoyed both reading tweets and then (once I located the site) seeing the naming of the Caldecott and Newbery award winners just as they were announced! Very fun.


• The Newbery Award was won by Moon over Manifest, written by Clare Vanderpool.
• The Caldecott went to A Sick Day for Amos McGee, illustrated by Erin E. Stead, written by Philip C. Stead.
• The Geisel award was won by Bink and Gollie, written by Kate DiCamillo and Alison McGhee, illustrated by Tony Fucile.
• Ship Breaker, by Paolo Bacigalupi, took the Printz award.

You can find the rest of the awards listed here.

Heidi Illustration Challenge from Tomie dePaola

The theme of Tomie dePaola's annual SCBWI contest was to illustrate the first paragraphs of Johanna Spyri’s Heidi. Not knowing whether I would have time to finish my entry by the deadline (just before the holidays), I resolved to make the attempt – if only as an exercise.

As well as the problem of dealing with a classic character many are familiar with (in this case I consider Jesse Wilcox Smith’s beautiful illustrations for the 1922 edition to be perhaps the most loved) I believe the very text chosen to be illustrated to be a problem. Spyri tells us where Heidi is going and with whom, describes the terrain and her outfit (both in elaborate detail), gives her age and even her complexion. With so much spelled out, and with Jesse Wilcox Smith’s illustration of the scene fixed in my mind, how was I to portray the scene in a different manner? Indeed a challenging contest idea from Mr. dePaola! And did I mention he wanted something unique? I considered portraying Heidi as a tan-faced, rosy-cheeked Swiss mouse or other creature..... but finally approached the challenge by trying several angles of Heidi on her journey up the mountain with her companion. (I’ll show three sketches – there are even more!)

I did not have time to enter the contest and can’t say my preliminary attempts rose to the challenge, but I feel I learned from the process and became even more aware of the difficulties involved in creating characters for classic works of fiction.

Cats on Wednesday -- Style: The Many Visions of Puss in Boots

I’ve mentioned before that one of my favorite books is Fred Marcellino’s Puss in Boots, whose cover graces my computer screen. I recently came across one of the most famous portrayals of the iconic cat character. Gustave Doré’s wonderful engravings were done for an 1883 edition of Charles Perrault’s 17th century classic. (Interesting fact: Perrault was the brother of the designer of the façade of the Louvre!) Apparently the story of the courageous, crafty and clever cat who defeats a horrible ogre was written by Perrault as a parody of the musketeer stories of his time. Illustrators have long enjoyed creating new versions of the brave cat, but still stay rather close to the Doré version – the tall cavalier boots, the plumed hat, the insouciant look.

An illustrator faces a great challenge when re-envisioning a familiar, much-loved, classic literary character. The excellent interpretations of Fred Marcellino, and the delightful animated version in Shrek 2, are distinctive in their own way while still bringing Doré’s early version to mind.

On tomorrow’s post I’ll show several sketches I recently finished as an exercise, showing my attempts to address the problem faced by the Puss in Boots illustrators. As I sketched I attempted to depict another iconic figure – the heroine of Johanna Spyri’s Heidi.

Dreams, Obstacles and Goals

On the second day of the New Year Catherine Linka, the founder of Writer2Writer, met with fellow writers (including me!) to discuss the way forward in 2011. The over-used phrase ‘new year’s resolution’ did not come into our conversation, but our discussion was definitely about resolve, about what we want as writers, and what is realistic to try to achieve as goals this next year. Catherine stressed the importance of actually verbalizing what we want to have happen: “If you know your dreams, you know your direction”. We each wrote down a dream we have involving our writing, and read each others’ aloud (anonymously) so that our individual dreams were actually verbalized.

Next we discussed the obstacles we face, writing them down, sharing them (anonymously again) and discussing possible solutions. It wasn’t a surprise that there was quite a similarity of difficulties in all our lives. It was helpful to be able to discuss them and to try to think of useful advice for such issues as too many claims on our time, dealing with discouragement, our own perfectionism, and achieving self-discipline. When we discussed our third topic -- goals for the new year -- we agreed it’s very important to set goals we can achieve, goals that are measurable. Finishing that novel by a certain date and submitting our work to an agent or editor are examples of realistic goals. Our own hard work, innovation and dedication are what we can control. Worthy goals for 2011.

I believe it was a very helpful, encouraging and positive meeting, and a great way to start the New Year!