A unique visual challenge

Yesterday was the publication date for my second author/illustrator project, DREAMING UP: A CELEBRATION OF BUILDING. The book combines illustration, concrete poetry, and photographs of architecture. I attempted to juggle these three different elements and achieve some kind of balance on a spread.
     My goal was to make a strong connection between children's building play and specific examples of modern architecture. Photo selection proceeded illustrations, and I did all the research. Some of the structures included in the book are not widely known. I was able to find web images, but I needed permissions and high-resolution files for print. Tracking photographers and architects was often like a treasure hunt.

      This idea began in Barcelona in 1993 when I first saw Gaudi's magnificent cathedral, La Sagrada Familia. There was something about the fluid, organic forms that evoked a sand castle in my mind. Gaudi adorned his spires with recycled shards of colorful pottery, the way a child might add sea glass and shells to a sand castle.
      While in Barcelona I participated in a summer painting program through the NYC School of Visual Arts. Our group of painters included people from different parts of the world, including Iván, a graphic designer from Bogotá, Colombia. Years later I reconnected with Iván through Facebook. In DREAMING UP I included an illustration of kids building with nature, making fairy houses. To inspire young builders I hoped to include a photo of a bamboo church by the Colombian architect, Simón Vélez. I had trouble finding contact information for Vélez so I sent a Facebook message to Iván and asked if he could help. It turned out that Iván's friend lived next door to Vélez and was able to send me his phone number! I called and spoke in Spanish directly to the architect. Simón Vélez is as generous and kind as he is talented.

      I also wanted to showcase construction from recycled materials. After earthquake destruction in China, architect Shigeru Ban quickly erected a temporary school using industrial paper tubes. I found wonderful photos of Ban's Paper Tube School on a blog written in Cantonese. My sister-in-law is from Hong Kong, so she translated my interest and posted on the blog and thereby managed to get me in touch with the photographer. It turns out the photographer taught architecture in Hong Kong, but he had graduated from Columbia School of Architecture, so he spoke English, too. The father of a young son, he was excited about a building and architecture book for children. He was another generous contributor.
      All together now, everyone, "It's a small world, after all..."

      Once I had procured photo permissions for the fifteen different buildings, I sketched compositions to parallel the photos. There is always an evolution that happens in the creation of a book. My art is nothing like I originally imagined. I planned graphic mixed media collage vignettes against a white background. I thought my drawings would have black outlines. As I experimented it became evident that heavily textured, stylized art with dark outlines drew too much attention away from the photographs.
      My editor suggested that I surround my vignettes with colored backgrounds. This threw me for a loop. I tried to unify the spread with illustration colors drawn from the photos. I worked with softer values in the outlines, and a less textured approach. The paintings are done in gouache.
      Here are a few spreads If these tantalize you, then order a book to explore the inventive creations of these diverse architects.

Two to Recommend

I read two books this summer that have stayed with me and that I highly recommend. Richard Ford's CANADA is a stunning book about deceit, betrayal, and the stories we tell ourselves. Dell Parsons, the fifteen-year old narrator, begins this way:

First, I'll tell you about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders that happened later.

Pretty good start and as a writer, it's fascinating to see how much telling rather than showing occurs in this book and how well it works. It's also interesting how much of a YA feel this books has as the line between YA and Adult fiction continues to blur. Check out CANADA.

BEHIND THE BEAUTIFUL FOREVERS is a nonfiction account of life in Annawadi, the Mumbai slum next to the airport. Katherine Boo, a staff writer for the New Yorker, spent three years living there and provides a rich portrait of people going about the daily business of survival. The writing is beautiful and the story compelling. This is a book that will change how you see the world.

What a joy to read all of your posts.  Such creative people you are!!

This summer I travelled with my sister to Utah to see my son.  We had a great time catching up, climbing rocks, and learning more about this beautiful state!

I also spent a great deal of time reading books that I want to teach in my college courses - The Giver, The Children We Remember, Number the Stars, So Far From the Sea... I fit in a few outside books, like Gone Girl and a few Reeve Lindburgh books. And I'm celebrating the release of I Want to Help!  

 

We are also the proud parents of a new to us 3 to 5 year old Rhodesian Ridgeback mix who was dumped in our neighborhood.  She has captured our hearts, in spite of her habit of eating my shoes!!

A Call for Funny YA

In January I will be teaching Directed Reading at the Whidbey Island MFA. Last year I taught crossovers YA<-->Adult, but my students got very depressed. So, I decided to teach funny YAs next.

John Green's writing is always excellent, and The Fault in Our Stars has some funny scenes. Still, both main characters have cancer and their situation made me cry.

I've read Flip by Martyn Bedford and Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick by Joe Schreiber.  I have ten others in my list. However, if you have written a funny YA, please, let me know. 
  

Summer reading

I didn't get to read as much as I would have liked this summer (perhaps this fall?) but these were my favorites over the past few months:

Wonder, by R. J. Palacio, is a middle grade novel about a boy with severe physical deformities who is beginning his first year at public school. Told through multiple perspectives, it follows his year and shows how his life and the lives of those he encounters are changed.

A Monster Calls, by Patrick Ness and illustrated by Jim Kay, is about a boy whose mother is chronically ill. A monster comes to help the boy, but not in the manner he expects. This is a powerful book that looks truthfully at all the emotions that arise when faced with a loved one's death.

Stupid Fast is a YA novel by Minnesotan Geoff Herbach. With a distinct first-person voice, the book narrates the summer of teenager Felton Reinstein where his mother has a nervous breakdown, he experiences first love, and he suddenly finds himself jock material. I believe this was also one of John's recommendations earlier this year.

Voice

I have vivid memories of books I never laid eyes on—books I never held in my hands. Instead a parent or teacher read aloud while I curled in a lap or rested my head on a classroom desk, the reader's voice transporting me into another world.

This summer my reading all related to curriculum development, but in moments snatched here and there, I listened to stories on the radio. My favorite programs are "This American Life" and "Radio Lab." On "Fresh Air" I fell in love with an author whose responses to Terry Gross's questions were filled with humor, insight, and humility. I was struck by his honesty, his willingness to reveal himself. Listening to his voice, I longed to be his friend.

I did not attend the 2012 Summer SCBWI Conference in LA, but I recall reading a quote from Arthur Levine's speech. Arthur spoke about a book from childhood he kept returning to because it is “infused with authentic feeling and creates an intimacy between author and reader that is timeless.” Arthur delivered his speech on August 9th and was quoted in social media within moments. I listened to that Fresh Air interview on August 10th. It hit me that a kind of intimacy was exactly what I was feeling with this author. Unfortunately, Terry Gross's interview was a rebroadcast of an earlier interview. The author, David Rakoff, had died from cancer the night before, the same day Arthur delivered his speech. Though I had only just discovered Rakoff, I felt as if I knew him and now I experienced a real sense of loss.

Rakoff's most recent collection of comic essays, Half Empty won the 2011 Thurber Prize for American Humor. It's on the top of my reading list. Until you get your hands on the actual book, treat yourself and listen to the Fresh Air interview and then some of his many, many stories on This American Life.

Summer Reading

This round is about books we read over the summer. I tend to read in spurts. After I finished the draft of my fourth novel and sent it to my editor, I then read voraciously for the next two weeks. One book after another. Ah, it was fantastic;) A few of the books that really sucked me in:

After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby. 

The next book:

 The story begins in 1962. On a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks out over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea and spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an actress, he soon learns, an American starlet, and she is dying. And the story begins again today, half a world away, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot—searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier.

I loved where this book took me. I didn't want it to end.


This next one was a galley I picked up when I went to my editor's office in New York. Scarlet by Marissa Meyer is
the sequel to "Cinder", a futuristic re-telling of Cinderella. Scarlet continues the story, only adds that of Little Red Riding Hood, in a way...I really enjoyed it and can't wait for the third installment...

And currently I am reading a book which so many people have told me that I must read. So, if you need me in the next couple of days, I'll be reading this: