Book Maker's Dozen

I’m happy to be part of a loose confederation of friends and illustrators here in Brooklyn operating under the moniker “Book Maker’s Dozen.” We are: Aileen Leijten, Boris Kulikov, Brett Helquist, Dan Yaccarino, David Gordon, John Bemelmans Marciano, John Rocco, Peter Brown, Sean Qualls, Selina Alko, Sergio Ruzzier, Sophie Blackall, and myself. You can know that we are a legitimate operation because we have a blog (here) and a Facebook page (here). You can go to the Facebook page, and “like” us, and everything.

This Thursday, December 2, we will transcend the virtual and touch the brick and mortar with a show, an opening, and some wine-fueled conversation about art and literature for young people, all at one of the great local and independent bookstores here in Brooklyn, powerHouse Arena. The powerHouse Arena is at 37 Main Street (corner of Water and Main Streets), in the DUMBO neighborhood of Brooklyn. The opening will run from 7:00 to 9:00 P.M. Full event details are here.

At the opening we will also be selling signed limited-edition prints of our work. Just in time for the holidays, you might say! (More information on the prints is here. Interested parties in far-flung places can order prints through our Etsy page, here.)

I hope you can come by the reception, stop by to see the show, or just follow us online!

Book-A-Day, today

Last month Anita Silvey launched the Children’s Book-a-Day Almanac — “a daily love letter to a book or author” and a source for “events, trivia, and celebrations for every day of the year, as well as a featured children’s book to explore in more depth.” It’s a great site and I’m happy to see that today’s book is Moonshot. The thoughtful (and appreciated) review is here. Thanks, Anita!

Cover me

Over at the Fuse #8 blog today Betsy Bird covers the HarperCollins librarians’ preview. One of the books on show is Eric Luper’s Jeremy Bender Vs. the Cupcake Cadets. The cover design is by talented designer (and friend and picture book author) Polly Kanevsky, and I did the spot drawings. This was a small but fun project.

Typing about that work reminds me that I never blogged about another cover I enjoyed working on this year, for the paperback edition of Avi’s The Traitors’ Gate, a story full of twists and turns that I enjoyed taking a crack at illustrating. (Illustrating the cover for, I should say. The interior illustrations are by Karina Raude.) The designer for the Traitors’ Gate cover was the adept Michael McCartney at Simon & Schuster, with whom I also had the pleasure of working on Lightship and Moonshot. (And to whom I owe some sketches for the next book we’ll work on together.)

It’s a gift to be simple (but not that simple)

Ballet for Martha, by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan, tells the story of the creation of Appalachian Spring by Martha Graham, Isamu Noguchi, and Aaron Copland. Jan and Sandra end the book with a wonderful line that looks beyond the dance’s premiere and toward performances to come: “And the collaboration will be created anew.”

And how!

Ladies and gentlemen, from mine own home state of Texas, the Stephen F. Austin High School Bulldog Band and Angels Dance Team: