If you remember anything, remember tree lobsters.

The bloggers of Pen & Oink visit and report from the studio that I share with Sergio Ruzzier, Sophie Blackall, Edward Hemingway, and Johnny Marciano, here.

Metaphors, gathering steam

Publishers Weekly’s Fall Sneak Previews are online here. 

On the list: “Candlewick climbs aboard for How to Train a Train by Jason Carter Eaton, illus. by John Rocco, which provides information on finding, keeping, and training a pet train” and “Orchard Books rides the rails with Train by Elisha Cooper, in which trains race across the country, coast to coast” and “Atheneum pulls into the station with Locomotive by Brian Floca, a look at the transcontinental railroad.” 

Clear the tracks, folks!

Happy Presidents’ Day

Here is a drawing-in-progress of Abraham Lincoln for the endpapers of Locomotive, coming in September from Atheneum/Simon & Schuster. On July 1, 1862, Lincoln signed the Pacific Railroad Act, which put government support behind the construction of the country’s first transcontinental railroad. (Nods toward this interest and work of Lincoln’s in the recent Spielberg film: a model steam locomotive on the desk in Willie’s room, and a quick bit of conversation between husband and wife about what they’d like to do postwar. “You’ve an itch to travel?” asks Sally Fields. “I’d like that,” says Daniel Day Lewis. “To the West by rail.”) Ground for the railroad was broken in Sacramento on January 8, 1863, 150 years ago last month. 

A closer look at the Pacific Railroad Act is online at the Library of Congress, here.