More Marty

It’s nice to be able to report two new reviews for Kate Messner’s and my Marty McGuire Digs Worms! 

School Library Journal reports: “The spirited youngster introduced in Marty McGuire returns…. Packed with eco-friendly ideas, this realistic, plot-driven early chapter book is a welcome addition to Earth Day or environmental units. The illustrations reflect the characters well, and the black-and-white drawings help to establish the mood. Readers of Annie Barrow’s “Ivy and Bean” stories (Chronicle) or Megan McDonald’s “Judy Moody” series (Candlewick) will enjoy Marty McGuire’s adventures.” 

And the Washington Post writes, here, that: “It’s hard to think of cafeteria composting as the topic for a good chapter book, but Messner and Floca pull it off. It’s the characters who make this book entertaining, whether it’s Marty’s wildlife rehabilitator mom or her inventive Grandma Barb, who thinks both worm slime and duct tape have essential uses.”

Thanks to SLJ the Post! 

Above: the great worm escape.

Marty McGuire Digs Worms!

Next month the second of Kate Messner’s Marty McGuire books comes out, Marty McGuire Digs Worms! The first book was about frogs; the second one, as you may have guessed, involves worms. I’m not sure how far down the food chain we can go with these books but I hope all the way; illustrating Kate’s characters and stories is great fun.

(A side note: I thought of the frog-loving Marty last week when I read that scientists have identified a new frog — a brand new frog — right here in New York. Read all about it here. Will a new New York worm follow? If it does, would you really want to know about it?) 

Good news for the new book comes in the form of its first review, a starred notice from Kirkus Reviews: “Third-grader Marty and her classmates are given a challenge by a visiting environmentalist: to develop Earth-friendly projects that she will then judge…. Floca’s cheery black-and-white illustrations match the upbeat theme of the tale, and with at least one per brief chapter, they break up the text pages nicely. Marty’s first-person commentary, sometimes just a tiny bit sarcastic, splendidly conveys the eroding innocence of middle graders. A quick, amusing read with an easily digestible environmental message; it is a perfect match for its young intended audience.” The full review is here. Thank you, Kirkus! Marty McGuire Digs Worms! is available April 1 in hardback and paperback from your local independent, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Powell’s.

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!

Ballet for Martha

Tomorrow, August 3, is the official publication date for Ballet for Martha: Making Appalachian Spring, written by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan, which I illustrated. I’m very happy to report that the book recently picked up its fifth starred review. (The stars have come from The Horn Book, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and, most recently, School Library Journal. Excerpts are on my web site here.) An interview with me on the SLJ site is here. The idea of leaping into the air for the accompanying photo was not mine but I was game, despite the fact that the photo shoot came the day after I tried wakeboarding for the first time, and that I was sore that day in muscles I didn’t even know I had. Other reviews that have warmed the heart have appeared on the Fuse #8 blog, here, and from the San Francisco Chronicle, here. Thank you to all the reviewers!

As I hope I’ve conveyed in the interviews I’ve done for the book, this was a wonderful project on which to work. I’m grateful to editor Neal Porter for thinking of me for it, and for the chance to work with Jan and Sandra on the book. I hope you’ll give the results a look!

More Martha

Some recent good news for Ballet for Martha: last week Elizabeth Bird, aka Betsy, alias Fuse #8, posted some generous thoughts about the book in her recap of a Macmillan preview for librarians, here. And now there’s word that Booklist’s July issue will give the book its second starred review. Ilene Cooper’s review says: “The book as a whole beautifully captures the process of artistic creation…what readers will surely want after putting this down is to see and hear Appalachian Spring for themselves.” An interview with authors Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan, editor Neal Porter, and myself will run with the review.

Thank you, Fuse and Booklist!

Horn Book

Jump for joy! A starred review of Ballet for Martha: Making Appalachian Spring, by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan, illustrated by yours truly, will appear in the July/August Horn Book Magazine. Thanks, Horn Book!

The End is Near

The end of the year has come, bringing with it, among other things, Best Books of the Year lists. I’m very happy that Moonshot appears on several: Kirkus Reviews’ Best Children’s Books of 2009 (Requiescat in pace, Kirkus), Book Links’ Lasting Connections of 2009, School Library Journal’s Best Books 2009, Horn Book Magazine’s Fanfare Best Books of 2009, Booklist’s Editors’ Choice 2009, and the Washington Post’s Best Kids Books of 2009.

My sincere thanks to all, and best wishes to all for 2010!

Above: an alternate sketch for Moonshot’s Mission Control page. Looking at this again I’m reminded how hard it was to choose an angle for the drawing. For some of us, Mission Control looks good from any point of view.

Today’s Moon News

Highly recommended: Today’s Science Times section of The New York Times. John Noble Wilford, A.O. Scott, and others reflect on the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11.

(A few years ago I got to see Wilford interview director (and fellow Texan) Al Reinert at a screening of Reinert’s beautiful, captivating film “For All Mankind.” If you want to spend a little time this anniversary week with images of Apollo, you won’t do better.)

Highly appreciated: Yesterday’s Fuse #8 review of Moonshot, here. For all the kindnesses within the review, I especially appreciated that Fuse tipped her hat to our taking the time to design the book’s endpapers around the fact that some libraries glue down the jacket flaps on their books. (I don’t know why they do it, but I know that they do it.) For Moonshot this meant coming up with a jacket flap-sized panel that would show readers something they might enjoy if they could see it, but that they wouldn’t miss if they couldn’t.




A final small note about the endpapers: In the last panel on the bottom right, you can see a figure, slightly hunched, speaking to the astronauts while they’re still in their trailer-like Mobile Quarantine Facility. It’s not the best likeness, but that figure’s identity can now be revealed.

Hey, People

From the current (July 13) issue of People. Buy it for the Michael Jackson photos. Cherish it for the book reviews!

Minimalists, shop early

The Apollo 11 anniversary month is here, and I’m happy to write that with it comes news that it’s back to the printer for more copies of Moonshot, now with a revised jacket, above. My vague sense of things is that it was the chance to include blurbs from Michael Collins and other Apollo astronauts that made reworking the design worth doing, but as long as we’re at it we’re loading the formerly restrained jacket with review quotes, too — including a review from The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books that’s just in, which I’m happy to write has given Moonshot its fifth starred review. Writing about both Moonshot and Robert Burleigh’s and Mike Wimmer’s One Giant Leap, BCCB says, “This pair of picture books, each featuring a poetic text that fairly begs to be read aloud, will be even better savored by independent readers who will delight in the authors’ carefully crafted storytelling while lingering over the visual renderings of the first manned moon landing.”

For those interested in additional lunar reading, BCCB has also published two lists of moon-themed books, one factual, here, and one fanciful, here.

Thanks to everyone who’s picked up a copy and sent us back for more, and to BCCB!

Liftoff!

Today is the official publication date for Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11. The reviews, in order of appearance, are excerpted below:

Booklist (starred review):
“Forty years after NASA’s Apollo 11 mission first landed astronauts on the moon, this striking nonfiction picture book takes young readers along for the ride.... Written with quiet dignity and a minimum of fuss, the main text is beautifully illustrated with line-and-wash artwork that provides human interest, technological details, and some visually stunning scenes. The book’s large format offers plenty of scope for double-page illustrations, and Floca makes the most of it, using the sequential nature of picture books to set up the more dramatic scenes and give them human context.... A handsome, intelligent book with a jacket that’s well-nigh irresistible.”

School Library Journal (starred review):
“Large in trim size as well as topic, this stirring account retraces Apollo 11's historic mission in brief but precise detail, and also brilliantly captures the mighty scope and drama of the achievement.”

Kirkus Reviews (starred review):
“A dizzying, masterful command of visual pacing combines with an acute sense of verbal rhythms to provide a glorious account of the Apollo 11 mission, one that stands as the must-buy in this crowded lunar season.... Floca’s language, in one of his longer texts, is equally gorgeous.... Humor lightly applied provides the necessary grounding touch to this larger-than-human endeavor without ever taking away its sense of moment. The front endpapers give detail-loving readers diagrams and a pictorial chronology; the back endpapers contain a brief history of NASA’s lunar program. Breathtaking, thrilling and perfect.”

And hot off the Internet is word that there will be a starred review in the May/June issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

All books are labors of love, but making Moonshot meant more to me — and asked more of me — than any work I’ve done so far. I am grateful for the support the book has received every step of the way from everyone at Atheneum, and I am proud, relieved, appreciative, and happy at the reception the book is receiving.

I hope you’ll find a copy somewhere and that you’ll enjoy it!

First Contact

Shelf Awareness, a daily e-mail newsletter for the book trade, reviews Moonshot today. As far as I know it’s the first published review of the book, and it’s a great way to start: “Floca masterfully balances poetry and science in this picture-book homage to the voyage of Apollo 11.” The review continues, “[T]he visual imagery and the pacing of the text hold the key to Floca's success,” and closes with, “Endpapers feature cutaway views of the rocket and all its stages, and offer a timeline of events; meticulous source notes make this a fine reference for youngest researchers, scientists and space fans. In these 48 pages, Floca makes an indelible impression of how those brief eight days in July, 40 years ago, changed history.” The complete review is online here. It’s a thoughtful and thorough review and I deeply appreciate it. Thanks, Shelf Awareness!

The Hinky-Pink is notable!

The American Library Association’s 2009 Notable Children’s Books list is now online, here, and it’s a happy honor that The Hinky-Pink is on it. Thanks to the 2009 Notable Children’s Books Committee, and congratulations to all the week’s award winners!

Fuse #8 on The Hinky-Pink

The “Posts With The Number 8 In The Title” series continues with this link to a review of The Hinky-Pink, by Megan McDonald, illustrated by yours truly, over at the venerable A Fuse #8 Production blog. It’s the sort of review one links to immediately, if one isn’t running around like mad in Texas at the end of a Christmas trip, which, coincidentally, I am. So a few days late, here we go. Thanks, Fuse! And to all, felice anno nuovo!

Lost ARC

The final drawings for Avi's final Poppy book are now underway. Meanwhile, reviewers may already have copies of the book in their hands. This phenomenon is made possible by Advance Reader Copies, or ARCs, early versions of a book sent out with finished text but often with sketches in place of the final art. This is the usual way of things with the Poppy books and is a convenience to everyone involved, with the exception of the illustrator; Poppy ARCs have left a trail of reviews, stretching back over the years, with only this to say about the drawings in the series: “Final art not seen.” After all that work — ouch. Still, that's better than the time a student reviewer, working from an ARC, posted a review of Poppy’s Return on Amazon that reads, “I didn't like the pictures very much because they looked like a small kid drew them.” Double ouch.

Above: Poppy, airborne over Dimwood Forest, in sketch and final form. Click to enlarge. Explanation to come in the spring of 2009.

Reading and Sharing

Some good Hinky-Pink news: Reliable sources report that The Hinky-Pink has been chosen for this year’s New York Public Library’s 100 Titles for Reading & Sharing list. I can’t find the full list online just yet, but I’ll post the link here when/if it appears. Meanwhile, thank you, NYPL!

Seconda stella!

I’m playing catch-up here today with good news from last week of a second starred review for The Hinky-Pink, this one in Publishers Weekly. Says the review: “Like the text, the art hits just the right tone of tongue-in-cheek earnestness....” (You can find the whole review here. It’s the second review from the top.) Thanks, PW!

I also wanted to put up a little bit about process in this post. Part of the fun of The Hinky-Pink is how full of incident and action the story is. It’s an illustration challenge, though, when a scene contains more drawing-worthy moments than can fit easily on a page. For one especially busy passage, we (editor, designer, and I) played with the idea of using comic panels to squeeze in as much action as possible, as shown in this sketch. That didn’t feel exactly right, though. It did, however, put us on the path to a happier solution, which was to keep the idea of the panels, but to frame them with an Italian Renaissance altarpiece. (You can see how that drawing turned out here.) That device not only allowed for showing multiple moments from the book, it also reinforced the story’s themes and setting. Also, it gave us all a chance to dust off the part of our brains where we keep our art history lessons and to relearn the word predella, and that was gratifying.

The Hinky-Pink is Independent

Some recent good news for The Hinky-Pink: the book will appear on the forthcoming Fall 2008 Kid’s Indie Next List, “Inspired Recommendations for Kids from Indie Booksellers.” This list is voted on by (God bless’em) independent booksellers across the country, and it’s great to be on it. Thanks, booksellers! The full list should go up (I think) mid-August, and you will be able (I think) to find it here.

(EDIT: No, not there. Here. Then click on “For Ages 4 to 8.” Ecco!)

And anyone wanting a look at drawings from The Hinky-Pink can now see a few images up in the Portfolio section of the web site, here.

Attenzione!

Early reviews are coming in for The Hinky-Pink and the news is good!

First, Kirkus Reviews says: “McDonald's storytelling excels through flavorful language, controlled pacing and a delightful conclusion. Floca displays the charm of Old World Florence through soft watercolor-and-ink illustrations that fill the pages, capturing the city's world-renowned landmarks. His delicate lines, full of vitality, enhance the retelling of this tale.... Fairy-tale enthusiasts will delight in this fanciful story.” (For completists, the entire Kirkus review is up on the Barnes & Noble site, here.)

Then there's more to come — in a starred review — in the upcoming August issue of School Library Journal. An excerpt: “McDonald’s flawless storytelling melds with Floca’s joyous art.... Girls who love princess stories will adore this lively tale.”

Avanti!

A Blogger’s Valentine

It’s a pleasure to note here that Lightship was today announced as the winner of a Cybil for Best Nonfiction Picture Book of 2007! (A Cybil, or a Cybils? I have trouble with my singulars and plurals where the Cybils are concerned.) Regardless, it’s the Children’s & YA Bloggers’ Literary Awards. It was an honor to find Lightship among a great pack of nominees a few weeks back, and an honor to receive today's news. Thank you to the Cybils Team, the panelists and judges, and a high tip of the hat to Susan Thomsen for the original nomination!