In an interview from the North Pole, a jolly man in a red suit was quoted saying, “My elves may not get toys made in time for Christmas. They are too busy reading.” This holiday season, why not follow the elves’ example by giving the gift of storytelling.

James McCann (website)
James McCann has been referred to as Canada’s answer to Stephanie Meyer and is the author of the YA sensation Rancour, Pyre and Dawn (Summer 2009)

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Lee Edward Födi (website)  (BLOG)
Known as the “Wizard of Words”, Lee Edward Födi has been writing and illustrating stories about magic, monsters and mystery for as long as he can remember.

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KC Dyer (website)
Published in North America and the UK, KC Dyer enjoys sharing some of the greatest grotesque moments in history with high school students.

Store details:
Once Upon a Huckleberry Bush
4387 Main Street
Vancouver, British Columbia
Canada V5V 3R1

Phone: (604)876-4010

Screen capture of http://www.quantcast.com/artemisfowl.com (as of December 3, 2008)

I’ve always thought Artemis Fowl is more of an adventure story for guys.  This website certainly prooves me wrong.  it turns out 53% of the people that visits artemisfowl.com are female between ages 12 and 17.  I can guess one of the reasons is that most guys stop reading novels when they enter highschool while girls still do.  I myself did not read a single book of fiction in highschool except for English Class.

There’s a new movie coming out that might possibly be live action (source).  It will probably be as popular as the Harry Potter series. I am definitely looking foward to it.

“What will Fat Cat Sit on?” by Jan Thomas (2007) published by Harcourt

I have been reading a lot about graphic design lately because of a job.  One of the most important task of a graphic designer is the laying out of the text, or Typography.  Typography is a really big part of this book.  At the back of the book, the font is listed as “Eatwell Chubby and Chaloops“.

There are two different Fonts in Jan Thomas’ book because there is lots of questions being asked in the story with ridiculous answers.  the two different fonts are used to emphasize words.  As you can see on the book cover, “FAT CAT” is in all caps.  It is written in this way throughout the book where capital letters are used to emphasize the words.  Capital letters in this case, however, are not used for shouting, like in internet messaging.  The Text in this story compliments the illustrations because they are both blocky and bold.

The illustration style in this book is vector based, done in programs like Flash or Illustrator.  Vector based illustration are done by Mathematical equations on the computer by drawing basic geometric shapes or lines (wiki).  It is different from Raster graphics; Raster graphics have different shades of the same color on each individual pixels of an image. The illustrations in “What will FAT CAT sit on?” is different from Flash illustrations in the way the color does not fill the outlines.  the coloring of the animals are done on a different layer and does not necessary fill to the edge of the outline.

The illustration of the cat is similar to Flash animation in which there are 4 pages were the outline of the cat are almost identical.  Some parts of the outline of the cat, the facial expression, and the hand gestures are changed to make the cat look different.  Flash animation uses different assets (such are props, backgrounds, arms, legs, hair, facial expressions…etc) that can be reused again and again in an animation.

Most of the illustration in this story is similar to what is popular in the world today: snapshot photography.  Most kids and adults today has digital camera or cell phone cameras with them where ever they go.  It is very common for people to pose for the camera any time during their day to day life.  There are sites like Flickr that have millions and millions of snapshot photographs people put up of their friends and families.

The compositions in the book is much like snapshot photography in which the characters are mostly facing the camera and doing some sort of pose or expression.  There are not much props or background in this picture book.  The only prop is a couch that appeared twice.

RH

“Ned Mouse Breaks Away” by Tim Wynne-Jones, Illustrated by Dusan Petricic (2003) Published by Groundwood Books / Douglas & McIntyre, Toronto, Ontario

An Illustrator’s job is not only to illustrate the story according to the author, but also to interpret the materials with his own thought.  Dusan Petricic has put a lot of thought into illustrating for “Ned Mouse Breaks away” to avoid some of the more gruesome details the book talked about.

This Story is a wonderful story to read for kids and adults alike.  There is a great review by Valerie Nielson over at CM Magazine, though I suggest reading the book before reading the review because the review reveals too much of the plot.

“Ned Mouse Breaks away” is more like “Tom and Jerry” Cartoon where the characters keep trying different attempts to do something, and always have a twist at the end because the brilliant idea has some sort of flaw in it.

The Illustrations in the book are brilliant.  When Ned Mouse tunnels into the warden’s chamber and couldn’t resist the mouth watering tiramisu.  Instead of drawing one panel where the mouse tunnels through the wall of the  warden’s wall, another looking at the tiramisu. A third one eating the tiramisu, and lastly felling full after eating the tiramisu.  Dusan Petricic combines these 4 drawings into one.  Petricic has the mouse tunneling through the table and onto the tiramisu, and already feeling full, resting on the tiramisu with the spoon that doubles as a digging tool and eating tool for the tiramisu.

When Ned Mouse starts to send his body parts to his friend using mail.  Kids will probably have images from horror movies where limbs and body parts are cut off and blood is all over the floor and wall of the prison.  Even if this is done in a cartoonish way, the ideas of it will still strike some kids as horrible.

Although kids are used to playing with Mr. Potato head, and rip apart Barbie dolls and action figures arms and legs, but the Ned Mouse is too much like a human being.  Kids might have develop sympathy for Ned Mouse still trapped in prison half way through the book.

Dusan Petricic treated this cleverly: instead of tearing off actual body parts, he uses Jigsaw puzzle analogy to represent the body parts.  Kids as young as 3 year old have started playing with Jigsaw puzzles so it is part of their experience of non-violent way of putting pictures and cartoon characters back together again.  This analogy is perfect for the story of Ned Mouse because when kids, or even adults, play with jigsaw puzzles, there’s always a piece missing.  it could be just misplaced, it could be hidden underneath the carpet, or it could have gone missing altogether.  One piece of the jigsaw puzzle missing does not mean you won’t be able to recognize the picture represented in the puzzle; it just feels incomplete.  The Jigsaw puzzle analogy is also perfect for the story because when you do find that missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle, the feeling you get is just overwhelming.  Even though it is just an insignificant piece of puzzle, you will feel you’ve finally accomplish something.

RH

“The Owl and the Pussycat” by Edward Lear, Illustratd by Anne Wilson (2003) Published by Chronicle Books, San Francisco. Distributed by Raincoast Books, Vancouver, B.C.

The Illustration in this book is similar to Eric Carle’s method of collage.  My teacher Katherine Shoemaker illustrated one of her book “A Telling Time” in that style.  In one of our class, we paint patterns on lots of different types of paper with Gouache and Watercolor in order to get different grains from different paper.  We then cut them out into shapes and make a collage of our patterns.  Eric Carle has an excellent VHS video demonstrating how he does this.  Eric Carle also has a website with slide shows that shows how to make collages into a picture book.

Anne Wilson’s style of illustration in this book is distinctly different from Eric Carles’.  Her patterns are more playful, more deliberate to the type of object she is illustrating.  For example, she would paint the background first, and cut out and paste shapes of patterns on top of the background, then paint and outline over the collage again to make it blend in.

All of Anne Wilson’s illustrations are double spread, and her pages are shorter than average (her book has 28 pages whereas an average picture book has 32 pages)  Anne Wilson’s version of “The Owl and the Pussycat” therefore only has 13 double-spread collages.

After reading it a few times, it is surprisingly easy to read and follow the picture at the same time.  Anne Wilson’s owl is always on the left side while the cat is always on the right side and therefore all of the owl’s conversations takes place on the left side while the cat’s conversation on the right.

Usually when we read a double-spread picture book to kids, the adult would read the words first and let the children look at the illustrations afterward.  In Anne Wilson’s book, even though it is all double-spread, but sometimes the text on one page actually only describes the illustrations found on that page.  So we might read the text on the left side, show kids the pictures, then continue reading the text on the right.

RH

If you type in “The Owl and the Pussycat” in amazon, you will find lots of books illustrated by many different artists.  “The Owl and the Pussycat is a famous nonsense poem by Edward Lear, first published in 1871.” (wikipedia)  In the next few days I will review a few books of the same title done by different illustrators in order to explore how different illustrators approach the same subject.

I was looking through google today and came across an illustrator around my age living in my city by the name of Kirsti Anne Wakelin.  She started blogging in January of 2007 and regularly writes in 2 personal blogs, a writers group blog and maintains her home page.

below are the links:

1. http://cwillbc.wordpress.com/
2. http://mysecretelephant.com/
3. http://kirstiwakelin.com/blog
4. http://kirstiwakelin.com/

I was reading through a magazine article about this music producer who blogs in his spare time and became quite successful within 6 months.  He was invited on TV, radio talk shows, as well as promote books on his blog for profit.  His strategy was to blog about things that he is passionate about, which was 1. saving money, 2. music, 3. Shanghai.  He did it purely as a hobby in the beginning.  But the way he did it is having lots and lots of content on it, and place links on each of his blogs that goes back to the other two.  Therefore generating more traffic for all his sites.

Kirsti Anne Wakelin is using a similar strategy to promote her blog.  First of all.  CWILL is a pretty well know Chidren’s book writers and illustrators group which has lots of visitors and therefore will direct some of the visitors to her site.  My Secret Eelephant is a blog that she writes about the children’s book events and news.  It also has a section for her published books; there’s also an “illustration process” section, which is interesting to look at for any aspiring illustrators of picture books.  The Third Blog is her own blog about her art and the types of art she likes, which gives the readers a perspective on her thought process, her sketchbook, and her other types of illustrations.

All of these blogs has an info/about section which tells us different aspects of Kirsti Anne Wakelin
and links back to her blogs and art works.  Putting so much into her blog means her art will have a lot more exposure than those who don’t.

RH

Back in 2006 when I attended the Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) Conference in Los Angeles, Myspace was the medium to blog on.  I was quite addicted to Myspace back then, posting lots of videos and photos and talking to my friends via myspace.  Lisa Yee gave a presentation on how she reached the masses with her blog on myspace.  2 years later, I am still reading Lisa Yee‘s blog on Myspace.  Aside from reading her blog and occasionally checking out music from independent artists, I rarely go on myspace anymore.  Most of my friends has switched over to Facebook so that’s where I spend most of my time now.  Facebook is a great social media tool if you know how to utilize it.  For me, it’s just a way to stay connected to my friends.  Funny how much time I spent each day on Facebook leaving comments, posting photos and updating my profile, yet it doesn’t help my status with publishers one bit.

There are, however, ways to make the most of Facebook.  As writers or illustrators, you can ask everyone of your readers to add you on Facebook, and since 50% of the 24 million Facebook users log in everyday, they will see your blogs.  (source) And if you are keen enough in marketing yourself, you can hire a coder to develop a Facebook Application that promote your book or illustrations, which will show up on every one of your Facebook friends’ daily notification.  And the best part of it is, if your application can somehow generate an income for you, you get to keep 100% of the revenue (source)

In order for Facebook not to be a “time-suck” network, You will have to refrain from writing on your friends’ walls and reading up on what your friends are up to every time you are on Facebook.  We have to see Facebook as another social media Tool in which we can utilize and market ourselves to the publishers and to the readers.

RH