Fusenews: The Post-BEA Cool Down Period

• I am ashamed not to have found this site before, but I’m grateful to have heard of it now.  On the blog Terrible Yellow Eyes, various artists have been invited to contribute their own visions of Where the Wild Things Are.  Says the site, "Over the coming weeks and months I’ll display a growing collection of works created by invited contributing artists and myself. We share a love and admiration for Sendak’s work and the pieces we present here are done as a tribute to his life and legacy."  The image seen here (called "He Found His Supper Waiting for Him") is by one Anne Bastine Koelle and is perhaps my favorite.  It has a lot of competition, though.  If you see nothing else today, check this site out.  Thanks to Drawn for the link

• Now that we’ve finished with BEA (and didn’t Alison Morris sum up some of the highlights nicely?) the next conference on the plate is that of ALA in Chicago.  And what might there be to do while in town?  Thanks to Children’s Illustration we now know that The Art Institute of Chicago is presenting the exhibition Picture Perfect: Art from Caldecott Award Books, 2006-2009. Says the site, "The award-winning artists included are Brian Collier, Marla Frazee, Beth Krommes, David McLimans, Jon J. Muth, Kadir Nelson, Beckie Prange, Marjorie Priceman, Chris Raschka, Laura Vaccaro Seeger, Brian Selznick, Uri Shulevitz, Peter Sís, Melissa Sweet, David Wiesner, and Mo Willems."  Best of all, it’s up until November 8th . . . 2010?  Really?  Uh… cool.  Thanks to Children’s Illustration for the link.

• You know I keep going on and on and on and on about When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead?  How I keep saying it’s my favorite book of the year?  How I keep teasing you with its current unavailability (it releases on July 14th).  Well good news.  Monica Edinger is having a When You Reach Me book giveaway contest.  That’s one way of nabbing a copy early.

New York Public Library caused quite a stir in 2005 when it started selling off some of its paintings.  We’re not the only system that’s done that sort of thing, of course.  Take the case of the Proctor Free Library.  One of their paintings by Jessie Wilcox Smith, which normally resided in the children’s room, was auctioned off.  Mind you, it wasn’t auctioned off with the library’s knowledge . . . . Thanks to American Libraries Direct for the link.

• Once I was working in the children’s room of the Jefferson Market Branch of Greenwich Village when this dude walks in and wants a new library card.  My clerk was busy so I took care of it, and he handed me his proof of address.  As I typed in the information I thought to myself, "Dan Yaccarino.  How funny.  There’s a children’s author/illustrator out there named Dan Yaccarino."  This was in the early days of my living in New York when I still had this concept that it was this vast metropolis where everybody had at least twenty people with their same name walking about.  Needless to say, I never said a word to him about it.  It was really only later when his wife and kids would come in that I thought to ask, "THE Dan Yaccarino?"  The answer was yes.  It really had been him.  Now THE Dan Yaccarino and that self-same family have been featured prominently in Time Out Kids New York’s Family Portrait feature.  I liked this part:

Would your children say that their dad has a “cool” job?
DY I wish that were true, I really do. We’ll go to book events, and occasionally people will come up to the kids and say, “It must be so great for you that your dad writes and illustrates books.” And they just shrug. But I figure Ben’s and Jerry’s kids probably have the same reaction.

• Daily Image:

Both Elizabeth Dulemba and Elizabeth Bluemle at ShelfTalker recently talked about the remarkable furniture site Straight Line Designs, Inc. and their products.  It’s the kind of place where I’d purchase half the accoutrements if I had the money and space.  Mind you, live amongst enough of these:

. . . and eventually you start to wonder if it’s the furniture or your own brain that’s getting wonky.  

Filed under: Fusenews