Home by Carson Ellis

Like every other illustration-obsessed blogger girl out there, I am utterly smitten with Carson Ellis' new picture book Home. Often when I buy a book ostensibly for Mabel, but really because I myself am in love with it (and, let's be honest, that happens quite a lot), it backfires--she has no interest and never takes it off the shelf. But this time young and old alike, chez nous, are in agreement about the fabuloisity of this tome. The combination of Ellis' precise yet cheerful style; the whimsical nature of the content she's cooked up here; and the underlying, quietly understated, messages about diversity and belonging all add  up to a perfect thing that is far more than the sum of its parts. Nevertheless, the parts are pretty enjoyable, too, and here are a few of them for you to peruse.

Another Poem in the Long-Running Poem Saga About the Long-Ago Summer of 2006

June 27, 2006
There was a snail

climbing up a palm frond
in a planter on the sidewalk
outside the mall yesterday
which raises the question
how the heck did it get there?



image source is here

F15

It's here, it's here, it's here! The day I wait for twice a year every year--the day I get to show you all the advances for all my books on the brand new season. In this case, behold--everything I edited for Chronicle Books for Fall 2015 in all its (ever so slightly crookedly photographed) glory! I'm really excited and proud about this list, and super duper honored to have gotten to work with so many amazing artists and authors. Here's what's what:

Radical Love by Toni Greaves

Fortune Favors the Brave: 100 Courageous Quotations by Lisa Congdon

Whatever You Are Be a Good One Notebook Colleciton by Lisa Congdon

Whatever You Are Be a Good One Notecards by Lisa Congdon

Here Kitty Kitty by Mallory McInnis

Art + Fashion: Collaborations and Connections Between Icons by Julien Tomasello and E.P. Cutler

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, Illustrated by Yelena Bryksenkova

Marimekko 10 Pencils

Marimekko Stationery Box

Marimekko Box of Labels

Marimekko Small Cloth-Covered Journal

Marimekko Large Cloth-Covered Journal

642 Tiny Things to Draw

Earth and Space: Photographs from the Archives of NASA preface by Bill Nye, text by Nirmala Nataraj

The Circadian Tarot: A Daily Companion for Divination and Illumination by Jen Altman, artwork by Michelle Blade

Much more info about what the heck all this stuff is available via the Chronicle Books site links above. Plus everything is already available for preorder there, and either is or will be soon wherever fine books and things are sold.

Paris Day 5

This was the day Mabel had been waiting for--she was tremendously excited to visit the Eiffle Tower and, specifically, to go all the way to the top! A height neither Bill or I had previously ascended to, nor perhaps would we ever have done were it not for the crystal clear vision of a certain small child. And so we got there early early in the morning to beat the crowds and did this thing, and it was quite glorious. From such a great height the view truly changes--the landscape itself flattens and hills become not-hills because you are seeing them from above rather than from the side. Magical. Then we came down, and rode the carousel, and had lunch at a super charming little garden cafe hidden in the park nearby. We went home for a rest and then ventured back out--stopping along the river to lounge in some lounge chairs we'd spotted a couple of days before from the boat--past the Hotel de Ville, and to the neighborhood on the edge of the Marais where Bill and I stayed on our honeymoon ten years ago. We were very excited to show Mabel the hotel where we stayed, to have a snack in the cafe right outside it--she was perhaps less excited by these things, but went along gamely enough. Then we took a long leisurely stroll through the Marais, passing through the ridiculous beauty that is the Place des Vosges, stopping for one more ride on one more carousel (this one very modern with crazy big-eyed french children air-brushed all over it) before dinner at a restaurant that caught our eye because of the mountain of cauliflowers mounded up in the front window as decor--and it was delicious, one of the best meals we had the whole time we were there. 

Favorite Corner

This is one of those odd little spots in our house, that tend to happen at the corners of rooms--because how can various pieces of furniture come together in corners without awkwardness, has anyone figured this out? Well, not us, anyway. So in this case this empty space has to be here so that you can get the books on and off the bookshelf on the left. But what in a normal apartment would be dead space has become, in the world of Mabel, favored space. Sometimes she crawls in there and plays bookstore, pulling books off the shelves and selling them to us for exorbitant amounts of imaginary money, each book tailored to the secret needs of the individual which only the bookseller somehow magically knows. Other times when she is feeling grumpy she uses it as a Mad Place in which to keep herself to herself and feel her feelings for a while. All in all it could not be a more harmonious use of space if we had planned it that way. Luck and grace and childhood making a virtue of necessity once again.