By "news" of course, we mean that which is new. Information, projects, ideas, that sort of thing. Maybe sometimes now and then you might find the "recent" and occasionally something quite "old" might find its way on to these pages. Possibly it could be in the form of an illustration, or perhaps I"m just behind the curve in some way. Enjoy.
I'm working on the illustrations for the sixth EllRay Jakes book right now, and there's a scene where a couple of characters perform a dance for the school talent show. I had my kids here last evening while I was looking up the dances that the writer describes in the book, and we had a really good time watching these videos and attempting the moves ourselves.
Frankly, I thought that the author had just made up dances called "The Dougie" and "Stanky Leg." Alas, she did not.
And the sketch:
I'd like to first announce that this past Friday at 8:19pm, I completed the third and final Everything Goes picture book, called Everything Goes: By Sea. Due to some things over the last six months like a book tour in September, my wedding in October, a week of jury duty in November, and breaking my hand in December, this book was late late late. I'm sure that everyone at HarperCollins was pulling their hair out by the time I got the final illustration complete and turned in, but overall they were very nice not to tell me about it as I madly completed the work over the last few weeks. The very very final piece that I did was the endpapers, which I have a part of here for you to look at.
What was the last part of this that I drew? It was, appropriately, the word "WOO" on top of the small water taxi.
Now, this isn't the end of Everything Goes. I still have one more board book to complete, and then there will be parties and fireworks when this book is published in September. But as I've been drawing cars, trucks, airplanes, and boats pretty solid since about 2007 as I conceived of, worked on, and completed this book series, I'm very excited to hit "save" and spend some time now making other things.*
In other Everything Goes news, I was surprised to find this big box of books in my mailbox this morning, full of several copies of the Complex Chinese version of Everything Goes: On Land. Two different publishers are making versions of Everything Goes in China. One is this one, published by Global Kids in Taiwan, and the second one is translated into Simplified Chinese, and published by Tianjin Maitian. Now, I don't really know the difference between complex and simplified Chinese, nor do I know how or whether they are different from Mandarin or other kinds of Chinese. If any readers know the answer to this, I'd very much love to know about it.
I was skeptical whether this book would be possible to translate, what with the gazillions of labels and signs and details all over the place. However, the publisher did a knock-out job with this, even using the textures and outlines and stuff that I did on the original. It must have been some really tedious work, even more since they had to translate what I made, where what I made was often kind of random. Again, I'd love to know how close they got, especially like on the food trucks and some of the other details. Let me know if you can read any of this and I might have a book to send you.
* In addition to the final Everything Goes board book, I'm illustrating a picture book written by Kelly DiPucchio and the sixth EllRay Jakes book by Sally Warner, both to be done by June; and I'm giddy to start a new series called Frank Einstein, Boy Scientist that is will be six books, written by Jon Scieszka. It has robots.
I just realized that I haven't posted anything here since January 10. The entire (but not so long) month of February sailed by and I have been absent. So before we begin talking about school visits, I should mention that my lack of visibility here can be attributed to the lateness of Everything Goes: By Sea and my current crazy rush to get it done. Breaking my hand on Christmas morning didn't do any wonders for my schedule, and as soon as the cast came off in February I more or less locked myself in my studio and went back to drawing. I'll write more about this progress later.
Another relevant thing is the "Sketch of the Day" album I've been posting on my Facebook page. I realized I should use my Facebook page more than I do (kinda like this blog!) and this is a fun and easy way to do it. If you don't already, go "like" the page and follow the sketches.
Okay so to the meat and potatoes. I visited the schools of Southampton Township, NJ, last Friday. I showed and talked about my drawings and Everything Goes to about 400 students over the course of the day. I might have written this here (or elsewhere) before, but visiting schools is one of those mental-health moments that is so good for people like me. Most people take mental-health days from work and stay home. Since I work alone in my studio 99% of the time, it's great to go somewhere and be adored. I hate the morning and afternoon rush-hour traffic (how do you commuters stand it? it's insane!) but it's worth it once I'm at the school.
So I'm just gonna post a bunch of pictures of the visit and the day, and let you see what the students and teachers made. Thanks to Jacquie Daddato for having me out to Southampton and thanks to all the teachers, staff and students for making it such a great day.
One of three full-house presentations.
That guy.
I signed more than 300 books!
And here are a bunch of drawings that they made inspired by Everything Goes.
I get invited to local book fairs, book stores, book festivals, and so on; and I often run into this dude named Erik. Erik is probably something like 13 years old, and Erik loves books. He writes a column for his local newspaper, The Upper Bucks County Free Press about books, and he has his own blog, called This Kid Reviews Books. Recently at one of these local book events where I run into Erik, he asked if he could interview me for his blog, and of course I said yes.
Now that everyone is all shopped out but likely didn't get what they really wanted, I relisted a few things and added a few other things to my Etsy store. I'm down to just three of the robot/heart screen prints, so it's your last chance for those…
I've always always loved board books. Big thick cardboard books, ostensibly for little kids who like to chew on things. Since Everything Goes was first conceived back in 2008, I wanted there to be board books with my cars and trucks and stuff. And now, I'm vey happy to tell you, there are. In fact, there will be six before I'm done. Sadly, they're not "officially" released until the day after Christmas, but I hear that some stores and retailers have them on the shelves already, in time for the holiday.
The first is called 123 Beep Beep Beep: A Counting Book and it is what it says.
The second book is called STOP! GO!: A Book of Opposites. This one is similarly simply-plotted.
The next two board books, Blue Bus Red Balloon and Goodnight Trucks get more complicated, story-wise, and will be out next year sometime.
Amazon has Stop! Go!
Or get it on Indiebound, which is better for the world. 123 Beep Beep Beep and Stop! Go!
Happy Holidays y'all.
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