Month: October 2007

In the true spirit of the season-
Get out there and get some candy!!

Did any of you happen to catch the American Masters episode on Charles Schulz last night on PBS?
I had heard that there was some controversy about this documentary because it showed Charles as too much of a downer, and focused too much on the negative aspects of his life.

Well, that may be so, but I found it to be incredibly moving and well done. He was a complex guy; like most artists I know who are truly involved in their art, it’s not always a bed of roses. I applaud the series for “going there”, so to speak.

Charles Schulz had a big impact on my childhood; I remember diligently cutting out comics every day and pasting them into my own scrapbook, so they would stay in order and tell the whole continuing story. There has probably never been another comic that was so driven by one person as Peanuts.

Catch this show if you can…and if you did, what did you think?

Oh, happy day! Lincoln School once again organized and hosted this fabulous one-day event.

Lincoln School seems like a really nice place to learn.

This is pretty much my favorite book fest for many reasons:

1. AWESOME authors and illustrators. Top-notch, every year! This year, Mary Jane Begin, Peter H. Reynolds, David Weisner, Giselle Potter, and Chris Van Allsburg were there, plus plenty more.

Here’s Peter H. Reynolds quick-sketching his character Vashti from The Dot.

2. Small, wonderful presentations by the participants. You actually feel like they are talking to you, and you alone.

Here’s David Weisner, talking to me and me alone, about his Caldecott-winning book, Flotsam.

3. Other fun stuff: crafts for the kids, book characters walking around, and this year, BIG NAZO!

The incomparable Big Nazo Band.

4. You can get your books cheerfully signed!

Peter is one of the cheerful-est guys I’ve ever met- and he stuck it out until every one of us got our books signed. We were last in line, but so help me, he was still cheerful!


Look- a hundred signatures later, and David is still cheerful, too!

5. It’s cheap! Only $3 to get into all the events, or a family rate of $10. For real! That’s always nice for those of us with bigger families.

As much fun as this festival is, this is the second year in a row that it conflicted with Escobar’s Highland Farm’s Harry Potter Day.
So, after a great half-day at Lincoln School, there was a cornfield beckoning us…

Snape took this picture.

Here’s hoping the two events don’t overlap next year…we love them both!

We had a close encounter of the natural kind a couple of weeks ago:

This lovely praying mantis was on top of our grill outside our studio, which gave us all a great view of it. Every time we brought the camera in close, it attacked as if it were trying to eat it!

After gawking at it for a while, we brought it over to a flowering sedum plant, where it proceeded to snag a bee from mid-air about 10 seconds later. And then another. And then another, and so on. That thing was hungry!

We watched it every day in the sedum plant for about a week. Apparently, this turned out to be an excellent hunting ground; then it dissappeared.

Remember the Biggest Spider Ever??
Here’s what she looked like after creating the biggest egg sac ever!

You can see that her body mass was greatly reduced by this effort. After this, she made another web nearby, but I don’t think it saw too much action before she died, right there in the web. It’s sad, just seeing her there now, falling apart.
Truly, it reminds me of Charlotte’s Web, and I am hoping to see Joy, Nellie and Aranea next year!

The above snowflakes were made by me, and are now owned by wonderful people who supported the search for cancer’s cure through Robert’s Snow.
You- that’s right, YOU- could be one of those wonderful people THIS year! Here’s the list of the illustrators who have been inteviewed this week as part of this year’s fundraising blitz. I’ll have more upcoming interviews, too. Go forth and enjoy, and of course, bid when the auctions start on Nov. 19th!

Tuesday, October 16

• Selina Alko at Brooklyn Arden
• Scott Bakal at Wild Rose Reader
• Alexandra Boiger at Paradise Found
• Paige Keiser at Your Neighborhood Librarian
• Janet Stevens at The Miss Rumphius Effect

Wednesday, October 17

• Rick Chrustowski at laurasalas
• Diane DeGroat at Jama Rattigan’s Alphabet Soup
• Ilene Richard at Something Different Every Day
• Brie Spangler at Lectitans
• Don Tate at The Silver Lining

Thursday, October 18

• Brooke Dyer at Bookshelves of Doom
• D.B. Johnson at Lessons from the Tortoise
• Erin Eitter Kono at Sam Riddleburger
• Sherry Rogers at A Life in Books
• Jennifer Thermes at Through the Studio Door

Friday, October 19

• Graeme Base at Just One More Book
• Denise Fleming at MotherReader
• Jeff Mack at AmoXcalli
• Jeff Newman at A Year of Reading
• Ruth Sanderson at Book Moot

Saturday, October 20

• Linas Alsenas at A Wrung Sponge
• Theresa Brandon at The Shady Glade
• Karen Katz at Whimsy Books
• Judy Schachner at Kate’s Book Blog
• Sally Vitsky at Shelf Elf: read, write, rave

Sunday, October 21

• Matthew Cordell at Just Like the Nut
• Maxwell Eaton III at Books and Other Thoughts
• Roz Fulcher at Goading the Pen
• Susie Jin at sruble’s world
• Susan Mitchell at Check It Out

Our old gnarly trees were ressurected by a severe spring pruning and actually made reasonable apples this year.

This is what happens when apples are left for too long without supervision:

Yes, they get attacked by the Harry Potter cast. Tragic!