BOOK COVER CLUB

"READ A BOOK. DESIGN A COVER FOR IT."
BOOK COVER CLUB

ALA AWARDS ANNOUNCED

I had this thought. What if someone could only win twice? Or three times? I'm talking about for the honors as well. That would allow new people to win the award and then everyone would be happy.

Please comment on this one if you have an opinion!

AN ARTIST AT WORK

You know I love street art - this is very interesting... and... uh... the buffalo head... yeah.

LOVE THESE

EVERYTHING GONE COMPUTER...YUCK

I've noticed that Richard Scarry's animation has gone from a nice painted background look to all colored digital. YUCK.

This is what it used to look like:



This is what it looks like now (please excuse the non-english - it was a better resolution)


I think it's a real shame. Everything these days is DIGITAL DIGITAL DIGITAL. 3D!!!! YAY! Seriously? I watched Avatar like that and it gave me a headache. Those old Disney cartoons a great!

I could only find a remix to Alice in Wonderland, but it's pretty cool:

INTERESTING VIDEO AND MY PROBLEMS

I'm busy trying to get sketches done for a book. It's been a bad week for me because I found out I'm going to lose my health insurance in a few years from my part time job. It was really good health insurance and I really need it since I have a pre-existing condition. Now what? Freelancers Union, etc. doesn't offer anything good enough for what I need because of the medications I'm on. Eeek. Anyway, this is what a freelancer goes through. I wish congress would recognize that there are people out there like me who need options and aren't wealthy. What do I do? Quit being an author and go hunt for a full time job? Could I even get one in this economy? I'd have to say that I really wouldn't want to do that since I've put in 13 years (wow!) into this author thing. Sigh.

Anyway, here's a fun artsy video I found. This group seems to do all their videos to look like stop motion, even though I think they use other methods?

RED RIDING HOOD PART 1

Someone asked about scary children's images. I immedietly thought of Red Riding Hood. The old images are the good ones....

Paul Gustave Dore 1832 - 1883 - French artist







Walter Crane 1845 - 1915 English artist






And here is a cartoon take on red riding hood called Red Hot Riding Hood, animated short, 1943:

SOLOMON AND THE RUSTY NAIL

My roommate showed me a book he got the other day. It came from Amazon. It's a used copy by William Steig that's clearly from the library.



"It's in great condition. Why did the library not want this anymore?" I wondered.



The story starts out simple enough: Solomon can turn into a rusty nail at will . "And zingo! just like that, he became something hard and tiny." I really laughed at the, "Something hard and tiny." Great language.

An odd sort of story idea, yes, but I was willing to go with it. It gets tense when Solomon meets a very scary cat wielding a sharp dagger. Solomon turns into his rusty nail self so that the cat can't eat him....



This is when I thought to myself, "Hmm, this would NEVER get published today."

The story gets really odd. The cat kidnaps Solomon, AKA, "the rusty nail" and keeps him locked up.



Solomon refuses to turn back into himself because when he does he will be eaten. Only at night does he become his bunny self, when it's safe to attempt to escape the cage. The cat gets frustrated by the length of time Solomon remains in his rusty nail state, so he takes him out of the locked cage - in rusty nail form - and hammers him into a board in his house. There Solomon is trapped... forever?

The story is really ridiculous. There's also some sub plot about Solomon liking to catch butterflies... I would definitely edit it down because it's clearly all over the place, but it does have a sense of fun that I think a lot of books now are missing. Are children's books losing their playfulness because editors are playing it too safe? Or do books need to play it safe? Do children today need to be aware of the dangers rusty nails and cats wielding daggers?