My new Drawing/Doodling/Poetry Activity Book is out now from Chronicle Books!

This is the description of the book from the publisher:
“A book for doodling, drawing, and laughing! Featuring the inimitably humorous art of Calef Brown and a wonderful menagerie to stretch and inspire your artistic talent and imagination alike—plus 32 stickers! Wildly inventive fun for artists aged 5 to 105.”

I worked with the fantastic editor Melissa Manlove, and the book and cover were art-directed and beautifully designed by Kristine Brogno.

Introduction by myself in feline form.
“May I tell you something? I love to draw!”

(Actually, this the page before it’s final form, when I had my pen in my pocket in the picture, and wasn’t drawing.)

The book is hinged along the top, with my drawings and words above, and a blank page to doodle and draw below.

The book begins with what inspired it – the drawings of snails that I do when visiting schools, and seeing the excitement of kids, some as young as 4, as they create their own spin-off snail creatures.

More snails…

Some of the pages have prompts, and some are more open-ended.

Most of the pages incorporate some rhyming or short poems into the prompts or descriptions.
I hope kids will play around with language as well as art for their creations.

There are a some Owlhauses in the book.

Plus two pages of stickers!

My new book Boy Wonders is coming in June, published by Atheneum/Simon & Shuster.

This is what Kirkus had to say:

BOY WONDERS (reviewed on May 1, 2011)

This boy doesn’t just wonder, he throws readers a forceful invitation: “May I ask you something? / Are you ever perplexed? / Completely vexed? / Do you have questions? / Queries? / Odd theories?” He does.

Brown’s book is in the grip of an effervescent momentum. Not that it really has anything to do with asking questions—of curiosity, of inquiry—though the boy sure does ask lots of questions. It is what, and especially how, he asks that spins the wheel. The story is shuttled along on Brown’s fine artwork: slightly jittery, slightly sinister, with blasts of color alternating with pages in shadow and clever interpretations of the boy’s increasingly loopy questions. His mind is a tinderbox to which Brown applies a match. “Do onions cry?” “Is water scared of waterfalls?” He adds some subversive wordplay as kindling: “Do clouds get jealous during storms, and steal each other’s thunder?” And “[i]f I’m too tired, am I a bike?” Soon thereafter, great logs are thrown on the fire. “Would a happy toucan / from the Yucatan / become cantankerous / up in Anchorage / or the Yukon? / What about Tucson?”

In the end, the questions and words are whole lotta fun, but it is the music the book makes that is the most arresting entertainment. (Picture book. 6 & up)

Last week I did a one and a half day residency at the Dyer Elementary School in South Portland Maine.

It was one of the most enjoyable and satisfying visits I’ve done, especially because I got to spend so much time

with the kids in their classrooms. We talked about poetry and stories, art and imagination.

I took requests and did lots of live drawing. So much that I can’t begin to remember everything I drew, it’s a blur.

I do recall A Panda Doing Karate on a Surfboard, and  A Two-Headed Triceratops Snail.

The student’s art work and poems were amazing. They created drawings of their own fantastical creatures

and wrote about them. Such an outpouring of imagination and art!

The 4th graders read, and had me read, some wonderful concrete poetry and odes to Maine.

Many thanks to Susan Morneault, Principal Brown, and  Eliza Cobb for making this fantastic residency happen.

Some pictures of art and poems below. Click for larger views.

The Basilisk Worm is very grouchy,
because unlike a regular Basilisk, it can’t fly.
But unlike a regular worm, it has legs.
Is the Basilisk Worm thankful for that? No.
It mostly meanders along roadways, mumbling to itself.

Satellites know of our whereabouts.
Within a few inches, or thereabouts.
Is this something anyone cares about?
They’ll tell us, I hope, when there’s bears about.

This is my dreamhome. I didn’t dream about it, it’s just a cool house.

It wasn’t designed by Rem Koolhaas, but he’s cool too.

This project was a dream come true. I’ve always wanted to illustrate Lear, who is one of my main inspirations. Daniel Pinkwater, also a genius and nonsense master,  selected the poems and wrote a fantastic introduction.

Published by Chronicle Books and available now.

]]> http://www.polkabats.com/his-shoes-were-far-too-tight/calefbrown/feed 0 http://www.polkabats.com/trains/calefbrown http://www.polkabats.com/trains/calefbrown#comments Mon, 28 Feb 2011 17:30:02 +0000 calef http://www.polkabats.com/?p=264 Just a few railroadian vehicles for your viewing pleasure.

your hotel fee to organizations like The Bodhi Tree, which among other things,  helps protect  Bengal

Tigers and their habitat.

I’ve recently finished work on a project with The Library of Congress and The National Children’s Book and Literacy Alliance called The Exquisite Corpse Adventure. As The Library of Congress site read.gov describes it:

Our “Exquisite Corpse Adventure” works this way:

Jon Scieszka, the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, has written the first episode, which is “pieced together out of so many parts that it is not possible to describe them all here, so go ahead and just start reading!” He has passed it on to a cast of celebrated writers and illustrators,who must eventually bring the story to an end.

The roster of writers is very impressive –

and aside from Jon Scieszka also includes Daniel Handler aka Lemony Snicket, Gregory Maguire, M.T. Anderson, Nikki Grimes, and lots of others. My fellow illustrators are Chris van Dusen, Timothy Basil Ering, Steven Kellogg and James Ransome.

It’s a really wild story, check it out at read.gov

I created art for Episodes 3 ,7, 15, 19, 21 and 27. Here are my illustrations: