Kirkus review of Boy Wonders
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)
My Visit to Dyer Elementary
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.
His Shoes Were Far Too Tight
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.
Trains!
Just a few railroadian vehicles for your viewing pleasure.
Save The Tigers
This is a small piece for Travel and Leisure, about a program which automatically donates a portion of
your hotel fee to organizations like The Bodhi Tree, which among other things, helps protect Bengal
Tigers and their habitat.
The Exquisite Corpse Adventure
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:
Allicatter Gatorpillar!
This painting of the little known reptile-insect is a recent private commission.
