Lucky

As promised, here’s my review of Lucky, written by Monica Engebretson and illustrated by my friend Melodee Strong.

Lucky by Monica Engebretson and Melodee Strong

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

This children’s picture book (based on a true story) is about the capture and eventual release of Lucky, a rainbow lorikeet, through the efforts of a young Indonesian boy named Kersen. Kersen feels unconditional love for Lucky that inspires him to learn about the species, empathize, and eventually set free the bird he cares for so much.

The plight of captive birds is gently presented through the story in a way that is very accessible to all audiences. Engebretson deftly avoids anthropomorphizing and excessively moralizing Lucky’s predicament while still showing Kersen’s torn emotions, kind acts, and compassion in setting him free. The book goes beyond merely teaching kindness towards animals and shows the power of simply doing the right thing for a wild creature. Even older readers like me may surprise themselves with tears when Kersen says his touching goodbye to his friend. The story is beautifully written and is not “preachy” at all.

Melodee’s illustrations are a wonderful complement to the words. Rich tones of warm sunsets and cool tropics permeate the background, while the lorikeets take flight in vibrant shades of rainbow colors. Melodee has always shown ample strength in rendering expressive, multicultural human characters in her other books, and Lucky is no exception. Kersen’s character is as amiable and expressive as his written description. I love Melodee’s textural backgrounds as well: an effective use of acrylic paints on watercolor paper that allows for some neat brush effects.

This book is perfect for parents and educators to teach children why wild animals belong in their native habitats, and offers interesting tidbits about parrots, Indonesian culture, tropical forest ecosystems, and conservation. Lucky is printed on recycled, chlorine-free paper using wind power. Furthermore, 100% of the proceeds from the sale of this book benefit avian welfare, rescue, and conservation. To learn more the real-life Lucky, download lesson plans, and purchase a copy of the book, please visit Lucky's official website.

View all my reviews on Goodreads.

Illustration Friday: Poise

I’ve got an “egg-cellent” submission for this week’s Illustration Friday! The image comes from the bilingual children’s picture book, Mayte and the Bogeyman / Mayte y el Cuco, and shows Don Maximo transporting a large stack of farm-fresh eggs with a fair amount of poise.

Looks like it’s going to be another “Working Weekend” for me because I have some serious deadlines coming up, but I still wish the rest of you a fun-filled couple of days!

Art Crush Wednesday: Melodee Strong

For this week’s Art Crush Wednesday, I’m featuring fellow Latina illustrator Melodee Strong. Melodee is an award-winning children’s book artist, instructor, and speaker whose work can be seen in the You Are Important board book series. She is also the illustrator of Colorful World and the paperback books You Are Healthy, You Are Helpful, You Are Brave, and You Are Friendly (click here to find these on Amazon). Newly added to that already impressive booklist is Lucky, a beautiful children’s picture book about a parrot who is captured in the wild and eventually regains his freedom with the help of a young Indonesian boy.

Melodee has received awards from the Society of Illustrators Los Angeles Competition 42 and the Society of Illustrators New York. She is also a member of the Minnesota Children’s Book Illustrators Guild and frequently leads presentations about children’s book illustration. We Minnesota SCBWI members had the pleasure of her being one of our “First Look” panelists during the 2008 Minnesota SCBWI Annual Conference.

Please visit Melodee Strong’s website for more information about this talented illustrator. Also, be sure to check back here this Sunday, March 29th, when I’ll be posting my review of Lucky. See you then!

Reflections Opening Reception Recap

Thanks to everyone who made it out on Friday night to the collaborative show between the Minnesota SCBWI and the Minnesota Center for Book Arts! The show was amazing and I’m so very proud of everyone who entered.

We had over 100 poems entered for this event. Thanks to the poetry judges Dr. Lee Galda, Jill Katz, and Jim Cihlar for selecting the top five! Congratulations to the authors of the winning poems:
"Princesses" by Jeanie Watson
"Once" by Krisanne A. Dattir
"Two-Wheeler" by Jane Thomas Noland
"My Back Yard" by Bill Herring
"His Father Overseas" by Ruth Berman

Competition was fierce on the illustration side, and judges David LaRochelle, Brian Malloy, and I sure had an intense time selecting only a few winners out of all the amazing work. Congratulations to the illustrators whose work won in the following categories:
Best in Show: Plane-in-the-Sky-Cycle by Shawn McCann, inspired by "Two-Wheeler."
Painting/Drawing: Princesses by Brianna Capra, inspired by "Princesses."
Digital: Two-Wheeler by Chrysa Otto, inspired by "Two-Wheeler."
Collage/Mixed Media: Overseas Tours by Anna King, inspired by "His Father Overseas."
Honorable Mention: The Ocean King by Nina Crittenden., inspired by "My Back Yard."
Honorable Mention: The Princess by Barb Bjornson, inspired by "Princesses."
Honorable Mention: My Backyard by R.W. Scholes, inspired by "My Backyard."

It was a fabulous time and I hope you local art lovers will make your way to the MCBA to view the show, which is up through May 3, 2009. View my photos of the event on Flickr. Very special thanks go to Georgia Greeley and Jeff Rathermel for making this show possible.

Finally, please be sure check out my guest post on The Bluestocking Guide today. Leave a comment to enter the prize raffle!

Blog Party!

I will be a guest in a “blog party” at The Bluestocking Guide next week! The event itself starts this Friday and runs through March 27th with over a dozen other authors taking part. Several books and related prizes will be raffled off to folks who leave comments on the blog posts, so be sure to stop by and share your thoughts!

My entry will go live on Monday, March 23rd, where I’ll talk a little about The Wishing Tree and how I went about getting photo references. One lucky visitor will win a packet of Wish Ribbons to make their own Wishing Tree.

Check out this post to see the complete roster of guests or view the trailer for the party.

Thanks to the stylish and fabulous Brooke for setting up this event!

The Sisters Grimm: Once Upon a Crime

The Sisters Grimm Book 4: Once Upon a Crime by Michael Buckley

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

New Yorkers will love this one: Sabrina and Daphne finally return to the Big Apple in Book 4 of The Sisters Grimm series, and boy do they manage some sightseeing. The city is amply featured as the sisters encounter several new Everafters etching out lives for themselves within its Boroughs. The author’s affinity for his hometown really comes through while the Grimms solve a murder, learn secrets about their mother, and help Puck heal from the injuries he endured during Book 3.

There is a huge glut of new characters tagging along in this volume; unfortunately, I didn’t feel like all of them were necessary. Buckley can write some great action scenes but he is lacking somewhat when the scenes involve a superfluous cast. At one point I counted 8 characters in a scene (Sabrina, Daphne, Granny Relda, Mr. Canis, Moth, Mr. Hamstead, Bess, AND Puck in his healing-cocoon thingy), but only Sabrina and Daphne had any lines or engaged any of the plot. Certainly not all of the characters can be fleshed out so well as the girls or Puck, but the absence of the Trickster King in his full glory really made obvious the meagerness of the additional cast to fill his void. I think the secondary characters fare better when they splinter into smaller groups or when they get tucked away into the sidelines.

It would seem that Buckley, like many authors, isn’t immune to the “sagging middle” phenomenon which often slows down the momentum of a book and even many series. On a brighter note, though, I think the illustrations in Once Upon a Crime are some of the best yet. They keep getting stronger, more nuanced, and fluid. Plus, the emerald green cover is lovely and goes so well with the theme. It’s those little details I love. I’m sticking with this series and hoping the story regains its usual stamina later on.

View all my reviews on Goodreads.

Read an E-Book Week

Today is your last chance to take advantage of "Read an E-Book Week." Several e-book publishers have made a variety of e-books available for free or at significant savings. Many genres are covered, downloadable in different file formats, and in some cases registration isn’t required to download the free e-books. Check out the Partners page for a list of participants and visit their websites for free e-books, industry musings, and other information. Better hurry, though - it's all over at midnight tonight!

Thanks to L. Diane Wolfe for the tip, and for being one of the "Read an E-Book Week" partners!

Illustration Friday: Legendary

I’d like to take this week’s Illustration Friday segment to show you a peek one my projects-in-progress. The last few months have been spent completing (among other things) illustrations for the forthcoming picture book, The Antarctic Express. The story is a retelling of H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness, and the scene features Professor Dyer unearthing a legendary Old One.

For this book, I’m creating graphite drawings first, then overlaying color and other effects digitally in Photoshop. It’s a change from my usual watercolor paintings, but after illustrating 7 books in that medium, I was ready to try something new. Unfortunately I can't show more of this technique until the publishing date draws closer. Trust me, though, this book is looking very cool.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

Reflections Art Show Opening Reception

Over a year’s worth of preparation is coming to fruition, and you are invited! Reflections, co-sponsored by Minnesota Center for Book Arts and the Minnesota Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, is a juried exhibition of illustrations inspired by the work of five award-winning poets. Also included in the exhibition are process materials from the University of Minnesota's Kerlan Collection, one of the world's great children's literature research collections. There will be a total of $500 awarded in prizes at the opening reception. I am fortunate to be one of the judges for the competition this year, so I’m really looking forward to the show!

Date: March 20, 2009
Time: 6:00pm - 9:00pm
Location: MCBA, 1011 Washington Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55415

Hope to see you there! The show runs through May 2, 2009. Very special thanks to Georgia Greeley and Jeff Rathermel for putting this whole event together.

Illustration Friday: Intricate

This week’s Illustration Friday submission is the final scene from the award-winning children’s book, Storm Codes. The intricate details of the Duluth Lift Bridge in Minnesota certainly took me a lot of time and effort to paint! My wrist still aches when I look at all those beams, girders, and icicles…

Find more information about this wonderful book, written by Tracy Nelson Maurer, at the book’s website. Have a great weekend, everybody!

More on Books-to-Film

“There's no one in film who doesn't take children's books seriously anymore.”

The above quote is from a recent Publishers Weekly article drumming up excitement for this year’s Bologna Children’s Book Fair. I’m pretty intrigued with the entwining relationship between children’s books and movies, as indicated by a number of my previous posts. Some books are wonderfully adapted into films, while others leave me aghast. Either way, creating a book that would also make a great movie might be a strong selling point these days, as the film industry remains strong even in this troubled economy.

The figures about the growing presence of children’s books in the book-to-film market are encouraging: pre-Harry Potter, children’s books comprised only about 20%, but that figure today is close to 50%. There will also be nearly 20 film scouts at the Bologna Book Fair this year, up from only a couple just 6 years ago, demonstrating an active interest from Hollywood.

It is certainly food for thought! Head on over to Publishers Weekly to read the whole article.

The Sisters Grimm: The Problem Child

In this third installment of The Sisters Grimm series, Sabrina and Daphne intensify the hunt for their parents by going after their kidnappers: Little Red Riding Hood and the Scarlet Hand. Along the way, they are reunited with their previously unknown Uncle Jake, face addiction, and learn the value of consequences while looking for a mythical, unstoppable weapon. It is all very exciting, indeed.

Most of what I love about the previous books is present in The Problem Child. Puck is as hilariously repugnant as ever (though he does make an unfortunate early exit here), Sabrina is scrappy as always, and Daphne still gets some of the best laughs. However, my hardcover version no longer featured a nice fabric cover, which I found a little sad. I guess they pick up dirt (and lose their gold lettering) a lot more easily in children’s libraries, but it’s the little tactile things that can really make a difference sometimes.

The plot, while loaded with lots more action, whimsy, and dark humor, zips around a little too much in this one. At times it even seems a little bloated. I loved the depiction of the Little Mermaid, but did they really have time for an undersea adventure while Puck was supposedly at death’s door? While it was nice to see Uncle Jake forgive himself at the end, the little time-meddling-wish-granting session left my head spinning, not only wondering what just happened, but debating whether it was even necessary. Conversely, there is no mention of what happened to the Everafter children of Book 2, which seems like a pretty big plot hole. I had figured their murderous crimes warranted at least some mention of punishment or consequences in Book 3, even if they are minors. It’s a little disappointing, but with several more books to go I’m hoping to see them again eventually.

Finally, I could hardly argue with the intensity of a crazed, psychopathic Little Red Riding Hood, but since she is my favorite fairy tale character I kind of wish the author had taken her in a different direction. I was anticipating that she’d be a cold-blooded seeker of vengeance, obsessed with exacting her revenge on Mr. Canis for the last several hundred years, but in the end she’s just a poor “little girl lost” whose villainy is too short-lived. It’s still a unique depiction of her, though. I guess I’m just a little biased.

My nit-picking aside, I still absolutely love this series and highly recommend it. The reader will move very quickly through this book, as it hardly stops for air so likely neither will the reader. It’s a pretty wild read that will satisfy anyone hungry for action, adventure, and humor. I can’t wait to see what happens next!

View all my reviews on Goodreads.