Alas, alas - my library did not get me the next Caldecott book in time for my Monday read! WHATEVER SHALL I DO?

Well, fortuitously, next week's book is one that I already own and love and have in fact posted about before: Ox-Cart Man, written by Donald Hall and illustrated by Barbara Cooney. You might think that I would have run out of things to ( Read more... )

At last the library got me a copy of the 2017 Caldecott Medal Winner! Javaka Steptoe's Radiant Child: The Story of Young Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, a charming book about, well, what it says on the tin. The illustration style is unique & intriguing: Steptoe paints on boards, so each part of the picture is on its own board and they're all fitted ( Read more... )

This week's Caldecott book, Baboushka and the Three Kings, is so cute! And also super tiny: the book is a little shorter than an ordinary paperback and only a little longer, much smaller than the usual run of picture book ( Read more... )

My mother and I went to the Indianapolis Museum of Art today and had a rather marvelous time. We hadn't realized it beforehand, but the museum has a perfectly enchanting exhibition of Marie Webster's quilts (Marie Webster revolutionized American quilting in the early twentieth century ( Read more... )

Some photos from my Chicago trip! I went to attend my friend Rachel's wedding shower, and I was worried about it beforehand because a) I didn't know most of the attendees, and b) I spent so much of last week so anxious about my possibly impending health problems; but actually I enjoyed it very much and I think getting away for a bit was good for me ( Read more... )

If the cover is anything to go by, I probably would have enjoyed the illustrations of Animals of the Bible had they only been in color. The animals are charmingly detailed and pretty - maybe a little too pretty, sweet and soft-eyed, but still charming ( Read more... )

Tomorrow is Easter! And so today became egg-dyeing day. I hard-boiled the eggs in the morning (one of them came apart a bit in the water, but otherwise the operation was successful), and dyed them in the evening.

( The egg dyeing station )

I just had to post this link: 16 Amazing Pieces to Celebrate World Origami Day. The fox! The unicorn! The black rider! The dragon!

28 - Have you ever collaborated with anyone else, whether writing together, or having an artist work on a piece about your fic?

I haven’t written a fic, but I have had a few artists draw illustrations for my fic, and it is always one of my very favorite things. radio_silent made a banner for my first Wonderfalls fic back in the day (this was back when fic ( Read more... )

Well, this is cool: Pyrografie, the art of drawing portraits with sparklers.