Three Things of Note

One: Emily Martin's Paper Doll Primer

One of my serious creativity crushes is on the Black Apple, Emily Martin. I'm very excited to hear that she's got a book coming out this fall called The Black Apple's Paper Doll Primer: Activities & Amusements for the Curious Paper Artist. It appears to contain not only the paper dolls themselves, but also some very nifty backdrops and paper theaters and other neat stuff. Quite conveniently it comes out just before Christmas! So if anyone named Adrien is out there reading, he may want to jot that down as a possible under-the-tree type item.

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Two: Christopher Baldwin

I've mentioned him on here before, but I thought I would tell you that his two completed comic strips Bruno and Little Dee are being re-run from the beginning with annotations. Bruno originally ran for eleven years and is such an interesting and thoughtful work. Little Dee was created to eventually go in newspapers but never got picked up (for shame newspaper land, for SHAME). It's really sweet and also very thoughtful (I've always thought that Dee is secretly a much younger version of Bruno... but this is not confirmed). Christopher's current project is a sci-fi strip that runs Mondays and Wednesdays in full colour! Very exciting. It's certainly a departure from the first two but is also really entertaining and fun. If you liked Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (I'm looking at you Terry!) then I think it's a good bet that you will enjoy Spacetrawler.

(click to make this a readable size)

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Three: Picture Book Report

Some smarty-pants artists decided to do their own illustrations of favourite childhood classics and the pictures they're making are gorgeous! It's a lot of fun to see a well-loved tale through the eyes of a new picture-maker and I'm really enjoying seeing this project unfold. I came upon it through Lucy Knisley's blog, who is doing Lois Lowry's The Giver (I'd never read that one... but since I'm doing a young adult services course for school I read it for class and quite liked it! Nice and creepy!).

Take a look at this little sampling of pictures:

Meg Hunt, the project dreamer-uper, is doing Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which we all know and love.

Laura Park is doing Geek Love by Katherine Dunn, which I've not yet read but have heard such interesting things about that I went ahead and bought it for the library so I can read it later this summer.

As I mentioned above, Lucy Knisley is doing The Giver, and this is her perfect cover:

Who doesn't love Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? Terry does. I sure do too! And I also love the fun illustrations that John Martz is doing from it:

Michael Ende's wonderful The Never Ending Story is being illustrated by Chuck Groenink whose portfolio is extremely lovely.

I think perhaps my favourites are the Sabriel (written by Garth Nix) illustrations being done by Kali Ceisemier. It could be because that Abhorsen trilogy is a long time favourite of mine, but it could also be because Kali's work is so beautiful and striking. It really suits the story too.

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I have a few more things I want to share (including some handmade jewelry from my mom!) but I still have to photograph them and then find a little slice of time to write about them. Soon! Maybe even later this week.