I’ve known Divya Srinivasan and admired her work since we were in college. And as thrilled as I was by the publication of her first picture book, Little Owl’s Night, I’m even more excited to see my friend back so soon with her second book.

Let’s talk a bit with Divya — whose other credits include illustration for This American Life and animation for “Weird Al” Yankovic — about her new picture book.

CB: What made you want to create Octopus Alone?

DS: I began thinking what setting I’d like to spend some time in — something different from the forest in Little Owl’s Night — that would have its own distinct set of inhabitants. Maybe it was starting to get hot here in Austin, but underwater seemed appealing. I’d been researching Hawaii because I’d never been and wanted to go. Looking at photos of the coral reef, and the beautiful, weird, colorful creatures living there, I thought it would be really fun to draw — and it was! I also liked the idea of exploring that world, going from the busy, friendly, familiar reef to the mysterious, quiet unknown that also has its appeal.

Once I decided on the reef, I knew I wanted the main character to be an octopus. I’d drawn them before and had roughed out a story (just in my head and in my journal) with an octopus on the periphery, so the octopus has been on my mind for a while. As I learned more about them and their characteristics — shy, observant, curious, intelligent, able to camouflage, etc. — Octopus’ personality started taking shape, and so did the story.

“Loner” seems such a negative word, and so definitive. I liked showing a character who loves her home, but realizes she needs some space, and who then ends up finding a place that feels all her own, like a precious secret. It’s her time alone in those quiet surroundings — knowing it’s there for her whenever she needs it — that allows her to breathe easy. When she’s had her fill, she is even excited to get back to her home and her friends in the bustling reef.

CB: Tell me about the kind of child you think Octopus Alone will appeal to the most.

DS: One day, I saw my friend’s three-year-old give herself a time-out. She had been having a drawn-out meltdown and finally did something she had just been told not to do. Before her mom said anything, kiddo went and sat herself in the corner. She knew she needed that quiet place where she did nothing but sit away from everyone, and that’s what time-out was. After a few minutes, she was out of the corner, laughing and playing — renewed! I really hope she likes the book.

Divya Srinivasan’s second picture book, Octopus Alone (her first was the lovely Little Owl’s Night) will be published next week and featured as the giveaway in my monthly Bartography Express newsletter, along with an interview with Divya.

Enjoy the book trailer here, and get in the running to win a copy of Octopus Alone by looking for the yellow box on this page.

Around midnight tonight, Willie Nelson — my favorite musician — turns 80 years old. It would probably take me until his 81st birthday to enumerate the reasons I love and admire Willie. So I’ll stop at three:

1) The band you see with Willie in the 39-year-old video above is largely the same band he has today, and that includes his older sister, Bobbie. Can you imagine the mutual love and trust and appreciation and loyalty that keeps a group of human beings so close for so long?

2) My dad turned me on to him, with the Waylon & Willie, Red Headed Stranger, and Phases and Stages albums he left behind when he died when I was 8. Dad didn’t have an unerring taste in music, but he got Willie right, and each time I listen to “Hands on the Wheel,” I appreciate the musical connection to my father.

3) I adore the story of how the musical influences Willie accumulated while growing up in Central Texas and the bonds he forged with those he made music for and with sustained him through years of underappreciation in Nashville — and ultimately made him an unimaginably huge and beloved cultural figure after he came home to Bobbie and Texas. I think Willie Nelson’s story would be a marvelous one for a picture book biography.

And, yes, I’m working on it.

In addition to the TLA events I’ve already written about here, I’ll be signing books this Friday at 10:30 a.m. at Booth #1601. Joining me at the signing will be Don Tate, illustrator of my upcoming book The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch, and Jennifer Ziegler, about whom I’ll say a little more at the end of this post.

On April 11, I participated in a literacy celebration hosted by Reading Is Fundamental (RIF) at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library here in Austin:

The event was part of a series of events sponsored by Macy’s, a longtime supporter of RIF. Authors Tim Tingle, Chris Barton and Cynthia Leitich Smith, who all have books featured in RIF’s Multicultural Book Collection, joined the festivities, along with Kay Gooch, a RIF Volunteer of the Year. Families from Book Spring, who participate in the RIF program in Austin, and Gullett Elementary School, who support RIF each year through the regional Read-A-Thon, heard from the authors and celebrated children’s books.

Here are a few of the images captured by AP photographer Jack Plunkett for RIF:

Tim Tingle with Saltypie, me with The Day-Glo Brothers, and Cynthia Leitich Smith with Jingle Dancer

Cynthia Leitich Smith and me during our conversation with the audience

Tim, me, and Cynthia

Signing The Day-Glo Brothers with my Day-Glo pens

This past Sunday, I drove down to San Antonio to attend my first conference of the International Reading Association, where I appeared on a nonfiction panel consisting of…

Brian Floca, Meghan McCarthy, Marc Tyler Nobleman, Shana Corey, and me

Ordinarily, either of those events — to say nothing of TLA — would be the biggest thing about my month by far. But April 2013 has not been an ordinary month, because this has also been the month when I married the love of my life, author Jennifer Ziegler.

Photo by the marvelous Sam Bond

(See? I told you I’d have a little more to say about her…)

There’s lots of good stuff going on at the same time, though, so if you can’t make it to our talk at 3 p.m., I’d love to catch up with you during the hour before. At 2 p.m., I’ll be signing The Day-Glo Brothers and Shark Vs. Train at the Anderson’s Bookshop booth, #1003.

IRA has a helpful guide to which authors will be signing which books at which times.

Some projects just feel like they are touched by kismet. Such is the case with Chris Barton’s nonfiction picture book text PIONEERS AND PIROUETTES.

Chris has had the idea of doing a picture book about the Christensen brothers, three guys from small-town Utah who are responsible for the Christmas tradition of performances of THE NUTCRACKER, for quite some time. As he dug deeper, he found the guys were pretty fascinating—their lives covered vaudeville, serving in WWII, living all over the country, writing original stage performances, championing ballet as an American art form—and always, always, a love of dance in all forms.

Enter Carol Hinz of Millbrook, who not only confessed to being a fan of Chris Barton’s writing, but to having a lifelong love of ballet herself, from her first lessons at age 7 through her present-day classes. It turns out Carol wasn’t the only Millbrook staffer to be currently taking classes in ballet, either.

A match made in heaven! Now Carol and Millbrook will bring PIONEERS AND PIROUETTES to bookshelves in fall 2015—just in time for Christmas. Of course.

I’ll just add that my oldest electronic files for this project go back more than 10 years — thank you, Erin Murphy, for being so patient and persistent about finding the right home for Willam, Harold, and Lew Christensen’s story.

On Sunday, April 21, the International Reading Association convention in San Antonio will host “But Kids Haven’t Heard of That!”: Why Teaching Unconventional Nonfiction Is Important, moderated by children’s literature expert Susannah Richards. The discussion will feature Marc Tyler Nobleman (Bill the Boy Wonder), Shana Corey (Here Come the Girl Scouts!), Meghan McCarthy (Pop!: The Invention of Bubble Gum), Brian Floca (Moonshot), and me.

Just a few days later, on April 25, attendees of the Texas Library Association conference in Fort Worth can listen in as I moderate The Best of Both: Nonfiction and Historical Fiction Picture Books, a discussion among Shana Corey (again!), Candace Fleming (Amelia Lost), Doreen Rappaport (Helen’s Big World), Tanya Lee Stone (Who Says Women Can’t Be Doctors?), and Melissa Sweet (Balloons Over Broadway).

The next day, on April 26, I’ll take part in yet another discussion, this one featuring authors with books included in the 2012-2013 Spirit of Texas middle school reading program. Besides me (my Can I See Your I.D.? will be the honored title in late summer and early fall), the panelists will include Jennifer Archer (Through Her Eyes), Karen Blumenthal (Bootleg), Veronica Goldbach (Deep in the Heart of Texas), and Andrea White (Windows on the World). ]]> http://chrisbarton.info/blog/2013/04/join-me-at-ira-and-tla.html/feed 1 http://chrisbarton.info/blog/2013/03/they-both-won.html http://chrisbarton.info/blog/2013/03/they-both-won.html#comments Tue, 19 Mar 2013 12:37:06 +0000 bartography http://chrisbarton.info/blog/?p=1752

I was in Denver last month to attend the annual conference of the Colorado Council International Reading Association and pick up the Colorado Children’s Book Award won by Shark Vs. Train. The award itself turned out to be this magnificent, hefty thing, which I opted to have shipped to me instead of trying to slip into my carry-on bag for the flight home.

I wish I’d thought to snap a photo of the award before the CCIRA folks kindly packed it away, but here’s how the pewter versions of Train and Shark look now that they’ve arrived in their natural habitat.

By the way, here’s what I said at the luncheon where I received the award:

The thing in life that we’re going to be our best at may be something we haven’t started doing yet. That’s something I realized for myself about 15 years ago — a few years before I started writing books for children — and it’s something that’s almost entirely undermined by the ineptitude displayed by Shark and Train as they try their hands… fins… driving rods at playing piano, traveling through outer space, and attempting to jump a row of parked vehicles while riding motorcycles. All the same, I think it’s true — for me, and for you, and for the young people whose lives you help shape. When you go back to your libraries and classrooms, please make sure they understand that creating picture books was, at one point, something I hadn’t started doing yet, and the same goes for illustrator Tom Lichtenheld. But we didn’t let that stop us, and now I think we’re each getting pretty good at it. Having our book honored with the Colorado Children’s Book Award will only encourage us to keep at it, so we hope that’s what the children of Colorado had in mind. We thank them, and we thank you.

Nearly three years after publication, Shark Vs. Train is still getting lots of support from my beloved independent local seller, BookPeople. How much support? Well, here’s the latest stack of 33 copies that I just stopped by the store to sign. (You can order them online if you can’t stop by their store in downtown Austin.)

Now for my question. As I was autographing books, the “Have your next birthday party at BookPeople!” sign was right in front of me. And I couldn’t help but wonder: Might a certain picture book near and dear to my heart make a great theme for an in-store birthday party?

Hmmm….

In 2011, I was looking for such a list, wondered why I couldn’t find one, and decided to just go ahead and make one myself. Since then, I’ve periodically updated and reposted it, and I plan to continue doing so. If I’ve missed any, or included some that no longer exist, won’t you please let me know?

California
Antioch University Los Angeles Children’s Literature Conference
University of Redlands Charlotte S. Huck Children’s Literature Festival

Connecticut
University of Connecticut Connecticut Children’s Book Fair

Georgia
Kennesaw State University Conference on Literature for Children and Young Adults
The University of Georgia Conference on Children’s Literature

Illinois
Northern Illinois University Children’s Literature Conference

Indiana/Kentucky/Ohio
Northern Kentucky University, Thomas More College, University of Cincinnati, and Xavier University Ohio Kentucky Indiana Children’s Literature Conference

Kentucky
University of Kentucky McConnell Conference

Massachusetts
Simmons College Children’s Literature Summer Institute

Maryland
Salisbury University Read Green Festival

Minnesota
University of St. Thomas Hubbs Children’s Literature Conference

Missouri
University of Central Missouri Children’s Literature Festival

Mississippi
The University of Southern Mississippi Fay B. Kaigler Children’s Book Festival

New Hampshire
Keene State College Children’s Literature Festival

New Jersey
Rutgers University One-on-One Plus Conference

New York
Stony Brook University – Southampton Southampton Children’s Literature Conference

Ohio
Kent State University Virginia Hamilton Conference

Pennsylvania
Kutztown University Children’s Literature Conference

Texas
Sam Houston State University Jan Paris Bookfest: Children’s & YA Conference
Texas A&M University – Commerce Bill Martin Jr Memorial Symposium

Utah
Brigham Young University Symposium on Books for Young Readers

Virginia
The College of William and Mary Joy of Children’s Literature Conference
Longwood University Summer Literacy Institute
Shenandoah University Children’s Literature Conference

Washington
Western Washington University Children’s Literature Conference

(Thanks to Loreen Leedy for suggesting the Salisbury University festival, to Kim Norman for suggesting the Longwood University institute, to Sara Lewis Holmes for suggesting the William and Mary conference, to Loretta Ellsworth for suggesting the Hubbs conference at St. Thomas, and to Edi Campbell for suggesting the University of Kentucky and Kent State conferences!)