RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!
GIANT ZUCCHINI ARE ON THE LOOSE!
It happens every year. It doesn’t take much — maybe a little extra rain, or you leave town for a day or two. You innocently go out back to check your vegetable garden to find Mother Nature has GONE WILD.
Suddenly, you feel very small and helpless,
It all started when Noodles the Monkey found the big stash of peaches used to celebrate Grace Lin’s new book, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon.
He loved reading about the greedy monkeys, but he also remembered the part about Minli using her last copper coin to buy a peach for a hungry beggar. After he ate the peach, he planted the pit, which instantly grew into a big tree full of ripe, luscious fruit. Mmmmmm! All the people in the marketplace relished those peaches, and Minli soon discovered who the beggar really was.
The more Noodles looked at the peaches, the hungrier he got. Maybe he could convince the alphabet soup kitchen helpers to bake something special with them!
Melissa with Rufus and Nellie.
Friends, I’m tickled pink and over the moon, because our very special guest at alphabet soup today is 2009 Caldecott Honor Medal winner, Melissa Sweet!
I can’t think of a better way to top off National Poetry Month, than with the illustrator who so brilliantly rendered the story of how Willie Williams, a doctor from Rutherford, New Jersey, became one of America’s most influential twentieth century poets.
If you’ve seen Melissa’s masterful work in A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams (beautifully written by Jen Bryant), then you know the award was supremely well deserved. Her mixed media collages embody the very soul and spirit of the poet, who “walked through the high grasses and along the soft dirt paths . . . stretched out beside the Passaic River . . . watched everything,” took notes “about things he’d heard, seen, or done . . . looked at the words . . . and shaped them into poems.”
Today, I’m thrilled to welcome award winning artist, author, illustrator, and teacher, Carla Golembe, to alphabet soup!
I first learned about Carla’s beautiful work back in the 90’s, when she signed on to illustrate my third picture book, The Woman in the Moon. Back then, it was frowned upon for authors and illustrators to communicate about book projects, so we never met or even wrote to each other in those pre-email days. Instead, I oohed and ahhed over some of the books she had illustrated for Mary-Joan Gerson, like People of Corn, How Night Came from the Sea, and Why the Sky is Far Away, a New York Times Best Illustrated Book.
Carla’s art is eminently suited for multicultural stories. She is especially adept at capturing the essence, rhythms, and natural beauty of places like Central America, Brazil, Nigeria, and Hawai’i through her sensual, color-saturated, vibrant and exotic paintings, which bring to mind Frida Kahlo, Matisse, Gauguin, and some of the whimsical and mystical elements of traditional folk art. On her website, she says her intention is “to create a visual haven that encourages viewers to enter my personal vision.”
#1 in an ongoing series of posts celebrating the alphabet.
Calling all fish lovers!
Whip out your good time goggles and dive straight into this playful book!
Leslie Ann Hayashi and Kathleen Wong Bishop, long time pals from Wahiawa (the unheralded center of the creative universe), really know how to make a splash when it comes to the alphabet.
Did someone just say alphabet? Hold me down, please.
Jama's Alphabet Soup 