BookLust

Fightin' Words 2

A delightful barb to start your weekend right.

He leads his readers to the latrine and locks them in.

– Oscar Wilde on George Moore

Silly Poetry Friday 31

The little poem I'm posting today isn't actually silly at all, but I like it, and wanted to share. It may be familiar to some of you, especially if you're a garden-lover. It was my mom who recently reminded me of this lovely gem – as a way of nudging me into working in my garden to forget some of my troubles. Thanks, Mom!

The poem is a well-known stanza from God's Garden, written by Dorothy Frances Gurney. I'm certainly not a religious person, but I figure an agnostic can still appreciate religious poetry, can't they? And for your visual entertainment, I'm posting some images from last year's garden, as was well as one pic from the garden this year so far. Ok, the poem:

The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,
One is nearer God's Heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.

And looky! My Rhododendrons bloomed this year! Woo-hoo!

Kids Are Authors!

A couple months ago I was invited by the folks at Scholastic Educational to be a part of an amazing school program. I must confess that I had never heard of Kids Are Authors™. Basically, it's a picture book competition open to all elementary schools across Canada. Every year groups of three or more students (with some direction from their teacher) participate in writing and illustrating an original picture book. A number of finalists are chosen from the entries, and then Scholastic Canada invites local authors, illustrators and librarians to choose a grand prize winner and up to three honour award winners from the final entries. So I was one of the lucky people asked to be a judge! The other judges involved this year were the authors Marsha Skrypuch and Joanne Richter, and librarian Rosemary Renton.

The final judging took place two weeks ago. It was an amazing experience, I must say. That was the first time I'd ever actually been to the offices of Scholastic Educational in Markham (which, by the way is in another country as far as I'm concerned, since I had to take TTC to get there. Two and a half hours on trains and buses! Oy). That place is huge. Everyone involved in this project was very helpful and friendly (we even got a delicious lunch! Yum). And now I have an idea how editors must feel when they are looking over submissions of picture book manuscripts. It's really tough to make judgments, because all of the stories had strengths, and all of the illustrations were really quite impressive. But us gals worked really well as a team, and in the end we were all in agreement as to who the winner should be. Can't mention the winner yet, but as soon as it's official, I'll write a post about it for sure.

The winning school will receive a cash prize of $1,000, by the way, as well as a commemorative plaque. The three Honour Award winners will receive a $100 cash prize and a plaque, too. But the best part is that the winning entry will be published and distributed by Scholastic Book Fairs and sold as a bona fide picture book! The money made from the sales of the winning book goes back into supporting the Kids Are Authors™ program, and any extra cash made is donated to various literary organizations.

Dang, I sure wish this program was around when I was a kid!!

Pants on Fire!

Here's a little illo job I did recently – just an updated illustration for the cover of Gordon Korman's 1997 book Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire. The story (which I admit I have yet to read) apparently involves a girl who is compelled to make up big fat lies to impress her friends. There is a goldfish and a supposed nuclear toilet bowl in the story, too, just in case you were wondering...

Getting an opportunity to do any kind of illustration work for the much revered Canadian children's author Gordon Korman is pretty exciting – kinda like setting one's pants on fire, I suppose.

Write On, Baby...

Some of you might know that I've got a weakness for black and white cards that are somehow related to the subject of books or writing. Naturally I could not resist this little beauty!

(Of course as cute as this photo is, personally I'd go postal if I caught any little kids playing with my precious Underwood...)

Silly Poetry Friday 30

Yup, late yet again. At least I'm consistent! Consistently silly, that is...

So I'm wondering, what do all you folks think about all the movies that have been made in the past few years, on Dr. Suess's books? I'm thinking of movies like the recent Horton Hears A Who, The Cat In The Hat and The Grinch. Did you watch them? Did you like them? Me, I could not watch them. Nope. Not ever. In fact...

I could not, would not, on a boat.
I will not, will not, with a goat.
I will not watch them in the rain.
I will not watch them on a train.
Not in the dark! Not in a tree!
Not in a car! You let me be!
I will not watch them in a box.
I will not watch them with a fox.
I will not watch them in a house.
I will not watch them with a mouse.
I will not watch them here or there.
I will not watch them ANYWHERE!

Well, you get the point. I did see the trailers for all those movies, and they just made my skin crawl. Why in heaven's name would you mess with such a good thing? Well, apparently that's what good ol' Dr. Seuss was thinking, too! Mind you, I do believe he shuffled off this silly mortal coil a while ago, but somehow, courtesy of The Onion, they managed to get in touch with ol' Mr. Geisel, and this is what he had to say:

Stop Making Movies About My Books

On the fourteenth of March, in towns nationwide,
In every cinema, multiplex, on every barnside,
Gleamed another adapting of one of my books,
CGI-ed and digitized by another sly crook.
Horton, my favorite—look how he's been treated!
Stuffed with tinsels and tassels and promptly excreted!
The puns! And the filler! The script fees you must save!
While I tumble and grum-humble around in my grave.
Did you learn all but squat from The Cat In The Hat?
Please tell me you fired the prick who made that.
I would have stopped writing, maybe sold Goodyear tires.
If I knew one dark day I'd costar with Mike Myers.
And Oh!
Oh, dear! Oh!
My poor Grinch, what they've done!
They crammed in live-action and snuffed out all the fun!
It's icky, it's tacky, it's awkward, it's wrong.
The Whos look like ferrets, it's an hour too long.
What a rotten idea to spend millions destroying
This masterful tale kids spent decades enjoying!
But still you keep making them!
Just how do you dare?
Sell my life's work off piecemeal
To every Tom, Dick, and Har'.
Why it's simply an outrage—a crime, you must judge!—
To crap on my books with this big-budget sludge.
My books are for children to learn ones and twos in,
Not commercialous slop for Jim Carrey to ruin.
Have you no respect for the gems of your youth?
To pervert them on screen from Taiwan to Duluth.
Even after you drag my last word through the dirt,
I know you, you pirates,
You'd cut out my heart for a "Thing 1" T-shirt.
For eighty-some years I held you vultures at bay,
knowing just how you'd franchise my good name some day.
Not yet cold in my grave before you starting shooting
the first of my classics you'd acquired for looting.
Mrs. Seuss, that old stoofus, began selling more rights
to Dreamworks, Universal—any hack in her sights.
First The Cat In The Hat and then this, that and Seussical
without a thought to be picky, selectish, or choosical.
So to Audrey, you whore, you sad sack of a wife:
Listen close. Pay attention, for once in your life.
You give Fox In Sox to those sharks who made Elf
And so help me, I'll rise up and kill you myself.
No Sneetches by Sony—
No One Fish: On Ice—
Burn that Hop On Pop II script not one time but twice.
Don't sex up my prose with Alyssa Milano…
And no Green Eggs And Ham with that one-note Romano!
This must stop! This must end! Don't you see what you're doing?
You're defiling the work I spent ages accruing.
And when it's dried up and you've sucked out your pay
There'll be no going back to a simpler day,
When your mom would give Horton a voice extra deep,
And turn the last page as you drifted to sleep.
Instead you'll have boxed sets, shit movies, and… well,
You'll have plenty to watch while you're burning in hell.

The Love of the Iron Whim

Right now I'm reading and enjoying The Iron Whim: A Fragmented History of Typewriting by Darren Wershler-Henry. It's not a typical history of the typewriter – more of a social and psychological study of this still very fascinating and beautiful machine. Here's a link to a little article about the author, in This Magazine, and a link to the author's web site.

And why call it The Iron Whim? Well, the author discovered that Marshall McLuhan in his In Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, called his chapter on the typewriter "Into the Age of the Iron Whim." Apparently whim doesn't just mean "a fanciful or fantastic creation; a whimsical object; a capricious notion of fancy"; it also means "a machine...consisting of a vertical shaft containing a large drum with one or more radiating arms or beams." I think that the word whim is very fitting for an old typewriter, don't you? An old typewriter is strong, sturdy and mechanical, as well as being rather silly-looking clunker, don't ya think? All the more reason to start a new category about the subject of typewriters (which is beginning to become a bit of an obsession with me) called The Iron Whim.

And speaking of said Iron Whim, did you know that there's a fabulous little display going on right now at the Royal Ontario Museum of early typewriters? We're not talking about the run-of-the-mill clunky Underwoods (which I think are divine, by the way) we're talking about heavy, clunky, very whim-sical machines that look nothing like what we would imagine a typewriter to be. The display is on until June 29th, so do pop in if you're even remotely intrigued. And even if you don't go, do check out this video podcast of Martin Howard, the collector of said bizarre typewriters.

And guess what? I even took a few piccies of those Iron Whim beasties while I was there...enjoy!

Tag I'm It!

I haven't been tagged for a book meme for a long time, and then out of the blue last week, I get tagged by two different book bloggers, for the same meme! So here ya go, Sara and Lizann– my response to the page 123 book tag!

It goes like this:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

I'm not one for tagging others, though, so anyone who wants to take part, be my guest!

The book I've got is Ghosting by Jennie Erdal (a wonderful book!) And here's my sentences:

This was a high point for Tiger. The procedure was greatly ritualised, carried out with sacramental solemnity. First the three dogs would be shut in their kennels by the gardien, a preliminary to the feeding exercise.

Adventures in Accounting

I know that most of you have probably already finished your taxes for this year (or else you're running around with wads of invoices and T-4s and T-5s, bumping into walls and screaming and crying), but I wanted to share my wonderful (yes, wonderful) experience with my new accountant. If you are late in filing, and you need help, and you're in the Toronto area, my I suggest Base Nine Financial? It's a very cool company run by Dimitris Stubos and Adam Dunn, specializing in servicing the artistic community (who as some of you may know, are often totally flummoxed when it comes to doing their taxes, present company included).

I found out about these guys last year from reading this National Post article, just after I had finished getting my taxes done (a horrible, horrible experience that I will not soon forget...grrrrrr....). I saved that precious article, and this year gave Dimitris a call. He's the guy you will be dealing with when getting your taxes done (the other fellow, Adam Dunn, is more the 'behind the scenes' guy, and knows a hell of a lot about running a business, since he runs the very successful toy company Monster Factory).

What can I say? Dimitris was open and friendly, and very eager to help me learn anything I wanted to know, and his goal was to save me as much money as possible. (At one point I had made a mistake in the information I had provided, and when Dimitris figured this out, and that it meant he could save me more money, he was simply giddy with joy. An accountant giddy with joy over saving their client money? Sign me up, baby!) Or how about an accountant who is interested in literature? When was the last time you talked books with your accountant? I'm not saying that's essential, but for me, it sure helps with the whole process. As an artist, I would much prefer to work with an accountant who has an interest in the arts, and who is connected within the artistic community.

Base Nine Financial is located in the Centre for Social Innovation, downtown on Spadina Avenue. It's an amazing place that is focused on housing and supporting small, creative and innovative businesses, but it's much, much more than that, and you really should explore the site in detail. So the fact that my accountant is associated with an organization that is all about community, and sharing ideas – well, it's a no-brainer for me!

So...if you need an accountant, or if you want to try someone fresh and new for next year, why not check out Base Nine Financial? I'll be mentioning this company again next year, far ahead of tax time. I'm just so thrilled to finally find an accountant that I like, I wanna tell the world!

Silly Poetry Friday 29

Perhaps I should start calling this category Silly Late Poetry? 'Cuz I'm always late in posting this darn thing, aren't I? Ah well...

In the past few weeks this one poem has been playing in my mind like a really nasty ear worm, and I can't get the damn fool thing out of my head. I'm hoping if I post it here, it will go away! I loved this poem as a kid – it was goofy and silly and had just the right amount of creepiness to hold my attention but not scare me too much. Ever heard of The Goops? It's a poem from a collection called Goops and How to Be Them, written and illustrated by Gelett Burgess, who apparently is the true author of the Purple Cow poem! (I had always thought it was Odgen Nash. Aren't I the silly one?)

Well, apparently The Goops are back in a really big way – I found this web site devoted to reissuing the original books, with the goal of bringing "proper manners and polite behavior back into the lives of contemporary families." Ummm...I hate to break it to these folks, but I don't think reading silly poems about weird-looking bald kids is gonna change any contemporary kid's behavior. My brother and sister and I loved reading this poem for no other reason than to have a good laugh, and sometimes, if memory serves me correctly, we pretended to be a goop at the dinner table (I'll tell ya what will change a kid's rotten table manners – a strict mother who will threaten to shorten your life span if you don't smarten up PDQ).

Ok, enough goop talk. Here's the poem (scanned from The Illustrated Treasury of Children's Literature, edited and with an introduction by Margaret E. Martignoni).