BookLust

The Illustrated Library 2

Here are some pages from a very quirky book my husband brought home for me a few years ago. He often does that – digs through the library's discards and snatches up the little gems that he knows I will treasure. Funny, actually, when I think about it – I've been fortunate in that way all my life. As a kid there was always lots of interesting books sitting in the living room – all the hot new reads of the moment, brought home by my mom from her job at the library. Damn good thing I married into the business.

But I digress. The book is called The Rabbit Box and it's written by Joseph Pintauro and designed by Norman Laliberte. I love the mix of old sepia tone photographs and the hand-drawn lettering. It's a fascinating book, but I  must confess that it kinda scares me whenever I read it.

Anyone out there familiar with this book?

Random Readings 6

   "You try," she said. "First a bite of some glue and then follow it with a crunch of the paper. And these squiggles. They are very tasty."
   Despereaux looked down at the book, and something remarkable happened. The marks on the pages, the "squiggles" as Merlot referred to them, arranged themselves into shapes. The shapes arranged themselves into words, and the words spelled out a delicious and wonderful phrase: Once upon a time.
   "'Once upon a time,'" whispered Despereaux.
   "What?" said Merlot.
   "Nothing."
   "Eat," said Merlot.
   "I couldn't possibly," said Despereaux, backing away from the    book.
   "Why?"
   "Um," said Despereaux. "It would ruin the story."

   – from The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo

Sneaky Peaky!

Guess what? The Scholastic Canada Summer 2007 Catalogue is out! Yeah? And why should I care, you say? Because my Halloween book is in there, that's why, silly! Check out the page advertising my first illustrated trade children's book, which is written by award-winning author and illustrator Robin Muller.

If you can't read the copy describing the story, it reads:

On the first stroke of midnight, ten children, two dogs and a cat enter a haunted funhouse. On their journey through the rooms, they encounter bats and witches and goblins. As the clock strikes, the children bravely sing, "Oh nothing frightens me!" – and one by one they disappear. By the twelfth stroke of midnight, only one brave child is left – and he's about to get a big surprise! This Halloween story is spooky and fun, and just right for young readers.

And guess who got to show a bit more of her book on the inside front page of the catalogue?

And finally,  here's a close-up of the cover of the book:

It won't be available til the fall, so save your pennies! 'Cuz I sure hope you'll buy a copy of this fun book!

On My Desk

Are you familiar with the wonderful blog On My Desk? Artists, illustrators, designers and creative folk share photographs of their inner sanctums, where all the crazy creative stuff actually happens. I look at some of the photos of these studios and want to cry. They're so rich with life and creativity! My studio? Definitely a work in progress. Back at our apartment, I had created a real lived-in, personal, creative space. But that took years to come to fruition. Now I'm starting at ground zero, so to speak. For starters, I have nothing on the walls because we're not doing any painting until this spring. And I need new storage equipment (I'm gonna get a couple of these guys at IKEA very soon; would love to purchase this instead, but don't have the room or the budget for it!), so in the mean time, papers are stored in old portfolio cases and underneath my drawing table. Not very practical, I know. But give me time. The next time I take some photos of my studio, I promise that it will have a lot more personality. Here are some shots (after I did the clean-up, of course!)

I love the fact that I can just turn my head and see the world go by as I work. I don't ever want curtains or blinds on this window – I find I need to have light pouring in all the time. Plus I love watching all the people walk by! There's a school across the street and I often see the teachers walking along the sidewalk with about 30 little kids all holding hands as they go off on a field trip adventure. I also once saw a guy walking along the sidewalk drinking a bottle of beer at nine o'clock in the morning. Another time I caught a guy smoking crack by the side of our house. Never a dull moment.

My sister-in-law bought me those cute coloured drawers as a house-warming gift. All my extra pens, pencils, erasers, paints and whateverthehellIcanthrowinthere, goes in there.

That silly-looking yellow slipper was a little creative project I did at Art Starts, a community arts centre close to where my husband works. Note the adorable hand-made pierogi. Thank you,  Isabella!

I'm not really into the whole 'how to be creative' thing, but I did order Keri Smith's creative dice a few years ago. I love them! And Keri does have some pretty cool ideas on her blog.

Of course there are books in my studio! That bookshelf? The hubby brought it home one day, after seeing it outside as garbage on someone else's front lawn. We got two other bookshelves that way. Gotta keep yer eyes open all the time!

And finally, a close-up shot of some of my books. I'll probably post pictures of the updated studio in the late spring/early summer, when hopefully by then, it will look a bit more interesting!

Of Cartoons and Cataloguing and Things

Humour me for a few minutes, ok? This week I finally cleaned up my disaster of a studio, which involved organizing old files and papers and drawings and crap. In amongst this mess I found an old project I had done way back when I was a student studying Library Techniques in college. We're talking mid-80s, when I was about 21. It was the final major project in my cataloguing class. Even in the world of nit-picky Library Science, if there was an opportunity to do something, anything remotely creative, by golly I jumped at the chance.

The late 70s and early 80s was a time of major change in the field of Library Science. The whole process of cataloguing was becoming automated, thanks in large part to this amazing company known as University of Toronto Library Automated System, or UTLAS for short. Any library people out there remember that acronym? If you can, you're dating yourself!

Well, for some bizarre reason I decided to create a beginner's training manual for technicians who had to learn the UTLAS cataloguing coding system. Me! Writing a technical training manual! I had experienced the depths of hell trying to learn from those goddam computer technical manuals, and decided the best way to learn a new system, any new system, was with humour, down-to-earth language, and surprise, surprise, cartoons! Inspired by those wonderful books  Marx For Beginners and Trotsky For Beginners (Remember those? What fun!), I created UTLAS For Beginners.

That adorable redhead you see was based on a real girl I knew in my class. She was cute as a button, full of spunk, had quite the potty mouth, and was the only person I ever let call me 'Patty'. She was the one bright shining star in those two years of death-by-boredom – a walking, living breathing cartoon. So I had to put her in my book!

Ok, I'll try not to bore you too much more. One interesting thing that came out of this project was that somehow one of the big cheezes at UTLAS got a copy of the manual (I made many copies for librarians who needed a laugh), and they actually called me when I was working at McMaster University, and suggested possibly using my concept for their own training manual publications. Sadly the idea never got off the ground, but it was very flattering for my ideas to be taken seriously like that. That was the first time I experienced the realization as an adult that I had something different to offer the world – that my writing and drawing could take me to some interesting places, if I just took the risk of sharing it with others.

Oh, and I got an A+ for the project!

Are Your West Indian Roots Showing?

If you've got roots in the West Indies and a passion for genealogy, why not sign up for an informative workshop with a lady who's an expert in genealogy of the British West Indies? Ok, ok, she's my mom, but really, she knows her stuff. And she's fun and witty and makes every subject interesting. The workshop will take place at the North York Public Library, and will run for three Saturdays in March. Here's some more info:

GENEALOGICAL RESEARCH
IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES
Do you have ancestors who lived in the British West Indies –  perhaps Jamaica, Trinidad, or another island? If so, this new course will provide an introduction to genealogical research in the islands of the British West Indies. It will include their history, geography, records and where to find them, as well as published and Internet sources. Although this is not a beginner's course, we will provide some basic information for those new to family history research.
Course: 3 sessions, Saturdays, 2-4pm, March 3-17
Location: Meeting Room 1, North York Library
Instructor: Dorothy Kew
Fee: $45

For other courses and workshops in genealogical research, check out the Toronto Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society.

My Snow Man Cometh

God he's so cute.

Random Readings 6

Steadily, the room shrank, till the book thief could touch the shelves within a few small steps. She ran the back of her hand along the first shelf, listening to the shuffle of her fingernails gliding across the spinal cord of each book. It sounded like an instrument, or the notes of running feet. She used both hands. She raced them. One shelf against the other. And she laughed. Her voice was sprawled out, high in her throat, and when she eventually stopped and stood in the middle of the room, she spent many minutes looking from the shelves to her fingers and back again.    

How many books had she touched?

             How many had she felt?

              – from The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak

The Illustrated Library

I've got a pretty decent collection of art and cartoon books in my library, and since it would be rather complicated to invite everyone over for tea and an opportunity to browse through these books, I thought it might be fun to post images from my collection every now and then. Hence the new category, The Illustrated Library.

The first image is from Café Fetish: dreams of a coffee lover by cartoonist, graphic artist and illustrator Jiri Sliva.

Bloor West Toonin' 4

I'm a little surprised at myself that I actually drew a somewhat negative cartoon of our Mayor Miller. When David Miller first ran for mayor of Toronto in 2003, I was right behind him. He was the antithesis of our previous joke, his Melness (a name coined by veteran city hall columnist Don Wanagas, who is now Miller's media relations director). Miller is educated, articulate, tall, blond and blue-eyed – the squeaky clean boy scout of mayors that our city has desperately needed for a long time. And he ran on a campaign of openness and honesty for our city (remember the whole broom thing?) "Together, we will open up the front doors of City Hall to the people of Toronto" was his promise to us Torontonians. So it comes as a disappointment that in his 2nd term in office, those doors are not so open. From the editorial that follows this cartoon:

Normally at this time of year, the corridors would be buzzing and the ink would be flowing with talk of the City budget and how to close the gap on the annual half-billion dollor or so shortfall...This year that process of public input and oversight has been dramatically reduced. Now it goes something like this: on Mar. 19, the completed budget is presented by the budget committee – perhaps balanced, perhaps not; on Mar. 20, the rest of the City Council – the people we elected to represent us when we can't speak ourselves – gets one day to comment; on Mar 21, interest groups like the Board of Trade get a day to squawk; and on Mar. 22, the public – all 2.5 million of you – get a single day to say what they think about it.

The reason for all this, according to the mayor, is to present the budget in "a more responsible way," rather than with the crisis mentality that has surrounded the process in recent years. This year, Miller is trying to circumvent the usual two months of mass panic and portray the City as a more "mature" level of government – a difficult thing when you can't even get your councillors to agree on a seating arrangement for a photo shoot – that can live up to its new powers under the City of Toronto Act.

So yes, I'm a bit disillusioned. This is the term where Miller really has to impress us (he didn't exactly wow us in his first term, but we gave him the benefit of the doubt), and so far, it ain't looking too good. But it's early days, and I'm still holding out hope for now. I mean, let's face it – he'd have to really screw up bigtime for us to forget ol' monkey man Mel, wouldn't he?