The ABC of why I wish New York was closer

2013/11/28 | kirsti

I have many reasons why I wish New York was closer, and most all of them are art related. Here’s one such example: The New York Public Library’s (free!) exhibition The ABC of it: Why Children’s Books Matter.

Alas, a New York trip is not in the cards for me any time soon, so I’ll have to content myself with the slideshow of photographs on the exhibit designers’ website (Pure+Applied), complete with a shot of a furry wall and Wild Thing doorway, and for the observant child, Humpty Dumpty sitting on a wall. There is also an exhibition brochure available for download from the NYPL website (bottom of the page), complete with a cleverly designed page on banned books.

The exhibition runs until March 23, 2013.

more info here: NYPL exhibition press release

new book beginnings ~ db

2013/11/272014/11/09 | kirsti

Mountains & Plains Winter Catalog.

Dream Boats is the featured book in this winter’s 300,000 copies of the Mountains and Plains Independent Book Sellers Association Winter catalog. It’s on the cover, and a few little vignettes made their way into the inside of the catalog as well.

Mountains & Plains is an almost 40 year old non-profit professional association of locally-owned bookstores, booksellers, and industry professionals. Wherever you are, please support your local, independent bookstore this holiday season. If you happen to be in Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, or Wyoming, there is a list of store locations on the MPIBA website.

My favourite Vancouver bookstore is Kidsbooks (Kitsilano, South Surrey, and Edgemont Village, North Vancouver). Their staff is incredibly knowledgable, and the are wonderful advocates for local authors and illustrators, and for great books for kids (and teens)…and they even have a few for adults!

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This post is part of a series documenting my process of illustrating the picture book Dream Boats (author Dan Bar-el, pub. Simply Read Books). The entire series of posts is archived here.

View a gallery of all the work-in-progress images including first sketches, reference material, mistakes, redraws, and tests, to final art at a much larger size, here.

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new book beginnings ~ db

2013/11/242014/11/09 | kirsti

Screen Shot 2013-11-24 at 12.22.22 PM

Dream Boats is a 2014 Recommended Read.

Dream Boats made the 2014 Canadian Toy Testing Council’s list of recommended reads for the age group 5+.

Also, this is going on until the end of November:

A Good Book Drive is an annual book drive to bring stories to a new generation of readers, and support kids in need of new books.

Running through the month of November, A Good Book Drive will be inspiring Vancouverites to purchase a new copy of their favorite kids’ book and deliver it to set locations throughout the city to be donated to this year’s book drive recipient.

– read more and find out how you can participate, on the A Good Book Drive website
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This post is part of a series documenting my process of illustrating the picture book Dream Boats (author Dan Bar-el, pub. Simply Read Books). The entire series of posts is archived here.

View a gallery of all the work-in-progress images including first sketches, reference material, mistakes, redraws, and tests, to final art at a much larger size, here.