My Next Book!

I can't tell you too much about this book yet because it's still a ways off from publication (June 2015 from Candlewick), but I am excited to share the cover of I WILL NEVER GET A STAR ON MRS. BENSON'S BLACKBOARD.

This book has been a long time coming, so it really makes my heart beat to see it looking like the real deal. I actually have a paper proof of the jacket--flaps and all, plus the rest of the book--that I get to hold and fold and cherish. There is nothing like the feeling of those crisp, heavy, cool pages in my hot little hands--my book!

I'll have more to tell as I get closer to the actual publication date, but suffice it to say that if you went to Blueberry Hill Elementary with me, and we had the same second grade teacher, then this book is secretly for you. I would probably not be doing this neat thing I am doing now, if it were not for that memorable year. Great real stuff for a writer of fiction.

Me, in a museum...?

It's crazy but true!

From October 11-February 22, my picture book art will be featured in an exhibit of children’s book creators at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, including the amazing art of Julie Paschkis, Woodleigh Marx Hubbard, and Nikki McClure. Visitors will be treated to an unusual peak behind-the-scenes of picture book making, seeing up-close the stops and starts that each artist experiences on their way to creating beautiful books for children.

You'll will see some things of mine that have never before been seen in public---woo woo! Like this early study for Two Speckled Eggs:

There will some parties, and some gallery talks and some workshops, and you'll just have to check back here in the near future for all of the juicy details about those sorts of things.

I hope you'll make it to our lovely museum to see this unusual exhibit. It never costs a thing to visit the Bainbridge Island Art Museum.

Take a minute to read this wonderful post about the exhibit by Julie Paschkis, on the blog Books Around the Table, by clicking here.

Welcome to The Writing Process: an Author/Illustrator Blog Tour!

Oh hello. Welcome to the Writing Process Author/Illustrator Tour!

I’ve tried to tidy up a little around the house and studio, but you may as well know--I put more effort into my children’s books than I do into housekeeping, so…just ignore the dog-hair dust bunnies, and those spiders over there are just part of the fabric of the place, literally.

You are here because I was tagged to join the The Writing Process Blog Tour by my good friend and critique partner Elizabeth Rose Stanton, who you will know as the creator of the amazing Henny. A big thanks to her for passing the baton to me. It's always good to have a reason to tidy up!

Beth and I have a crazy amount of stuff in common, including these three things: we both have degrees in architecture, we are both married to architects, and we both assign human-qualities to our favorite white chickens! 

This is my late hen, Alice, passing on dangerous secrets to Hedgehog, shortly before being eaten by the bandit, Racoon.

On to the tour!

What am I currently working on?

I just launched my first book as an author and an illustrator, which is really over-the-moon exciting!! It's published by Candlewick, a fact which causes me to pinch myself on a daily basis. 

TWO SPECKLED EGGS has been quietly promoting itself while I finish up the final art for the next book of mine that Candlewick is willing to publish, which I will tell you about in a minute. TWO SPECKLED EGGS is above all a friendship book, but it is also a birthday book, and it’s a teeny bit autobiographical. It is about a girl named Ginger, whose long anticipated birthday party goes awry, as they often do. The day is saved by Lyla Browning, the one girl Ginger didn’t even want to invite in the first place.

I hope to hit the road this summer and do some real promoting of this book! A few story-times here and there, and some school visits in the fall, reading TWO SPECKLED EGGS to willing listeners.

If you happen to see this book out in the world, send me a photo! Or better yet, buy it, and send me a photo! 

The book I am finishing up for Candlewick right now is called I DEFINITELY WILL NEVER GET A STAR ON MRS BENSON’S BLACKBOARD, (or STAR as we call it when we are in a hurry). It is about a day-dreamy child called Rose, who just can’t get on the same page with her rather teacherly teacher.

They do eventually find common ground, but not until Rose has a day or two that would send most of us back to bed. If you happened to be in my second grade class at Blueberry Hill Elementary School, you might know which teacher inspired this tale.

Here are some of Rose's (tidier, more focused) classmates:

I wish I could show you more from I DEFINITELY WILL NEVER GET A STAR ON MRS BENSON'S BLACKBOARD, but it is all super top-secret, guarded by three-headed dogs. Unless you come to my house--then I could show it to you, and we could have cake and tea, while the three-headed dogs loll around in the sun. STAR is due out just about a year from now, so keep an eye out for it during the spring or summer of 2015.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

This is such a hard question. I see that Mike Curato also thinks it is a hard question. Hmm, well… I think my work is somewhat different because I am utterly untrained in the area of writing for children, and illustrating for children. Sometimes I feel I am just swinging my pencil with my eyes closed, hoping the ideas hit the paper and not the wall. Not really-- I mean I went to college. And I got a masters degree in architecture. So I have practiced writing and drawing from time to time. But creating books for children is not writing papers on the French Revolution, nor is it drawing window framing details. So when I am really banging my head against the wall because I-have-no-idea-what-I-am-doing, I remind myself that my lack of training means that my work is fresh, and unique, and all mine.

Why do I write what I write?

My favorite stories to write are the ones that spring pretty directly from an emotional memory from my childhood. I’ll remember a time when I felt that I was the victim or the perpetrator of an injustice, and just how that felt at age four or five or six or seven--and then I have a story. The more I access memories of my childhood, the more I have access to them—just last week I woke up with a vivid memory from a challenging time in my family when I was very, very young. It’s now at the top of my list of future book ideas.

How does my individual writing/illustrating process work?

I can’t really say how my writing process works, because it is still a mystery to me. I just write whenever I can, and especially when a not-ignorable idea pops into my head.

And I am growing as an illustrator, so each project is just a little different from the last.

But, once I am really excited about a story, and I have fleshed out the text for a bit, then I start doodling and pretty quickly hash out images for various scenes on rolls of architectural tracing paper (cheap, plentiful, and not at all intimidating). I tear it off and mound it up, and before you know it I am on my way with a sketch dummy!

My desk, in the early stages of my new work-in-progress. Exciting, huh?

My final art process for these first books has been a somewhat complicated and labor-intensive combination of traditional drawing and painting, and digital collage. And I do it this way out of fear. Yep. Here it is—I am fearful of committing to a final composition that is not 100% changeable. And glue dries hard and fast and is not at all flexible. So I do all of my collage-ing in Photoshop, which allows me to change everything (almost) right up until the minute I have to commit to making it a PDF that I can send to my book designer. (Ha! There, I named my fear publicly, now maybe it will go away.) Sometimes I do have to go back to the very beginning, and redraw and rescan and repaint and rescan and recollage, but mostly I have total flexibility in this process, and I like it that way. (But, I think my current, secret, work-in-progress may be different, which I guess makes sense, but different in a different way, if you know what I mean) Sometimes I add in photographs or collaged textures that I have created or found on the internet (only the ones that are available for download without copyright!).

Okay, well, my time is up, and you have other blogs to visit, so I’ll let you go.

Next up on your tour are Sarah Dillard and Laurie Thompson .

Sarah is the creator of the recently released EXTRAORDINARY WARREN--A SUPER CHICKEN,

which is about the funniest, most optimistic chicken you will ever meet. Sarah and I know one another from an author/illustrator retreat that we like to go to in the middle of the winter in Vermont. She's got a sense of humor a lot like Warren's.

Laurie is the creator of the very soon to be released (September, 2014) BE A CHANGE MAKER-HOW TO START SOMETHING THAT MATTERS 

and two exciting non-fiction picture books: Emmanuel’s Dream , and My Dog Is the Best, both launching in 2015 (January and May, respectively). Laurie and I are a part of the cohort that calls itself The Advisory Committee of the Western Washington SCBWI, and we’ve known one another for quite some time. 

Enjoy the rest of the tour, and come back to visit any time!

Five Questions (Plus One) from Candlewick, and answers from me!

Um. Yes, it's me!

This very short video is a from a series, called Five Questions (Plus One), that Candlewick is doing with some of their authors and illustrators. They asked me five surprise questions (plus one), and I answered them! 

I think I like public speaking better than video speaking. But I also think the good people at Candlewick did their best to make me look at least presentable. 

That thing when you can't remember the facts and you say stuff anyway.

Sheesh.

The problem with speaking in public without notes, and trying to say something factual, is that you might just get the facts wrong. That is just what I did at both of my book launch parties, when I tried to tell people about a very round-about source of inspiration for my just released picture book, Two Speckled Eggs! I was trying to tell them about the movie Shortcuts, directed by Robert Altman, an adaptation of nine short stories by Raymond Carver. Instead, I said the movie was directed by Jim Jarmusch (a fantastic director by the way), and was an adaptation of short stories written by Robert Altman. Wow, so wrong. I think my brain scrambled itself under the bright lights. That must be it.

But hey, anyway, if you ever want to know just how round-about this inspiration was, let me know and I’ll tell you over a cup of coffee. The explanation is too long and boring to put here. But the excellent story in question is here, in case you want to read it.  

It's Almost Book Launch Time!

Wheeeeeee!

It's a long journey from dream to publication, but the day has almost arrived! Two Speckled Eggs, the first book that I have both written and Illustrated, goes on sale on April 22, 2014!

If you are in the Seattle area, come have some cake with me at Secret Garden Books in Ballard on April 22, at 7 pm, or Eagle Harbor Books on Bainbridge Island, on April 27 at 3 pm. 

I'll be very happy to see you!

Sometimes it's hard to hear your own voice.

A spread from Two Speckled Eggs, in book stores April 22, 2014!

More elephanta.

This fella, along with several other of my elephant monotypes, is hanging at the Bainbridge Arts and Crafts gallery this month.

People ask me, "So, do you have a thing for elephants?" And I think they want me to say, "Why yes, the elephant is my totem animal, and I see it as symbolic of the threshold between...." well, you know what I mean. But really...

I just have a thing for this guy, who is the model for all of my elephant monotypes, which are really just about making marks with printing ink on a plate and sending it through the press. Really. This little elephant must have been carved by someone who loves elephants the same way I do. I picked him up in a shop filled with well-curated junk--my favorite!

Here are a couple more of my elephants:

I think they all look like they are on the move. Aren't we all?

Getting dressed is messy business

This is just a little color study for my current picture book project. I do this at the very beginning of the painting phase, so I don't get in trouble farther down the road. I'll pin this up for reference, and do the same thing for all the other characters! 

Beatrice Alemagna

I really love her work, and so I was tickled to come across this very sweet little video about the making of her book What is a Child. Worth a peek, especially if you are an illustrator and love to see how others do it! True inspiration.

Moody Pachyderms

Every now and then I find my way to the printmaking studio of my friend Wendy Orville, and I spend my time making stuff like this. Cathartic messy wonderful monotype printmaking! A small collection of my moody pachyderms will be on display at the Bainbridge Arts and Crafts Gallery during the month of March, along with the work of several other talented printmakers, including my talented friends Karen Cornell and Tracy Lang. Opening festivities are this coming Friday March 7, 6-8. Stop by and have a look!

How to Use Shrek As a Model for a Laughing Teacher

Okay, this will be quick. But it's  good lesson.

A few minutes ago, I was working on a drawing that features a lot of laughing people, including a teacher.  I was really unhappy with the way the teacher's body language looked. (I find adult body language somewhat harder to capture than kids'.) So, on a whim, I grabbed my copy of William Steig's Shrek, flipped through the many pages of expressive body language that Shrek uses, and voila! I found a laughing Shrek. Just what I needed to improve my own sketch of a laughing teacher. Better, yes?

Keep your mentors at your side at all times, people!

Birthday Party for a Birthday Party Book!

My picture book Two Speckled Eggs, a story about a friendship discovered at a birthday party, is going to have a couple of birthday parties of it's own!

Join me if you can to celebrate the launch of my very first picture book on Tuesday April 22, 7 pm at Secret Garden Books in Seattle, and/or on Sunday April 27 at 3 pm at Eagle Harbor Books on Bainbridge Island.

Spend a Little, Get a Lot

Sometimes you have to spend a little to get a lot. That is what I tell myself every time I fork over the dough to attend another children's literature conference or a retreat. And the investment is always worth it, although the return is often completely unmeasurable. A couple of weeks ago, I was lucky enough to be a part of a warm and wonderful retreat for published authors and illustrators, and yes, I did have to fork over a little dough to attend, AND, I spent my birthday weekend away from my loving family. 

And it was worth every penny, and almost every loving complaint about my absence. Over that far too short weekend, I gained camraderie, insight, pounds (yes-the food was excellent), new titles for my to-be-read list, friends, contacts, resources, skills, and confidence. Some of these gains are measurable (unfortunately in the case of pounds) and some are not. But I am richer for all of them. And grateful. And inspired. And freshly aware of what makes my writer engine hum-which is probably the most valuable insight I could have gained. 

I also came home with a few small but HUGE new skills in photoshop and wonderful insights into digital painting, as taught to us by the very talented Christopher Denise. Just a few clicks of the mouse on his big monitor, and whole new worlds opened up to we who were watching.

Anyway, here's a little sketch experiment using one of my simple and almost dumb new photoshop skills.

And here is the wonderful book recommended to me by a wacky Brit that I know, Hazel Mitchell. I am not an absolute beginner, but I have taught myself what I know, and that is not much. So it is wonderful to have incredibly useful new vocabulary and tools at my finger tips! Feels almost like it was written just for me, not quite a luddite, but a sort of reluctant adopter. Now less reluctant!

New Website-a work in progress!

If you have visited here in the past, you can see now that I have switched things up a little! A little spring cleaning, I guess. I consider this website a work in progress, especially as I learn to use squarespace.com. If you've got tips and hints for me, I'd love to hear them. Meanwhile, have a look around, and check back from time to time to see things improve!

Happy New Year's Birds

Not sure what my ongoing fascination with birds is all about.

My perceptive son made the comment that perhaps I should channel this fascination into a picture book project. Just might try that on for size.

Usually these are tiny advent birds, for my own children's advent calendar. This year they are bigger New Year's birds. (I did still make tiny advent paintings, just not birds.)

Great Blue Heron

Quail (and yes she is wearing pearls, because they go with her hat)

Sandpiper

Merganser

And here are some of the little tiny paintings I made to fit into the tiny little pockets of my children's advent calendar. These are just about 1 1/4" by 1 1/4". My children are now teenagers, and they still love these little surprises.

Happy New Year, all!

XO

Jen

Here is a book I love.

It is called Jane, the fox & me, written by Fanny Britt, and illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault.

It is beautiful in so many ways. It is visually arresting, first of all. Most of the images are moody, highly textured, almost black and white with lots left to the imagination. 

The words are spare and the voice is accurate--an adolescent girl struggling with changed friendships, a changing body, a fragile self-image. A wonderful book and a loving mother are her anchors.

And, you will see, the story ends well. In full color. Just beautiful.

WOOT! WOOT!

More exciting new book news: my upcoming picture book TWO SPECKLED EGGS is on the "What's New" page of the Candlewick Press Spring/Summer 2014 Catalog, which you can browse at your leisure here. What a thrill to see the cover image there, and in such great company! Thanks Candlewick!!

Book launch!

George Shannon and I launched our picture book, Turkey Tot, on November 3 at Eagle Harbor books!

It was a blast! 

I was so lucky to be able to learn from a master--George entertained kids and grown-ups alike with his funny turkey hat, his wonderful reading of Turkey Tot, and a give away: two huge cans of hominy (and I mean HUGE) plus some rope and instructions for making the same stilts that Turkey Tot made in order to pick the juicy blackberries! 

We sold every copy of Turkey Tot in the store; I experienced the absolute thrill of signing my very first book; we ate cake and cookies (and even sipped a little prosecco when the crowds were gone!)

Big thanks to Eagle Harbor Books for hosting our book birthday party! And to all who came out to celebrate with us!

Finally, a blog post.

Hello! And welcome back to The Blog That Time Forgot.

Or that Jen forgot.

I really haven't forgotten. I've just been feeling really shy! It's funny how when you finally get a chance to toot your horn because your efforts have resulted in something worth tooting about, you (I) get all tongue tied and pigeon toed. Hands behind your back, toe in the dirt. Nothing to write about. Nothing to report on. It's tough to be a horn-tooter! I know you know what I mean.

But toot my horn I must.  Because it would be a shame to hide the fact that I have finally realized a long held dream! And because it would be a shame to keep the end result of the hard work and the long hours, and the blood, sweat and tears, a secret.

Biggest and most exciting on my horizon is my very first ever book launch party with George Shannon for our picture book, Turkey Tot! George and I will be celebrating on November 3, at 3 pm at Eagle Harbor Books. If you are in the area, stop by for some blackberry treats, and maybe you will even learn how to make your very own blackberry picking stilts!

Kirkus Reviews had some nice things to say about Turkey Tot, which is a picture book for the preschool set:

"A determined turkey gets the sweet, juicy, high-hanging berries.
Turkey Tot is wandering about the bucolic farmstead—the reader winningly transported there via Mann’s easy-handed, dark-lined, watercolor-washed artwork—where he lives with his friends Chick, Pig and Hen, in search of something to eat. Blackberries beckon, but they are too high to reach. So Turkey Tot looks about for some way to access the berries. His friends think all his ideas are cockamamie—and repeatedly so in Shannon’s polyphonic refrain: “You’re talking silly talk.” “We can’t reach the berries, and that is that.” “He’s been different since the day he hatched.” They decide to take a nap by the pond. But Turkey Tot will not be discouraged. Perhaps his first few ideas are a little off note—one has him finding a ball of string to which, he figures, he will tie a balloon and float Pig up to berryland—but he finally manages to wire all his different schemes together and snag the berries. Then he shares them with his uninspired comrades, which is more than the Little Red Hen would have done. Good for Turkey Tot: freethinking, resolved, generous.

Let’s hope that when November rolls around, Turkey Tot has become the farm’s mascot, not its dinner."

And School Library Journal had some great things to say as well:

"Turkey Tot thinks outside the box. He’s hopeful, imaginative, and persistent, refusing to let his Debbie Downer friends in the farmyard discourage him. He’s determined to retrieve juicy blackberries that hang just out of reach, but he needs a little help to implement the plans he makes to get within range. His enthusiastic schemes include floating up to the berries via a bunch of balloons and being flung at them from a teeter-totter. Naysayers Pig, Hen, and Chick tell him no way, no how. No matter, because Turkey Tot pulls together materials to make a pair of stilts from tin cans, and he fills a basket with the plump berries on his own. Now, his detractors sing a different tune. Hen’s observation that Turkey Tot has been “different since the day he hatched” is no longer a criticism but a compliment. Shannon’s writing is simple, clean, and cheerful, and his message of stick-to-itiveness is delivered perfectly. He also incorporates refrains that kids will have fun repeating during storytimes. Mann’s illustrations, a blend of watercolor, pencil, and digital collage, pop against ample white space, and the four characters are depicted in a wonderfully silly and endearing style. This picture book, like its protagonist, is a bona fide winner.–Alyson Low, Fayetteville Public Library, AR

I am pretty thrilled with these reviews! And I think all kinds of kids will love Turkey Tot, too!

Meanwhile, I am about to travel to NYC for some festive KidLit related events, including a 15th anniversary party at Pippin Properties, a visit to the Society of Illustrators to see the Original Art Show, and a chance to visit with some editors and art directors. I'll swing through Massachusetts for a long overdue visit with family, and then spend a little time with the wonderful Kate Fletcher and Heather McGee at Candlewick Press. They've invited me to read to their staff from my own picture book, Two Speckled Eggs, which they are publishing next spring! Talk about feeling a little shy! Yikes!! I wish I could share the cover of Two Speckled Eggs with you, but it's still a little early. It's release date is April 8, 2014!

And in between and all around these other things, I am busy working on the final art for another project for Candlewick, a second book of my own, called I Definitely Will Never Get a Star on Mrs. Benson's Blackboard.

And I am daydreaming and doodling on a few other things as well. Stay tuned! I'll try to be less shy from now on.