Today I’m highlighting illustrator Brie Spangler’s snowflake for Robert’s Snow: for Cancer’s Cure. Brie’s snowflake is called “Blue-Haired Lady.” I love how the image the title brings to my mind - an elderly woman with wild hair - is not at all what I see on the snowflake. This is a vivacious young thing! With gold stars spangling her hair, I’m inclined to think she may even be a fairy.

According to her bio, “Brie Spangler is an author-illustrator originally from the Boston, Mass. area. She loves clambakes, baseball, and her pekingese, Lola. When not drawing pictures, Brie can be found avoiding direct sunlight, drinking too much coffee, and snuggling with her husband, Matt."

At Brie’s website, you can see a wide variety of her work. She’s very diverse! Her illustrations include educational work for the American Medical Association, children’s series like The Stinky Boys Club and The Caped 6th Grader, magazine illustrations, and pictures for companies like Capezio and Keds.

In June 2008, Knopf will release Brie’s book Peg Leg Peke, the first book on which she is both writer and illustrator.

To buy Brie’s snowflake, go here. The auction begins November 19 and ends November 23. Be sure to check out all the other snowflakes at Robert’s Snow: for Cancer’s Cure!

We're still blogging about snowflakes available in the Robert's Snow auction! Here are this week's posts:

Monday, October 15 
Randy Cecil at ChatRabbit
Michelle Chang at The Longstockings
Kevin Hawkes at Cynthia Lord's Journal
Barbara Lehman at The Excelsior File
Grace Lin at In the Pages

Tuesday, October 16 
Selina Alko at Brooklyn Arden
Scott Bakal at Wild Rose Reader
Alexandra Boiger at Paradise Found
Paige Keiser at Your Neighborhood Librarian
Janet Stevens at The Miss Rumphius Effect

PLEASE NOTE!  We can't possibly feature all of the illustrators participating in this event on our blogs.  That means to see all of them, you'll have to go to the Robert's Snow Site.
 

For the next few weeks I’ll be participating in Blogging for the Cure, which jules of 7-Imp sums up better than I ever will:

Upon seeing that two books I was sent review copies of months ago and haven't touched except to put on my TBR shelf are being released today, I began to feel guilty.  My number of posts has significantly dropped off, and for that I am very sorry.  I wanted to offer up a quick explanation of why this is, because no matter how much I try and make myself post, it doesn't look to be changing any time soon.

Posting a good entry requires brainpower.

I am working harder at my job than I ever have before.  I am investing more energy in it.  My hours are not the longest they've ever been, but during my contact time with students I am using the most energy I ever have.  This is having very positive results in the classroom and with my colleagues.

Unfortunately, it is completely exhausting.  It is exhausting to the point that my recent hobbies have become reading (but not writing), playing video games (mindless but because they give you tasks to do still gives a sense of accomplishment), and complaining (a rather unattractive trait, being a complainer).  I very rarely cook real food anymore.  A year ago, I was cooking myself a nutritious dinner every night.

So I've been doing the bare minimum here - participating in group events, and then making other posts as I have energy.

So when will you see posts from me?

A week from tomorrow on October 17 I'll be writing a feature about illustrator Brie Spangler and her work for Robert's Snow

In November, during the Winter Blog Blast Tour, I'll feature interviews with Kerry Madden and Dia Calhoun.

I have a whole schedule of things through May but I don't want to reveal them as they're all group events that we haven't begun to publicize yet.  In any case, you are guaranteed a post a month from me.  I know that's not a lot, but that will be there for sure.  Beyond that, you will get reviews when the mood strikes me to write one, commentary on days when I have the good fortune to read the other blogs, and participation in memes/regular weekly events when I get a chance to sit down at the computer.

I just wanted to let you know what was going on so you didn't think I'd disappeared entirely.

See you next week if not before!

I've started a new theatre journal:

http://mimula.livejournal.com

I'm not in the habit of writing about picture books, but there are some that still strike my fancy, in addition to the old favorites that hold a place in my heart.  Now it's October, my second favorite month of the year (July is the first because that's when my birthday is), and we kidlit bloggers are celebrating Bradbury Season.  For me this time of year is more marvelous than scary, but I like a tinge of the morbid even in my sparkles, and so I present you my choice for Bradbury Season: Robert D. San Souci's Cinderella Skeleton. 

"Cinderella Skeleton" is a fairytale retold for goths.  Our familiar friend Cindy isn't sweeping up the house anymore.  Now her chores include hanging cobwebs, arranging dead flowers, littering the floor with dust and leaves, and feeding bats.  Her stepmother and stepsisters are still evil, though, and when the marvelously dead Prince Charnel hosts a ball, they do everything they can to keep her away.  

You know this story, though, so you know that it all ends well.  When Prince Charnel finds Cinderella Skeleton he proclaims:

Cinderella Skeleton!
The rarest gem the world has seen!
Your gleaming skull and burnished bones,
Your teeth like polished kidney stones,
Your dampish silks and dankish hair,
There's nothing like you anywhere!
You make each day a Halloween!

That part always makes me cry a little, tears of joy.  I received this book as a gift from my boyfriend (he's so goth he's dead, except he's not really goth at all - just vaguely morbid, like me) and he inscribed it with "You make each day a Halloween!" at the front of the book.  

Where this version of the tale shines is not in the plot itself, which we all know.  It is in the details.  It's in the fact that Cinderella's coach driver is a black cat.  It's in the way San Souci deals with the glass slipper part of the tale.  It's in the fact that this Prince is Prince Charnel ("a building or chamber in which bodies or bones are deposited" - thank you, M-W.com!) instead of Prince Charming.  And it is in the phenomal illustrations provided by David Catrow.

"Cinderella Skeleton" is perfect for fans of The Nightmare Before Christmas and The Corpse Bride (which it pre-dates by five years).  It is the whimsical kind of spooky that perky goths enjoy and morbid but not too serious children adore.  It is wonderful and beautiful, and it is my favorite Halloween book.

For more on Bradbury Season, see Colleen's post at Chasing Ray.

 

If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to my feed so you will get my other recommendation posts.

Buy a Friend a Book Week is October 1-7 (as well as the first weeks of January, April, and July). During this week, you’re encouraged to buy a friend a book for no good reason. Not for their birthday, not because it’s a holiday, not to cheer them up–just because it’s a book.

What book would you choose to give to a friend and why?

I would buy His Majesty, Queen Hatshepsut for just about any friend of mine.  I’d choose this one because it is the origin of my Hatshepsut-obsession; a female king makes me happy because I’ve always thought I should be one.  Everyone should read it, because it’s fun!

October Project #2 is here: community.livejournal.com/scriptita…

For today's Monday Misdirection, I shall simply point you in the direction of my first October Project Post.  You can find it here: http://community.livejournal.com/scriptitans/568.html

Each Sunday at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast,  jules and eisha ask us to talk about good stuff that happened in our week.

Here’s mine!

1. Work was low stress and high productivity.  It began with a teacher workday, which enabled me to get ahead on lots of planning.  I also made a push to get caught up on grading, and so now I won’t have much grading to do for the next week.

2. It was a musical theatre week.  I went to see two of my students in a production of Les Miserables.

3. And then I went to see Hairspray the movie of the musical based on the movie (it’s like The Producers that way) which was a lot of fun.

4. I got paid.  

5. Banned Book Week started yesterday!

6. In my unsuccessful quest to find a Nintendo Wii, I discovered that my BFF from middle and high school has a livejournal and friended her at my personal journal.  (And was friends with my housemate but not me.  Life is odd sometimes.)

7. Despite or perhaps because of a couple of little-sleep nights, I came up with the idea for my October Project.

In anticipation of NaNoWriMo, I’ve decided to set up a bit of a challenge for myself.

Here’s the deal:

Every day for the entire month of October, I will post some fanfiction over at

.  It can be as short as a 100-word drabble or as long as a serial story.  But it will be there, and it will be me writing.

The basic idea here is that to improve at writing, you need to write.  But I get hung up on all the world-creation parts of things.  This will give me the chance to write without having to worry about that; someone else has made the world and the characters for me.  Now all I have to do is get inside them.

You can expect to see writing in the following fandoms: Pirates of the Caribbean, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Final Fantasy (VII, X, or XII, most likely, though with perhaps some V or VI thrown in), Harry Potter, Star Wars, and perhaps others.  I’m open to requests, provided it’s something I feel fairly grounded in.

Care to join me?  Drop a comment on the entry linked here, and I’ll keep a list of who’s playing.