Sketches I'm not allowed to tell you about #illustration #middlegrade #kidlit

Just a sketch.
Nothing to see here.
Move along.

Monsters at the book store

Let's set the stage here. I've been receiving a lot of feedback about my illustration portfolio, mostly in that it will likely scare the children. (As an aside, I'm in the process of completely overhauling the lot of it to eliminate those things that I've been told make it scary.)

The other day I went shopping at Barnes & Noble. I had a 20% off coupon. It was mandatory.

I saw a bit of a trend in the picture book department, and I decided to take a few photos. See if you see a pattern.

And I bought this one (isn't the lighting on the cover fantastic?):

For the record, Halloween is very much over, and the Christmas books were everywhere. Most of the books (all but two, if I remember correctly) were face forward rather than lined on the shelves.

I have to say, I had a discussion with a children's book editor over the weekend (who I won't identify here) who, when I told her most of the feedback I've been getting about my portfolio is that it's too scary, said, "Creepy is in."

I totally love that editor.

Fairview Elementary

As many of you know, by day I'm a guide at Frank Lloyd Wright's iconic masterpiece, Fallingwater, near Mill Run, Pennsylvania. A couple of weeks ago I had the privilege of playing tour guide to some great students from Fox Chapel's Fairview Elementary, and they were fantastic! They were telling me about organic architecture!

This is us at the end of the tour, and yes, one of them even bought a copy of Yikes! at the museum shop.

Just want them to know, they can come back anytime!

"Yikes!" featured on Storypockets

Check out the blog for the Children's Department of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh:

http://storypockets.blogspot.com/2008/09/
local-illustarator-nora-thompson.html

They've given a little "heads up" to our "Yikes! Wow! Yuck!" book.

Thanks, guys.

Em dashes and hyphens and editors—Oh my!

(Sorry in advance if I can't get the punctuation working properly on this blog!)

See, the thing I'm liking about editors—and this is coming from a Typography/Graphic Design instructor—is how they keep using em dashes properly.

I've received two emails from editors over the past two days, and both included the correct use of em dashes. The one I got today used two em-dashes and a hyphen properly in the same sentence! And on top of that, both editors used only one space after every period.

Oh, yeah. They get it.

Call me anal, but I'm thinking those are the people I want working on my books.

Yikes! Gets Ink

The nice people at the Greensburg Tribune-Review (writer Mary Pickels and photographer Scott Spangler) gave the Yikes! book a nice little write up. Mary took the time to talk to a few other people besides me, including Celia Naranjo, the Creative Director at Lark Books. Spanky took a great photo, but it looks like it didn't make it to the online version. He spent a long time that afternoon setting up the shot where he projected an illustration I did (for a possible upcoming project--more about that when it happens) and stood me in front of it. Take my word for it--I usually don't like how I look in photos, but I can deal with this one!

Yikes! Wow! Yuck!

Our new book is out!

The Yikes! book became official today (even though it's been available on the Internet for a few weeks now). It's written by Elizabeth Snoke Harris, and illustrated by Yours Truly. It was great fun to work on. The Art and Creative Directors over at Lark (Robin and Celia) are so easy to work with, it didn't feel like work at all.