Meet Isol.  Incredibly badass Isol.  The fact that you may not know her name instantly is a crime.  We Americans are fairly . . . how to put this . . . screamingly awful about paying attention to authors and illustrators from other countries.  Isol won the most recent Astrid Lindgren Award, but she’s hardly a household name.  Heck, she’s hardly even known within our profession.  That’s why I’m doffing my cap to the award folks who put together this video for her ceremony.  See artists?  If you’re good pookies and do well with your illustrations then maybe you too could get a killer video about you and your work presented for all the world to see.

There are even blooming bagpipes.  Brilliance.

The Newbery/Caldecott Banquet may have already occurred (yes, I’m still editing my interviews from that night…. sigh) but that doesn’t mean the Caldecott is any less a 75-year-old.  Thus we have this peppyperky bit of free use.  In the future I’d love to see a Billy Crystal-esque medley of the winners a particular year.  That’s my dream anyway.

Open your copy of The Hunger Games and you’ll see that it’s dedicated to some bloke called James Proimos.  Jim’s been known to those of us in the picture book community for a number of years now (and his Stunt Frog is required watching today if you haven’t already seen it) thanks to books like Todd’s TV and Paulie Pastrami Achieves World Peace.  The two buddies have now paired together on a fictionalized picture book memoir from Suzanne’s youth, Year of the Jungle.  Here the duo discuss the book and their collaboration.

Here is why it is so difficult to be friends with fellow blogger Phil Nel.  Because even on his worst days, he’s still more prolific than I am on my best.  I don’t mean just in blogging, but in being a bloody professor and writing books.  To top it all off, he’s one of the most generous bloggers as well.  Check out his recent post Sendak on Sendak where he shares NINE videos of Maurice Sendak.  NINE!  I’d not personally seen the interview on NOW with Bill Moyers from 2004, so that’s the sample I’m presenting to you today:

Head on over to Phil’s for more.

I don’t personally have many pet projects I believe in, but Wireman may be the exception.  The idea of creating a quality graphic novel with the 500 most common words for struggling older readers is a no-brainer.  But making a good one is remarkably difficult.  Difficult but not impossible, I should say, since author Sue Stauffacher took on the project years ago and the result was Wireman.  Now Sue has turned to Indiegogo to help fund the third, as of yet unfinished, volume.  She’s halfway there to the funding but needs more!  Failing that, if you happen to be a big-time publisher who wants to publish the books yourself, all power to you.  But in the short-term, Sue needs a boost.  Here’s a video explaining more: