Everything Naomi Loved is the first book I've ever co-authored. It was a great experience and resulted in something totally different from what I normally write, which is really refreshing. Now Betsy Bird, one of my favorite librarians, has named it one of the best picture books of 2020!
I am very (very!) proud to announce that my book, The Fabled Life of Aesop, has been awarded the American Folklore Society's Aesop Award, for excellence in children's literature in 2020. Here's their announcement:
From Kikus:
"Messages both overt and hidden in the life and preserved wisdom of an enslaved storyteller.
Hello All!
It's been awhile since I've posted here, but I needed to share some very nice things have been said (and been awarded) to my book, The First Dinosaur. Just in the last month, it was named :
–Kirkus Best of 2019
–A National Science Teacher Award for best books of 2019 (I'm REALLY proud of this one)
–An Orbus Pictus Recommended Title
–Golden Kite Honor Award
–and as you can see from the image, it won the Cybil Award for Best Middle-Grade Non-Fiction
Hey Teachers!
With the help of several educators who have years of experience teaching STEM, I've finally put together a curriculum guide for One Day A Dot. You can find the PDF at the bottom of this link.
Hey Teachers!
With the help of several educators who have years of experience teaching STEM, I've finally put together a curriculum guide for One Day A Dot. You can find the PDF at the bottom of this link.
Here's the thing...when reading a picture book, an author has to go above and beyond the call of duty.
Also, I live in mortal fear of children being bored when I read, hence the...well...whatever you call this outfit!
This is me reading from my newest book THE ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY NO PRINCESSES BOOK.
Man, when you come up with a long title for a book, it seems like a lot of fun. But then, you suddenly find yourself typing it over and over again for titles of articles like this one. Now I kinda yearn for an acronym to save me time. I guess the acronym for this would be TAPNPB. Or maybe TAPPB. Or maybe I can create an acronym for the acronym and simply call it APP.
You don't often get reviews this nice, especially from Kirkus *cough cough*. In particular, this was written by Julie Danielson, who if you don't know her, is worth following. She has the great children's book blog Seven Impossible Thing Before Breakfast.
Anyway, here's the review:
Due to great laziness, there are looooong gaps between me posting updates. However, every once and a while enough coolness comes along that simply forces me to alert the world:
I'm in EW this week! They did a cover reveal of my picture book that will be coming out in Spring 2018: One Day A Dot.
Here's the link: http://ew.com/books/first-second-spring-2018-cover-reveal/may-22-2018one...
Hey y'all!
So Saturday is here. It's real. It exists, and some reviews are in. I thought I'd just leave there here on the table:
Booklist said:
"Bloch’s childlike cartoons cultivate a chaotic atmosphere well matched by Lendler’s playful story of an egocentric child in a carefree world. The contrast between the character’s uncomplicated (but havoc-wreaking) mindset and the weariness of the parents is uproarious. A bittersweet note closes this lively celebration of Saturdays."
Being a writer is lonely, poorly-paid, frustrating, ego-crushing, time-consuming, unappreciated, overwhelming, OCD-inducing, enervating, daily-grinding, and sometimes-you-work-for-a-whole-year-on-a-book-and-it-doesn't-sell-and-you-think-"oh no I've wasted my life"-ing.
–That moment 50 pages into a book when I realize I don’t like it and I want to stop reading but I also think I might be betraying literature and literacy if I put it down.
–That moment when I read a friend’s manuscript and laugh and think, “Crap, that’s WAY better than anything I’ve written this month.”
–That moment in my school visits when the kids realize Romeo & Juliet are about to die and suddenly they get REALLLLLY quiet.
Hey y’all!
It’s been…uhh…a long time since I last posted, basically because I’m lazy and the thought of dealing with HTML makes me break out in a cold sweat. On the upside, this ensures that when I do post it’s for a darn good reason.
Today’s Darn Good Reason: I am able to proudly announce that my next picture book will be Little Sid: Tales of a Tiny Buddha, and that it will be published by First Second (aka The Greatest Graphic Novel Publisher Of All Time)!
Alright, so I'm sure you're all getting sick of me talking about my UK trip (see previous posts). And my hair is WAAAAY funky in this picture, but I got to talk to my sister-in-law's old high school, which I thought was very cool. Plus, I got a little write-up from them with tons of pictures showing me prowling the stage like some sort of primeval author/panther hybrid...only less panther-like. My movements were probably more of a scurry like an author/squirrel.
Here's the link below:
Woo-hoo! The first "official" review is in for The Stratford Zoo's performance of Romeo & Juliet, and I couldn't be happier.
"The animal thespians at the Stratford Zoo perform yet another of the Bard's tragedies, this time with a rooster and a bear in the title roles.
Here’s a story I like to tell from the trip: I visited one prep school that was the fanciest school I have ever seen in my life. It was a castle. Not figuratively. Literally. It was built for a 15th-century Earl. (The picture above is not a stock photo. I took it before my talk.) So anyway…
I did my normal talk. And after my talk, I always ask if anyone has questions and I usually chat to kids for about 15-20 minutes about stuff. This is actually my favorite part because it lets me see the world from their perspective.
I just got back from England…and boy are my arms tired! Am I right, folks? Hello? Anyone? Sigh…
So…I just spent two weeks touring around the UK, talking to various schools about Shakespeare. Yes, that’s right. English schools paid an American to talk about Shakespeare. The phrase “bringing coals to Newcastle” comes to mind.
I don’t have the energy or discipline to create a well-crafted essay about the whole experience, so instead I’ll simply offer a few random thoughts on the experience.
See that picture up above? That’s me during the storm yesterday. And sadly, that’s not a cooler full of beer, it’s full of rain-water. Rain-water which I’m bailing and dragging out to the street. At this point in the storm, I’ve had to get creative.
From this angle, the ground looks dry and fine, but if you turned the camera the other way, you’d see my entire backyard full of water about to enter my house.
Howdy folks!
So you see that pretty picture up there above these words? Well, if you wait a couple years (until 2017...boo!) then that picture will be part of my newest picture book!
Howdy Folks!
I’ve been getting one question a lot recently: “Are you a big fat liar?”
To put this in context, they are not asking me whether I murdered a man or not (on that, I please the 5th). No, they are simply asking about the final page of The Stratford Zoo Presents Macbeth.
In case you don’t remember (or haven’t read it…for shame!), the final page features a peacock writing up a Coming Attractions billboard for the Stratford Zoo’s next performance: Romeo & Juliet.
Lady Macbeth
Voted: Most Likely To Run A Presidential Campaign
Hobbies: Cleanliness; nagging; calling on the gods to make her a man; knitting doilies
School Play Credits: Blanche Dubois in Street Car Named Desire; The Little Engine in The Little Engine That Could Kill You All
Typical Small Talk: “…The babe that milks me- I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums And dash'd the brains out had I so sworn as you Have done to this.”
Detective MacDuff
Nickname: “Mr. Righteous;” “Dude Ex Machina”
Favorite dish: Revenge (served cold, but of course)
Yearbook quotes: “Hey, where’d my family go?”
Banksy
Nickname: “Sidekick McGee”
Position: Thane, whatever that is
Voted: Most Likely To Be Overlooked
Macbeth
Nickname: “Old Pushover”
Hobbies: Mongering (war, power, sandwiches, etc.),
Turn-ons: Pushy Women
Turn-offs: Pushy Women
Mental State: A bit iffy
Voted: Most Likely to Succeed (Note from the author: This joke works on so many levels it’s scary.)
For many people today, Macbeth is a bit academic. It’s either “that thing I had to read in high school” or “that really expensive show that that really famous actor is doing to show that he can really really act.”
But for me, Macbeth is the play that I co-wrote with Shakespeare. Okay, technically I just adapted it into a graphic novel for kids, but by sticking my head under the hood and seeing how the play’s engine worked, I learned some interesting things along the way.
1. Even Shakespeare needs help sometimes.
When I tell people that I’ve written a graphic novel of Shakespeare’s Macbeth for kids, most people say, “Macbeth?! You mean the horribly bloody play by Shakespeare? How on earth can you do that for kids?”
Quite frankly, a lot of Shakespeare’s work is a bit tricky to translate for the younger set.
How much is your love is worth?
Your first answer is, of course, “My love has no dollar value. My love is priceless. Love is one of the great inventions of this wondrous thing we call the universe.”
But the real answer is, “Ask you vet.” Because your vet knows how much your love is worth down to the penny.
For instance, I have a friend who paid $6,000 to give his dog a taint-hole. Yes, a taint-hole.
Disclaimer: This may or may not make any sense to you unless you’ve played Clash of Clans. Which you shouldn’t, because it’s a major time-burn. But if I’m too late and you’ve already been pulled in, then here are a few things I’ve learned from playing this game with my son.
Floss, when no one is looking. Seriously. Sometimes those chunks go flying.
Dance, when no one is looking. Then, if no one was looking, videotape it, upload it onto youtube, use the ensuing traffic to establish a platform from which you can leverage yourself into a six-figure deal for a reality show based on your dancing at which no one was looking.
What to write for my first post? Well, I’m not quite sure what to say for myself except “Welcome!” I probably won’t be a frequent blogger but I will post from time to time when I run across something of interest.
For instance, my first post got me thinking about other “firsts,” and I thought you might find them interesting.
First Picture Ever Posted To The Internet