How Martha Had a Book Signing in St. Paul, Minnesota.

I’m happy to report that I will be appearing, along with author David LaRochelle, at Red Balloon Books in St. Paul, Minnesota for a super-duper, book kick-off extravaganza! Officially it’s being called a Publication Party for How Martha Saved Her Parents from Green Beans. And green beans are invited too. But they better behave.

It’s not that often that an illustrator and author of a picture book get to sign together or are even seen together is this day of projects being divided out long distance. Especially not when separated by 1,800 miles or so. But of course I still consider myself a Minnesotan for life, so I had to make this one. It’s like a reverse Oregon Trail experience. I’m headed back east from the wild, wooly, muddy, pierced and tattooed frontier. But I’ll use an airplane. And I’ll have an iPad to entertain myself with. There will be much less to do with Ox’s this time around.

You can check out an early review of this picture book at Kirkus by clicking here AND clicking your heels together three times and saying, “There’s no place like Kirkus for a review…” Here’s a excerpt from the review that examines the illustrations, I mean, come on. Of course I’ll going to excerpt that part!

“Dramatically comic illustrations rely on bold colors as well as exaggerated gestures and facial expressions to heighten the absurd. With their silly black hats, boots, mustaches and eyes, the spindly green beans actually do look menacing enough to steal the show.”

See you on April 21st, in St. Paul Minnesota at Red Balloon Books!

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A Box of Books

The highlight of any day is the arrival of that first box of new books. There are a bunch of copies in the box so you know it’s an actual book that will be for sale and on shelves and in libraries…at least the good libraries…

Thanks to David LaRochelle for his wonderful manuscript and all the editors, art directors and designers at Dial who helped make a wonderful picture book.

They’ll be available for purchase soon. And as I remind people often, one copy really isn’t enough. The American Association for Book Illustrators, Writers, Salesmen and Book Sales Establishment Owners (or the TAABIWSBSEO) recommends you always buy three copies of a book. Just in case…

And here’s the Kirkus review, which should be available in a day or so.

And here’s David’s web page for his newest book!

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Color Martha!

I’ve created some activity and coloring pages for How Martha Saved Her Parents from Green Beans. The wanted posters came from an idea that David LaRochelle developed, where students created Wanted Posters for the bad green beans. So I created an Old West style template so kids can concentrate on drawing the character. The other two pages are coloring pages based on scenes from the book.

You can download a zipped file with all four images by clicking on this line. These are 8.5 x 11 pages in PDF and JPG format.

Or you can click and print the JPGs below.

You can order the book from Barnes and Nobles, Powell’s, IndieBound or Green Bean Books. And as I always say, why stop with just one? Doesn’t everyone you know deserve a book?

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Bad Beans

Here are two early bad green beans from the development art for How Martha Saved her Parents from Green Beans. Due out in April, be sure and buy your seven copies as soon as you can! It’s all about green and orange isn’t it!?

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A Very Witchy Book

I’ve posted a bit about this already, and you’ll be sick of hearing about it by October. But that’s when A Very Witchy Spelling Bee comes out. So get ready for some witchy tales as October approaches!

This was written by George Shannon and is based on a funny idea of combining spelling and spells.

I’ll post more art as the release approaches.

 

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The Secrets to Success

Because I’m either overworked or lazy, todays post is a repost from last year. Think of it as a BEST OF posting…Anyway, here it is again for the new readers since everything on a blog is dead two minutes after posting.

From 2/2012

The Three Keys to Success!

Yup. Here it is. The Three Keys to Success in Kids’ Lit! I imagine you are pretty excited to read this. I mean, THREE KEYS to success! Even I can count that high and I’m an artist.

Ok, here we go…number one…. numero uno…I’ve been thinking, maybe it’s more like 8 keys to success. So, how about  ’8 KEYS to SUCCESS in Kids’ Lit’. That way I have enough room to get to issues like – ‘Make sure you run spell check’.

So, here they are: 8 KEYS to SUCCESS in Kids’ Lit…

1. I was going to start with, ‘Stay focused’. But I keep stopping to check emails and deleted part of the list by accident.

As I think about this, I realized I have more like 13 Keys. So I could call it something like: The 13 Keys to Fabulous Kids’ Lit. And that gives me room to include items like, ‘Smile more.’

But 13 is a horrible number. Bad luck. I mean buildings even skip that number. It’s not small enough to be catchy and not long enough to sell as a novel length How To Book.

Actually I have too many tips. So, I’m thinking ’23 Magic Steps for Success in Kids Lit.’ You don’t want to deal with 23 KEYS. Keys are heavy, they jingle, they jangle, after awhile you forget what they open or why you have them. They end up collecting dust in the drawer with spare change and nearly empty Tic-Tac containers…but 23 STEPS seems like reasonably good exercise, especially if you are like me and sit in front of a computer for 11 months of the year. But I can easily break the 23rd step into 4 additional steps…So -

The 27 Steps To Be Successful In Children’s Lit.

1. Name your book Harry Potter.

2…OK. That first one doesn’t really work, as I seem to remember that name being used already in a TV show or a movie. Or a game. Or a theme park. Or on a package of jelly beans.

You know, I’m going to regroup here because the list just keeps getting longer, which is ironic, as number 11 on the list is, ‘Keep things simple’ and I think number 19, ‘Keep getting better’, isn’t very helpful because it’s too broad.

So there you have it. I have spent months writing this post, and my 3 Steps to Kids’ Lit Success (copyright Mark Fearing, 2012) just keeps getting more complicated. And I am on deadline so I really should get back to writing the book I am working on. But if I can’t break this down to under a hundred steps, I don’t deserve to write step-based or key-based lists at all.

And yes, you could interpret this list as a sideway glance at any How To Succeed list. But I am working on a new post called – ’42 Awkward Lurches to Kids’ Lit Success’. I think 42 is exactly the right number.

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How Martha Saved Her Parents – Before and After

As I’ve mentioned here a few times before…How Martha Saved her Parents from Green Beans pops into bookstores in April. Written by David LaRochelle and illustrated by me, it’s no doubt the greatest children’s picture book ever created. Ever. In all of history. And I mean that on a galactic scale. OK…So I’m filled with hyperbole. Give me a job in marketing then.

Anyway, Here’s a quick example of a before and after.

This is the rough sketch. This is the BEFORE stage. Notice how my rough outlines are so rough, I can’t even follow them…What is wrong with me?

And below is AFTER I run the ‘Illustrate This Page’ Photoshop plug-in. Amazing isn’t it? The bad part is the Illustrate This Page plug-in actually takes about 4 days to work and I have to be there the entire time.

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Look! A book! A real book!

I got my advance copy of How Martha Saved her Parents from Green Beans in the mail last week. And yes, if you frequently read the blogs of authors and illustrators, or are one yourself, you know that getting that first copy of an actual book is a wonderful moment.

Out in April. You better order now!

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Ouch! A little sensitive are you?

Recently I was reading some online reviews of the books I’ve worked on. Never a great idea. But the Internet exists if for no other reason than to make you more neurotic.

Anyway, I found one concerning The Three Little Aliens and the Big Bad Robot. An illustrator had left a comment like, ” It looks OK. Basically he just ripped off the minions from Despicable Me.”

Ouch! I have to admit, the alien kids do look similar. But the sad part, or good part, is I designed that book long before that movie came out. And here’s the story about that.

I started designing the aliens as soon as the contract came in. I was really excited. My first drafts had all three eyed-alien kids and that crazy multi-eyed robot. I was into lots of eyes…I tried making the characters blue, but I didn’t like it. So I defaulted to a yellow-green/acid-green coloring for them because that coloring looked great atop all the deep-space backgrounds the book featured. And they are aliens…come on. I’m not the most original colorist.

So I turned in my first designs, I got notes back and the art director asked what I thought about each of the aliens having a different number of eyes so kids can more easily tell them apart. Cool idea. I did that and was soon moving forward painting the roughs.

About halfway through the book I went to Apple Trailers one day and – nearly wet my pants when I saw the first full trailer for Despicable Me that featured the Minions. I believe that the earliest teaser trailers didn’t have the minions in them. Well, I freaked out. Looked online for anything about them and started alternative character designs. I wrote the editor and art director, who had seen the roughs, telling them I would have to change everything because my characters look similar to these other characters in a new movie.

The art director wrote back saying, don’t bother changing them. They loved my characters as they were. The characters in the book are kids, they are not minions. And there are lots of characters with similar traits in books and films.

And so that’s how I became a big, fat, plagiarist…not.

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New year, same problems!

The end came and went and here we are. Another fresh year upon us. It doesn’t look any different outside to me.

I try and have a professional goal each year in addition to the just surviving stuff…like being able to afford groceries. Hoping that the car keeps running. That I don’t need a root canal. I always hope for those things. I’m a Minnesotan after all. We must be cognoscente of all the things that can go wrong at any given moment.

Five or six years ago My goal was to illustrate a picture book. I got lucky and The Book That Eats People was offered to me. The next year I was busy with three more books to illustrate. .

In 2013 I’d love to see a really funny, bizarre and edgy picture book manuscript come to my agent for me to Illustrate. There aren’t many manuscripts like that these days. I’d love to get one that an editor reads and loves, but can’t imagine what it would look like; how it would work.

I’d also like to finish some of the long manuscripts I’ve been working on. Call them middle grade novels or outlines for graphic novels, they are definitely taking up too much space in my head. I have all these bits-and-pieces of stories that need to be resolved. It’s difficult to move on when you build up too many of these hangers-on.

And I’d like the chance to relax with my work this year. To cast aside all the minor tasks and insecurities that always feel like they will overwhelm me. I’m going to work on packing up the worst of my professional anxieties. You probably know the ones I speak of: The ‘Am I good enough?’ issues.

Why doesn’t my work look as good as this other artists? Why can’t I get more done? Why I am such a sucky writer that I can’t find an ending to this story!? Why can’t I more easily identify which of my ideas are going to resonate with readers and editors? Why am I often so sure that my work isn’t-working? Will I ever get hired again to do anything!?

I feel like I’m too old to continue carrying these with me. I’ve always been one of those sensitive-artist-types, like Josh in Haiku Tunnel. The You Tube linked clip is the scene where it is explained to Josh by his boss that the reason Josh can’t even accomplish simple tasks is because he has an artistic temperament and then gives Josh some great advice. (note the scene is mildly edgy and may not be right for all audiences). When I first saw this I finally understood what was going on in my head all these years.

For 2013 I’m going to “Go back to my desk, settle down, focus and catch-up.”.

Happy 2013! It’s going to be a great year if for no other reason because it’s the year after 2012 and before 2014. What can be better than that?

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