I’m trying to catch up with posts. But in catching up I just get further behind. Maybe it’s my artistic temperament. Remember, go back to my desk, settle down, focus, and catch-up!

I was a guest at the SCBWI of Western Washington’s wonderful event Inside Story on October 28th. I was up there to discuss, what else, The Book That Eats People. It was held at a great independent book store called Third Place Books in their Lake Forest Park location. We had an enthusiastic audience and a bunch of wonderful writers and illustrators who gave the Inside Story on their projects. I got to meet old and new fans of the book (amazing considering it’s only been out since August I think, but one person already had two copies for me to sign and bought another). And of course I got to look at a mountain of beautiful books and hear from an array of writers working in different genres.

Mike Cressy even showed up just to let me know I couldn’t get into Washington without the Oregon Alarm sounding.

Below are some rather bad iPhone pics from the event. Thanks to Meg Lippert and crew for putting together such a cool event.

I just came across a fascinating review/discussion of The Book That Eats People on a blog called-  human behavior. Based in Australia, I believe, they bought the book Down Under. That makes me happy.

I see the author, John Perry, has read the review and wrote a great comment afterwords.  I love the fact that this book is dynamic and offers so many POV’s and can stimulate a discussion about so many different ideas. This reviewer is especially interested in the moral aspects of the story. Is it a good book? Is it scary? Does it have a moral perspective? How exciting to be able to think about these issues as part of a picture book discussion!

Here’s a link to the review at human behavior.

I changed the theme of my gift tags this year to Cats and Dogs. The new set of tags are posted in my Free Gift Tag section. Or you can click here to see them and download a high-res file for printing at home.

The Book That Eats People got called out in The Oregonian on Sunday.

Read it here – Review by Helen Babbit, or see below.

Here are three children’s books that come with teeth, lots of teeth. The first is “The Book That Eats People,” written by John Perry and illustrated by Mark Fearing, who lives near Portland. The book comes with a warning: “This is not a bedtime story!” It tells the story of a people-eating book while actually being that book.

The book’s victims include poor Sammy Ruskin, who tasted of peanut butter, and Victoria, who was gobbled up beginning with her pink toenails and ending with the question, “Have you ever heard a book burp?”

Fearing’s illustrations incorporate collage, seasoning the book with depth, humor and vibrancy. Perhaps it is time for a book with teeth, considering the millions of books that have been devoured by readers.

- The Oregonian – 11-1-2009

Two more review are out for The Book That Eats People. The reviewers seem to get the attitude of this book, which is great. I had one discussion with someone concerned about what age child the book is appropriate for. I don’t think age is as big of issue as is the personality of the child. I know a certain three year old who, while she thinks it’s scary, LOVES how bad the book is, and doesn’t think it’s real. Not like VAMPIRES. Or bears. This three year old is REALLY scared of bears. Except blue or pink bears. Those aren’t scary. But I digress…

Certainly the book will appeal more to kids 4 and up. But I believe it’s too funny to be REALLY scary. I think watching ‘commentators’ on TV ‘news’ is far scarier.

First up a review from The School Library journal.

In this tale of tongue-in-cheek terror, a breathless narrator warns readers about a book gone rogue. Beginning with a peanut-butter-fingered child who pages through it and is gobbled up, the book leaves a trail of bones, chewed pages, and missing children and grown-ups as it takes advantage of its prey’s cluelessness. Finally caught by police after someone sees it in action, the jailed book is transferred to the zoo. But readers are holding the very book and are warned at the conclusion, “…this book is always hungry. And it eats people.” This hilariously dark story is illustrated with collage elements using Photoshop in a jazzy, jangly style that is part noir and part graphic novel. Big-eyed characters are stalked by a wonderfully sinister and pointy-toothed tome. Readers who love monsters and a good scare while still delighting in silly proceedings will definitely want to brave this tale.

—School Library Journal, November 2009

And from the Bulletin of the Center of Children’s Book

“The title gives you fair warning, but in case you’ve missed the point, the text underscores it firmly: “This is NOT a storybook. It is NOT a book of rhymes. It isn’t a how-to dictionary. It’s a book that eats people.” Apparently the book got a taste for flesh by snacking on a young owner, and since then there have been various, only intermittently successful attempts to contain its savagery; now it’s up to the current reader to look out for him/herself. This isn’t a plot, exactly, but it’s still a deliciously dark piece of comedy with a pleasingly horrific air, and the history of the volume’s malfeasance has the well-honed feel of a scary campfire story. The illustrations, created in Photoshop, encompass a startling variety of styles and effects. The colors have a bright opacity reminiscent of acrylic paints with a smudgy frescoed texture; thin lines, droll caricature, and beady eyes on the figures suggest European animation; sinister nibbles round the edge and bits of collage elements, especially burped-up print, offer reminders of the menacing message, while quick views of the glowering, toothy book (and one look into the dripping-fanged abyss) itself leave no doubt of the text’s veracity. This has the same jaunty literary irreverence as Kevin O’Malley’s works, and his fans will appreciate this as a bracing counterpoint to all those gentle self-aware book stories (like Gerstein’s A Book, BCCB 7/09); it could also simply add interest in the library for those kids who’d rather destroy books than read them and who will therefore be tickled by the idea that there’s one prepared to fight back.”

—Bulletin of the Center of Children’s Books, November 2009

And for an extra treat, some more early art for The Book That Eats People. This is from the page where we let readers know it is NOT a book of rhymes or a fairytale. It has several smaller elements on it, each of those was painted large and reduced to fit in the overall layout I established. This is an early draft with some type for placement only. I wanted it to look older then the typical illustration on the pages. At the same time I didn’t want to push it o far that it was ‘antique’ looking.

I’m usually not a big fan of video games. I mean, I play them – when I have time…if I have time…when I USED to have time. But the standard 3D graphics have gotten stale to me. There’s something about the ’shininess’, the surreal amount of texture detail, the hang-up on recreating reality (Look how real it looks!  Who cares? Have you ever looked at a  Van Eyck? He had hyper-surrealism/hyperrealism down in the 15th century. )

And I am not a fan of Flash as a development platform, an animation tool or whatever Adobe wants to sell it as this week. I do some work in Flash. But I rarely find it the ideal tool for anything other than hyperactive, marketing driven websites where the first thing you do is turn off the music, turn off the animation and try and find an HTML version where you can at least bookmark specific links… ANYWAY, the following post deals with a video game that’s done in Flash. So much for my cranky dislikes.

I saw this game on the Apple download page and decided to look into it and it’s really quite a cool game. The free demo works on OSX. The game play is pretty inspired. It’s not HALO – thank goodness – the body count isn’t the defining accomplishment but it’s fun to interact with, inspiring to look at and I wasted some time with it and it felt good!

The company is from the Czech Republic (Is it still called a Republic?) . Their website is here and they have some fun point-and-shoot type games (look under FLASH GAMES at the top of the page). They all feature inspired art direction, intriguing character design and innovative interaction with the scenes. Wonderful, fanciful illustrated worlds that feature a great deal of humanity in the art. They give me a real sense of seeing things from another human beings perspective. And that, for me, is usually a defining factor in what makes Art. Show me something about how you perceive the world. It doesn’t have to LOOK like the ‘real’ world. In fact,  don’t let the real world interfere if you have a strong enough vision. That’s why this work feels special to me. 99% of video games out there have no interest in presenting a point of view that resonates beyond what we precieve as ‘reality’. Even the most ridiculous, outlandish constructs in video games are rendered with the upmost care to make sure they look JUST LIKE WHAT WE SEE all the time.

This company has been doing work for quite some time and once again I am behind the times. Nothing new in discovering that. But it’s new to me and I really enjoyed it.

A review of The Book That Eats People in Publishers Weekly. They call it the greatest book ever made, EVER. The best story ever told, EVER. And the most amazing looking book ever…OK. I lie.

They don’t say that. But they give it a very good review and, once again, don’t make fun of the illustrations which means I can sleep a little easier.

Publishers Weekly Review of The Book That Eats People.

And here is the review if you don’t want to ‘click’ or ‘jump’ or ‘hyperlink’ or whatever you kids do now days on the internet tubes.

The Book That Eats People John Perry, illus. by Mark Fearing. Tricycle, $15.99 (38p) ISBN 978-1-58246-268-4
From the grim warning on the first page (“CAUTION! This is a book that eats people”) to the advice at the end (“Never read this book with syrupy fingers. Never read it with cookies in your pocket. Never turn your back on it”), Perry’s debut soldiers on with a Lemony Snicket–like straight face. The histories of the book’s previous victims are given in gory detail (“Sammy pulled as hard as he could, but the book ate him. Then it coughed up his bones and they clattered across the floor like wooden blocks”). Fearing draws the book-within-a-book with blood-red covers, heavy-lidded eyes and a mouthful of fangs, packing his collage spreads with torn and crumpled papers (which take on an especially gruesome vibe in this context). Perry also covers the book’s perverse appetites (“if you hear a sound like an octopus in a tub of yogurt, that’s the book’s empty stomach”), tactics (it “traded covers” with a book called All About Dolphins, to the delight of one young Victoria Glassford) and eventual (if ineffectual) incarceration. It’s all irresistible. Read it. Carefully. All ages. (Oct.)

There’s an interview with John Perry, author of The Book That Eats People, and me – the illustrator posted at the 7 Impossible Things website. There’s also some other art samples posted. I didn’t say anything too dumb. I think. I hope.

7 Impossible Things – The Book That Eats People

The author of The Book That Eats People offers a video about the dangers of the book.

I’m always suspect of reading about writing. I’m not entirely sure why, but I think I have chronic mistrust of those who speak in authority and those who want to. Often I skip over good advice, not wanting to hear it for fear it will turn my process end-over-end, or even scarier, make me realize that I have no good process. That all my years of ‘experience’ haven’t actually produced anything worth charting, diagraming, putting into Power Points or enumerating. Often my system of creation is – There is nothing. Chaos. Something. Do it again.

Can’t sell a million artist self-help books with advice like that.

But there are a lot of good ideas that have been expounded on by writers, people who teach writers, artists ETC. I’ve been thinking about them lately as I am currently revising a large graphic novel and the process was once again filled with surprises. Left turns on red lights, short cuts that aren’t REALLY short cuts and full stops on an empty road, in the middle of nowhere, when I am going 110 miles per hour and have no idea where I was headed.

A graphic novel is a daunting task. Writing a story and investing another year (at least) drawing 150 maybe 200 pages is best described as ‘a long slog’. Don’t get me wrong. I love doing it. I can’t imagine a better challenge or more interesting job. But if you are going to climb Everest you have to admit it’s one big mountain. And so it is.

Creating a graphic novel is more closely related to writing a film than writing a novel. Because the script is just the starting point. The words on paper have to be good (hope they are good) but there’s a lot of work ahead. Pencils and inking then post – coloring and setting the type, printing. You spend months penciling, inking and coloring. If you decide to alter a chapter or drop a scene or change a setting, you won’t just be editing copy. You’ll be drawing, inking and coloring all over as well.

When I work on graphic novels or comics there’s always some change in the dialog and settings when I get to drawing them. This is a process where the material gets more interesting and dynamic. You find a visual joke in the written material. Or a visual way to communicate something that was in dialog or description before. But, I always want a solid story in place before I draw dozens of pages. I usually write and draw my own material so when I write the script I can use the visuals in my head to pre-visualize what will happen in art. This is different than if I was handing my script off to another artist.

I mentioned in a previous post a book that I think does a very good job of introducing graphic novels but I wanted to mention another site I turn to for some great advice about writing. The site is often focused on screenplay writing and technique but just as often goes into subjects that are helpful for anyone writing fiction.

Most graphic novel scripts are not that different from a TV or film script. (Unless you want to use only third person narration in a graphic novel.) Much of the thought process behind writing for the screen can help you write a better graphic novel. I’m not talking about structure (3 Act ETC). I’m looking at effective methods to communicate ideas as efficiently as possible. Using dialog effectively and focused on character action. How to cut to the core of what is most important, usually in the present tense and understanding that a visual element will play a huge role in how the final work is consumed, understood and appreciated. The words on the page are not the final product.

If you don’t already read John August.com, check it out. It’s a site I visit often when I struggle with taking the Nothing into Chaos and beating that Chaos into Something.