Award-winning children's author and illustrator Chris Gall says he’s been drawing pictures and writing stories for as long as he can remember. In addition to his widely published commercial illustrations, he authored and illustrated the enthusiastically received Dinotrux, which introduced the prehistoric metal monsters that now return in Revenge of the Dinotrux.
Here Gall talks about the latest antics of his cranky creations.
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Tell me about the inspiration for Revenge of the Dinotrux? Had you planned to do a sequel, or was it a “back by popular demand” thing?
I had ...
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I’ve expressed on more than one occasion my love for international picture book imports. They are always exciting to see, breathing life into the contemporary American picture book landscape.
Read the last Seven Impossible Things on 'Squid and Octopus.'
And the Dutch? Well, Dutch picture book creators are always, it seems, doing interesting and beautiful things with picture book text and art. Case in point: If you love picture books and haven’t seen Ronald and Marije Tolman’s award-winning The Tree House, get to your nearest library or bookstore as fast as your feet can possibly carry you ...
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Whether you are a fan of George R.R. Martin’s epic fantasy novels set in the fictional world of Westeros, or the hit HBO series now in its second season, you’ve probably heard the title A Game of Thrones.
Read the last SF Signal on social SF.
Even those who don’t read fantasy are probably familiar with A Game of Thrones because the story—a gritty tale of warring factions scrambling for power, scheming families, sex, lies and betrayal—resonates across genres and fandoms. Folks who have never shown the slightest bit of interest in epic fantasy ...
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If you live anywhere in the South (or even if you don’t) and love picture books, and the traveling gods allow for it, there’s a very special exhibit you won’t want to miss. I haven’t seen this exhibit yet myself, but I feel compelled to tell others about it. Exhibits of such beauty deserve such rooftop yawps.
The North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA) in Raleigh currently has on display the work of author/illustrator and storyteller Ashley Bryan, who has led a long and distinguished career in children’s literature and whose work draws, in ...
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Somewhere, a wolf is howling. Jean Craighead George, author of over 100 books, mostly about the natural world and mostly for children, has died.
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It seemed that the world had just begun to pull itself together and move on after the death of Maurice Sendak last week when we learned of the passing of another literary lion. Like Sendak, she was one of Ursula Nordstrom's geniuses, another sad coincidence.
It was Nordstrom who took on Julie of the Wolves, which was inspired by a trip the journalist took to Barrow, Alaska, to ...
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Carlos Fuentes, the novelist and essayist, died Tuesday at the age of 83 in Mexico City. He foresaw ending his days there, much as the Peruvian poet César Vallejo prophesied that he would die in Paris, but we must imagine that Fuentes might have preferred to leave this plane in Providence or London or, yes, Paris, all places in which he had lived over the course of a long life. For, though proudly and definitively Mexican, Carlos Fuentes was always a bit of an outsider in his homeland.
Read more reviews of Carlos Fuentes books.
Born in Panama, the ...
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One of the characteristics of great literature is that it says something meaningful about life. Science fiction does that, too, except that the perspective is usually seen from an outsider's viewpoint and is often focused on society in general.
Being fond of subcategorizing as we are, science fiction fans call such fiction "social science fiction," and it's concerned less with the tropes usually associated with sf (like spaceships and technology) and more concerned with human activities and how people interact in groups. Or, to tie it back to the "science" label, it's concerned with "soft" sciences like ...
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I've received a few requests this week from folks who are looking for contemporary romances to read for upcoming vacations—and lucky for them, and for me, I've read several great books and novellas in a row, plus I know several books I've enjoyed that are on sale right now.
Read the last Smart Bitches, Trashy Books on recommendations for fans of 'Fifty Shades of Grey.'
You'll be making all kinds of Good Book Noise and Happy Reading Sighs—and your credit card won't burst into tears either. So here's a roundup of some ...
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He’s been punched, kicked and shot at, but TIME Magazine columnist and admittedly unmanly man Joel Stein may finally be ready to conduct a convincing game of catch with his 3-year-old son Laszlo when the time comes.
At least that’s the hope. Until Laszlo, the comfortably urbane writer was quite happy not fixing things around the house, racing fast cars or engaging in any other macho activity normally associated with red-blooded American males. Stein has since done all these things and more in solid preparation for future father/son outings, as well as his forthcoming first book, Man ...
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In 2006, Jai Pausch's husband Randy, a professor of computer science and human-computer interaction and design at Carnegie Mellon, was stricken with pancreatic cancer at the age of 46.
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Given only a few months to live, his life was prolonged for two years by heroic measures, including a dangerous operation followed by an experimental program involving radiation and three different chemotherapy drugs.
Randy is notably known for giving the speech at Carnegie Mellon titled “The Last Lecture,” which also went on to become a New York Times bestseller he co-wrote with ...
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In the opening pages of Héctor Abad’s memoir Oblivion we meet Abad’s father, Héctor Abad Gómez. He is a warm man, affectionate. Perhaps a little too so—when he hugs him in front of his friends it’s so very embarrassing.
Read the last Bookslut on the graphic novel 'Unterzakhn.'
A few chapters later we’re reintroduced to the man as husband and family man, and then a little later, as professor and doctor. As the pages turn, Héctor Jr. grows and so does his awareness of Héctor Sr., and the son can ...
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There was a time when almost all the crime fiction I read had been recently published. I was young and callow and dismissive of any novels my parents or—heaven forfend!—my grandparents might have enjoyed in their own salad days. I desired nothing so much as to stay current with the genre’s latest developments, its freshest authors, its most wet-behind-the-ears trends.
But then I started buying vintage paperback mysteries and thrillers—primarily for the excellence of their cover illustrations, those eye-catching 1940s, ’50s and ’60s fronts graced by long-limbed lovelies and treacherous blondes and bent-nosed mobsters sporting pistols ...
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The “before they were famous” narrative is a mainstay of writing about pop culture, and accounts of the Beatles’ residency in Hamburg are at the head of that canon.
Read the last Popdose on Man vs. Wild's Bear Grylls' latest memoir.
Like all such stories, the Hamburg narrative lets us look at familiar subjects in new ways. It restores to the lads from Liverpool some of the sexy-dangerous aura that faded from them as the ’60s ground on—caftans, love beads and bad mustaches still in some hazy future, the Fab Four still Five, leather-clad shag-monsters, greasy-quiffed, tearing through ...
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I received a review copy of Sasha Gould’s Cross My Heart in March, but the been-there, done-that cover art didn’t catch my attention, so I set it aside. Recently, though, I ran across a blog post that discussed the drastic changes that Delacorte made to the artwork.
They changed it from the look of literary historical fiction on the advanced copy to a romantic mystery/paranormal look. A big shift in the marketing angle? Now that piqued my interest.
Read the last Bookshelves of Doom on 'Code Name Verity.'
And now, after actually reading the book, I feel ...
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Fast-forwarding a few centuries from her usual Arthurian-adventure milieu, Elizabeth Wein captures the heart-stopping drama of modern war in Code Name Verity, a gripping spy novel centered on the friendship of two young women in World War II Britain.
When secret agent “Verity” is caught by the Gestapo, much like Scheherezade, she promises to write down the details of her mission in hopes of prolonging her life and avoiding further torture. The narrative she weaves recounts the history of her friendship with Maddie, who piloted their plane that crashed in Nazi-occupied France. While Wein’s masterful plot is too explosive ...
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There’s no shortage of picture books or beginning readers about Two Best Friends.
James Marshall’s George and Martha series, and Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad are but two classic examples of literary duos that will never be forgotten. And my favorite duo from recent years? Cowboy and Octopus from Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith. IF ONLY we could see more from this unlikely pair. In a 2010 7-Imp interview, Scieszka did say, “I do have a bunch more Cowboy and Octopus stories that I wrote, just because I loved those two guys and how they interact. Could ...
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When invited to go on a life-changing adventure, Sham Yes ap Soorap, the main character of Railsea, ponders: “What if it’s terrible? What if it all ends in tears?”
That’s exactly how I felt when picking my first China Miéville book to celebrate the momentous occasion of our debut at Kirkus. Thankfully, Railsea wasn’t terrible—far from it—and the only tears shed were the ones upon the realization that no, I cannot have a pet bat called Daybe.
Read more new and notable SF and fantasy with SF Signal.
Sham Yes ap Soorap is a ...
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A few select tweets I posted while reading Elizabeth Wein’s Code Name Verity*:
@LizB @SarahRettger 11% in, and OH MY GOD I LOVE IT SO MUCH.
@SarahRettger Am I going to be devastated by the end of this? Am I going to be CURSING YOUR NAME??
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@SarahRettger @LizB Just hit 68% and burst out with, "Oh my god. Omigod. OH MY GOD!" so loudly that I made Josh jump.
And two more that I posted a full 12 hours after finishing it:
@SarahRettger @LizB I was just talking to a student ...
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A decade after the publication of his debut memoir Running with Scissors, Augusten Burroughs has produced a tough-love take on the self-help genre with his recent book of advice, This is How.
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It’s somewhat of a format departure for the acclaimed author. Here, Burroughs offers welcoming hugs, positive reinforcement and a sharp slap in the face for readers eager to comprehend and process the machinations of excessive drinking, suicide, regret, overeating, finding love, realizing your dreams, getting a job or exuding confidence.
Burroughs talks to us about this shrewd combination of ...
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The post-apocalyptic world Thomas Pryce so effectively renders in his debut novel Unnatural Selection may be rife with sun-seared cannibals and other assorted perils, but the former science teacher from Yonkers, N.Y., says, “There’s no more comfortable place for me to be than building a world in my own little room behind a computer.”
We caught up with the author in southwest Florida, where he runs a company that builds and manages high-end custom aquariums. Here, he talks about finally making the decision to self-publish his book, the evolution of the self-publishing industry and how rejection made him ...
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