Extra Yarn: Author Mac Barnett’s 2012 BGHB Picture Book Award Speech

Mac Barnett

I’m glad to be here tonight in your company, and I’m glad that our book is in the company of this year’s honorees and the winners of years past. It’s a thrill. I want to thank my agent Steven Malk, an always-trusty advisor, and Balzer + Bray for publishing our book. And I want to [...]

Extra Yarn: Illustrator Jon Klassen’s 2012 BGHB Picture Book Award Speech

Jon Klassen

Illustrators are notoriously good at giving speeches. When they decide to get into illustration, it is secretly because they know how good they are at public speaking, and they can’t wait until the day when they win an award so they can finally show a room full of literary people how great they are at [...]

Face Out: Picture Book Covers

Puss in Boots

A recent conversation about the current state of the picture book soon came around to the subject of book jackets. A senior art director in the group noted mournfully that as jacket designs have increasingly become the province of sales and marketing teams, covers have grown less representative of the books they trumpet. The disconnect [...]

January/February stars

January/February 2013 Horn Book Magazine

The following books will receive starred reviews in the January/February issue of The Horn Book Magazine: Building Our House; by Jonathan Bean (Farrar) Dreaming Up: A Celebration of Building; by Christy Hale (Lee & Low) Ask the Passengers; by A. S. King (Little, Brown) Days of Blood & Starlight; by Laini Taylor (Little, Brown) One Came [...]

Studio Views

Picture Book Month at the Horn Book

Eight picture book artists talk shop in these pieces about tools and techniques “Ticonderoga #2″ by Donald Crews “Pulp Painting” by Denise Fleming “The Sculptural Quality” by Arthur Geisert “Family Albums” by Margaret Miller “My Next Medium” by Chris Raschka “Sharpie Markers to the Rescue” by Lynn Reiser “Tiny Pieces of Paint” by Peter Sís [...]

Studio Views: Family Albums

Picture Book Month at the Horn Book

Photographing children is both exhilarating and exhausting. When I’m faced with a toddler’s classic meltdown, I wonder why I base my livelihood and sense of personal success on the whims of two- and three-year-olds. I wonder how I can capture natural, appealing photos in spite of runny noses, low blood sugar, and Barney. Hey, who [...]

Studio Views: My Next Medium

Picture Book Month at the Horn Book

My favorite medium, my ideal medium, is the one I haven’t used yet. Or, maybe, it’s the one that I’m contemplating using, toying with using, in my next book, Lordy! I think to myself, Lordy!, in my next book, I’m going to CUT LOOSE! In my next book. With my next medium. See, the thing [...]

Studio Views: The Sculptural Quality

Picture Book Month at the Horn Book

Etching in a nutshell: a polished copper plate is coated with a thin layer of wax (a ground). A sharp metal stylus (an etching needle) is used to scratch lines through the ground exposing the copper. Acid eats (etches) the lines down into the plate. The etched lines are filled with ink, and, under tremendous [...]

Studio Views: Tiny Pieces of Paint

Picture Book Month at the Horn Book

I grew up behind the Iron Curtain. There was a shortage of everything (freedom most of all) — and only one kind of paper, one kind of ink, one kind of paint. I was one happy artist when I became an illustrator in the U.S.A. So many materials! I settled on oil pastels, which I [...]

Studio Views: Ticonderoga #2

Picture Book Month at the Horn Book

My hands-down favorite medium would have to be graphite or lead, the core of a pencil, the material that makes the marks on paper. Lead makes the words, images, idle thoughts (doodles), specific information — crucial and otherwise — visible. With the lead from a pencil I can make thin delicate words and lines, bold [...]