Book Review: My Neighbor Is a Dog

My Neighbor Is a Dog

Written by Isabel Minhós Martins

Illustrated by: Madalena Matoso

With a limited palette, flat rendering, and brilliant use of white space Madalena Matoso has illustrated a deep and quiet story by Isabel Minhós Martins. Look how beautifully Matoso conveys a cityscape. A marvel! 

The overarching story is about not judging a book by it's cover, but there is so much fun in the visuals and animals and silliness of behavior in their apartment building that you don't feel you are being preached to at all.

Every element, from story, to character, to design and pacing works so well. This is one for the bookshelf. The bookshelf below, by the way, belongs to Time of Wonder (part of Water Street Bookstore in Exeter, NH). I spent oodles of time in their store last week and found it to be one of THE best children's bookstores. The selection, space, and staff are amazing. One bonus as a mother shopping here? A minimal amount of toys. Your little ones will be too busy reading in the corner bench with the bears, anyhow.

Gina's Top 5: SCBWI Workshop Presenters

For the past seven of the ten years I have attended, I have blogged a recap of the NESCBWI conference. As I was gathering notes on this year's event, I decided to browse through my old posts and thought to do a 'Top 5' list.

In no particular order:

1. Melissa Sweet, author/illustrator. Due to proximity and providence, I have seen Melissa speak and have attended a few of her small workshops. Her career is awe-inspiring, her talent abounds, and she is gifted at not only sharing her enthusiasm, but techniques for writing and illustrating: how to generate and extract ideas, words, and images, etc.

2. Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen, author. Prepare to get an education when you sit for a workshop with Sudipta. She tosses extremely useful basics and guidelines to writing picture books alongside gritty/witty personal stories. No snoozing in her classes.

3. Frank Dormer, author/illustrator. As an illustrator, we can't forget that without ideas and concepts, our pretty pictures fall flat. Frank delivered a fabulous working workshop for illustrators a few years back that stuck with me. It forced me to put a problem-solving cap on and work fast (don't all good workshops blaze by?).

4. Mark Peter Hughes, author. The first time I ventured into taking a writer workshop, I was lucky enough to land in a class with Mark Peter Hughes. He got us to write down, speak up, and think in broad, useful terms about character development.

5.Dan Yaccarino, author/illustrator. Well, certainly Dan's reputation as a rock-star of picture books precedes him. He shared so many gems about storytelling, bookmaking and the hard work involved in this business - I dare you to walk away without a big, shiny lightbulb hovering on your noggin.

About Me

It's always a good day when you get new postcards in the mail, right? I think I'm extra-excited about these. The girl and scene are from my latest picture book dummy. I started writing the story in a waiting room a few years ago. It started out about ME, about being small. It is called, simply enough: I Am Small. More on this later...

Right before I picked these up off the front porch I updated a bit of my website. I rewrote my biography to reflect ME a bit more. I even included a favorite picture of myself - not the posed picture I used in a recent interview - something more ME. I updated the splash page to reflect art that is more ME lately - a newer style that combines sketchiness and controlled gouache painting.

I posted this over at my personal blog too. I don't usually cross-post, but given the nature of things, it felt right.

What I'm Working On

Continuing on my black & white experiments, I'm putting this little image on the back of a new postcard. I can't get enough of this little girl - and I'm so excited to share her story at the upcoming NESCBWI Spring Conference.

What I'm Working On

I'm doing that 'thing' where I'm juggling lots of little things at once:

A few spot illustrations for a dummy
Postcard ideas
An IF sketch
Thumbnails for a new picture book dummy
Editing manuscripts

When I'm feeling a little scattered, I think this is the best way for me to be productive. I'm not committing
100% to any one thing, but making progress and good use of my time.

Also, I'm completely in love with the mouth/nose shapes on the blue guy in the top right. Swoon! Admit it, we're all selfishly, egotistically, in LOVE with our work from time to time. It makes up for the copious self-loathing we all do.

P.S. Have you seen the new, much improved Illustration Friday website? No? Go now.