Today's illustration is from The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald. Princess Irene is looking at her starry ceiling, with no idea of the horrible goblins in the caverns beneath her mountain. This novel is pretty much a fairy tale in style and scope. My only issue with it (and it's a small one, probably to be expected from a fairy tale type book) is that all of the forces for good are beautiful while the evil creatures (goblins) are hideous. It makes me wonder what would change in a similar story if the forces for good were hideous on the outside but beautiful on the inside, while the evil characters were pretty to look at but hideous on the inside. I guess that would be the story told from a goblin's point of view...
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Like one of Franny Bloch's Littmus Lozenges, Because of Winn Dixie by Kate DiCamillo is just the right mix of sweet and sad.
I'm sure this probably isn't the image most people think of when they think of Neverland from J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan. It's a scene that, to my knowledge, has never been included in a film version. It comes from a line in chapter 1 about how each of the Darling kids has his own version of Neverland:
"Of course the Neverlands vary a good deal. John's for instance, had a lagoon with flamingoes flying over it at which John was shooting, while Michael, who was very small, had a flamingo with lagoons flying over it." (p. 14 Barrie, J.M. Peter Pan. New York: Penguin Books. 2002.) I love books, but the words that I love the most just might belong to Michael Ende. He's less popular in the U.S. than he deserves. Most people have seen The Neverending Story movie, but few have read the wonderful book on which it is based. Even fewer people have heard of Momo, a shorter and somewhat stranger book about a girl who lives on the outskirts of an unnamed city that is under siege from the villainous Men in Gray and their Time-saving Bank. Most adults rush around, hoping to deposit more and more of their free time to use at an unspecified later date, not knowing that the Men in Gray are destroying their deposits, hour by hour. With nothing but free time, Momo is the only one able to fight back. It is a fable for the modern world where all too often, people are overly concerned about getting work done or rushing from place to place and not taking time to have actual free time. Until very recently, Momo has been out of print in the U.S. for years. There was a new edition that came out last year, but I'm not a fan of the new edition's illustrations. (Find a copy with Ende's illustrations if you can - the earliest English translation was titled The Gray Gentlemen.)
I love that Michael Ende books have a very surreal quality. They start out in the real world, and they warp reality just enough to be fantasy but still feel like they could be real at the heart of the book, if only our world had a touch more magic. This is Pippi in her blue dress with red patches just before she meets Annika and Tommy in chapter 1 of The Adventures of Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgrin. (I wanted shoes with brushes on them when I read it as a kid, and as an adult, if floors have to be clean, I still think that would be the most fun way.)
It's been a while since I posted - just over a month. Partly, I was trying to finish a picture book project. Partly, I had trouble thinking of a children's book with the letter "K." Kanga and Roo from Winnie the Pooh seemed too obvious a choice, and then I remembered Professor Kirke from The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, which made me think of his childhood adventure in The Magician's Nephew. This scene is just after he puts on the yellow ring and arrives in "The wood between the worlds."
The scene is from chapter 1, when the wolves gather at Council Rock, and Mowgli plays with pebbles, oblivious while the tiger Shere Khan tries to claim him as his own. I wanted to do this illustration in black and white - and I used pen and ink and marker for this illustration (different from the others I've posted so far). I thought this might help the grey wolves look more ghost like /other worldly in the night.
I is for Iorek Byrinson, king of the ice bears in The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman. The movie version had great casting, but it got lots of things wrong, adaptation wise. (I'm looking at you, ending that was in the trailer, but not in the movie...) The ice bears armor is described in the book as rust red sheets of metal. I think an ice bear would care more about function than form or ornamentation.
Fittingly, today is the birthday of both the character Harry Potter and his author, J.K. Rowling. The scene I chose to illustrate is Hagrid arriving to give Harry his Hogwarts letter and a rather battered birthday cake. I could go on and on about how much I love, love, love Harry Potter, but I'll just mention two things that I admire about this series. First, the characters are so well written, I feel like I know them. Even the minor characters are well rounded, with strengths and weaknesses. Every few years when a book came out, it was like a visit with old friends. I really miss that. (The Qudditch World Cup article on Pottermore was a nice treat this year.) Secondly, I am forever grateful that Harry Potter made reading a shared experience. Suddenly, my friends were interested in reading books.
I love the Graveyard Book. It is a wonderful example of an author (Neil Gaiman) taking something old (Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book) and making it his own. There isn't a wasted sentence or turn of phrase, and I was very happy that it was recognized by the Newbery Award committee. (Sometimes fantastic books get ignored by award committees.) I love the characters, in particular Silas, who doesn't eat bananas, and Bod, the kid growing up in the wilds of the graveyard. It might not happen, and I wouldn't want it to happen unless Mr. Gaiman thinks it can be as good as this one, but since there are two Jungle Books, I hope that maybe one day, there will be two Graveyard Books. It had a great ending, but it was one of those books that I didn't want to leave behind on the last page. I tried to depict the graveyard a grey, misty place with just a hint of color. I imagine Silas as the darkest thing on a dark night. My scene is from chapter 2, when he brings Bod books and teaches him to read with gravestone letters.
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Melissa TisonI'm an aspiring author / illustrator. Archives
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