"Monsters and Miracles" Family Day at the Skirball Part 2: Tao Nyeu and Erica Silverman

Sunday at the Skirball was jam-packed with family fun as L.A. celebrated some of its local children's authors and illustrators.

Tao Nyeu presented Bunny Days and her widely-acclaimed debut, Wonder Bear. The latter book sent my son into a "playing-with-magical-hats" phase last year. Of course, I was more than happy to indulge him.

(Come to think of it, I bet Rene Magritte had a relationship with his hat akin to the one the boy and the bear have in Wonder Bear. Speaking of hats, I love Eric's collection in the film Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium. Am I digressing enough?)

Here's an avid magical hat collector after returning from a personal intermission, trying in vain to catch up with Tao.

Here's Erica Silverman, children's book author and librarian extraordinaire, getting audience members with imaginations to raise their hands. Erica went on to assure everyone that as long as you have a brain, you have an imagination.

Why did we all have to summon our imaginations? Because Halloween came in May, as Erica led us through a spirited reading of Big Pumpkin.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!!! That ghost's about ready to jump off the page!

Warning: don't read this book unless you're prepared to get cravings for a gigantic slice of pumpkin pie.

From Halloween to horses, Erica lassoed the audience in for selected readings from her endearing Cowgirl Kate and Cocoa series.

Erica recently launched the sixth installment of Cowgirl Kate and Cocoa, Spring Babies, with a fun event at Once Upon a Time Bookstore in Montrose, complete with a real, live pony. Yes, the pony was actually inside the store. Too cool!

Erica wraps up her presentation. And, finally, I must be really smitten with the mohawked boar, seeing as I've given him so much frame space in all my photos. I guess he seemed like the silent partner to my eye.

Another digression: The boar comes from the land of Noah's Ark at the Skirball, another exhibit to definitely check out.

Now I'm over and out...

"Monsters and Miracles" Family Day at the Skirball Part 1: George McClements

Public Service Announcement: If you're in L.A. and still haven't checked out the "Monsters and Miracles" exhibit at the Skirball Cultural Center, do yourself a favor and go.

Today's "Monsters and Miracles" Family Day featured a celebration of local children's book authors and illustrators, including Gerald McDermott, Susan Goldman Rubin, Tao Nyeu, Erica Silverman, George McClements, Zach Shapiro, Alva Sachs, Patricia Krebs, and a musical performance from Aaron Nigel Smith.

I didn't get to see everything, but I'll share several blog posts worth stuff I did catch.

I'm still wondering why George McClements's publisher doesn't add "dinosaur wrangler" to his basic author/illustrator description. Probably because they'd have to pay him more. Well, it certainly doesn't mean that he wouldn't be earning every extra penny of it. Just look at what Milo, his blue dinosaur, puts him through.
I'm pretty sure that George's books come with extra special coatings to protect them from dino slobber.

In this picture, you can practically see the slobber dripping off the pages of Dinosaur Woods. I think some even got on George's hand.

I loved George's message: When you use shapes,

you can draw anything!

Milo gets a lot of "oooohs and aaaahs" from the crowd for his impressive circle. George had a hard time hiding his jealousy.

A Night of the Veggie Monster interlude. Check out them peas. I'm sure it's enough to give many a kid a culinary coronary. Wow!!!!!George drawing Milo.Milo surveying George's work.

Milo thinks he can do it better.

A hardcore contingent of Milo fans in the audience agrees. Poor George musters everything he can to hide the green monster while holding the blue one.

To be continued...

The 2010 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books Déjà Vu/ Déjà View, or How Dueling Jarrett Krosoczkas Support the Existence of Parallel Universes

I've been reeling since my recent discovery concerning the nature of the universe. As might be expected, this paradigm-shifting discovery has brought on a bad case of existential crisis mixed with a touch of post-nasal drip.

Previously, many of my afternoons had been spent managing my citrus-colored minions, as they painstakingly built a stylish, Sputnik-like craft designed to seek out and prove the existence of parallel universes. No more. For the humble book festival in my own backyard has changed Everything, with a capital "e."

And here's the man around whom the fabric of space-time tore like a cheap picture book in a toddler's mouth-- Jarrett Krosoczka.

Here's a picture of Jarrett channeling his awesomeness. This doesn't take but a few seconds, by the way, for Mr. K is very extremely awesome (just ask my son, a big Lunch Lady fan).

Nobel prize-winning scientists, with whom I've consulted, believe that it was during this very awesomeness-channeling moment when life as we know it changed forever.

According to extensive data sheets, this change began on 4/25/09 (the date Jarrett Krosoczka first appeared at the L.A. Times Festival of Books) and erupted into total systemic googolotronic breakdown on 4/24/10 (the date of Jarrett's second L.A. Times Festival of Books appearance).

For a brief period between those two points in time, Universe A212 and Universe BN89 existed simultaneously on the same space-time continuum. And, yes, blog readers, I was there to capture every quantum-physics-tickling moment of it.


Universe A212 Jarrett does battle with Universe BN89 Jarrett to see who can draw the better Lunch Lady. Methinks it's a "draw," but I wouldn't want to get between two space-time bending doppelgangers, would you?

Universe BN89 Jarrett points to his face, insisting that he was the first Jarrett to come up with the clever Q-styled "mole communicator" for the Lunch Lady's sidekick/assistant, Betty.

The dueling doppelgangers challenge each other to a "Betty's gadgets" draw-off. I think I have to give it to the Universe A212 Jarrett this time. He got those totally tubular fishstick nunchucks in there.

Now let's follow the Jarretts through a reading of Punk Farm. Universe A212 Jarrett is thoughtful enough to let the other Jarrett go first.

They're going strong.

The battle rages on...

A high pitch frequency pulses through the UCLA campus, signaling the disentangling of Universe A212 from Universe BN89. In the next nano-second, the two Jarretts will be individuated again and free to return to their respective universes. They have finished making history.

And they all lived happily ever after. Feel free to rock on with your bad selves, a la Jarrett.

P.S. Even though there was only one picture book panel at the whole festival (can we change this, folks? While we're at it, how about book prizes for PB, MG, children's poetry, and children's graphic novels?), it was super rad. Hats off to Sonja Bolle for moderating a hilarious discussion with Kadir Nelson, David Shannon, and Pam Munoz Ryan.

Books Are Hot in West Hollywood

The 7th Annual West Hollywood Book Fair had me with this poster. I love it! At first, I thought the blue fellow was a walrus, goo goo g'joob. I know, I know. But, Candy, where are the tusks? Okay, so maybe I wanted to see a walrus. But I'll settle for the super-cute blue pug, too.

Unfortunately, I lost all of the wonderful pictures I took while there last Sunday. Please don't ask how, it will depress me all over again. Anyway, my son lit up with the spirited reading of Green Eggs and Ham by actors Randy Oglesby and M.C. Gainey.

In an interesting display of the ripple effect, my son has been requesting to read his CD-ROM version of the book throughout the week; and tonight he started reciting lines from the book while helping me cook, as he sampled the sharp cheddar cheese we were grating.

We also enjoyed the creative puppetry of the Rogue Artists Ensemble in their performance of The Story of Frog Belly Rat Bone, based on the picture book by Timothy Basil Ering. I love the concept of the puppet as extension of the puppeteer. Where does one end and the other begin?

Lisa Yee was funny as usual on her panel, "Tough Issues, Light Touches: Writing for Teens Without Turning Them Off." This was the only children's literature panel of the day (hint to the organizers: How about at least one more for next year?) And we enjoyed listening to Erica Silverman read her newest book, There Was a Wee Woman...

Finally, my Southern California helio-biblio index theory proved correct once more. Books are hot and so is the weather when L.A. hosts a book fair. Can I hear you say, "90's?"

Parallel Reading

Here's my son at "Feria del Libro" engaged in an activity I call "parallel reading," which is probably just another form of "parallel play." While the L.A. librarian read Peggy Rathmann's Officer Buckle and Gloria, my son opened up Where the Wild Things Are.

The scene made me imagine what the two stories, or any two stories, would sound like if read aloud at the same time. Would a third story emerge from the seeming gibberish, in the spaces in between the two stories? Uh-oh, it sounds like I may have another experiment on my hands.

Back to "parallel reading." Sometimes my son selects a bedtime book for me to read. Read that sentence again. That's right. He will choose a book for me to read aloud to myself, and then he selects a book for himself. Can anyone else speak to this interesting reading behavior?

Fun stuff: Note the "sizzling storytime" poster in the background of the above photo. In one of my many literary laboratories, I am working on a helio-biblio index that charts the temperatures for book festivals in the L.A. area. My research has revealed the following so far: books are hot! (based on data collected at the L.A. Times Festival of Books, the West Hollywood Book Fair, and Feria del Libro).

Stay tuned...

And Now on to What This Blog Is About

My son and I headed to downtown Los Angeles for the "6th Annual Feria del Libro: A Family Book Fair" this past Saturday. We had the great fortune to catch one of my former UCLA Extension Writer's Program instructors, Alexis O'Neill, (a.k.a. A Lexus? Oh, kneel!) in action.

Here she is in the above photo releasing a gigantic book-eating butterfly into the atmosphere. She also managed to somehow squeeze in two lively performances of her books, Estela's Swap and The Recess Queen.

I must admit that for the past year I've had "push 'em and smoosh'em, lollapaloosh 'em, hammer 'em, slammer 'em, kitz and kajammer 'em" stuck in my head at various times.

This delightful refrain comes from The Recess Queen, and don't tell me I didn't warn you. This book will infect you with its rhythm. I think the CDC is in the process of issuing a global warning.

Now that I've seen Alexis perform it with hand/arm gestures, the rhythm infection has spread from my brain to my limbs. It makes it hard to hold my fork steady when I'm eating.

By the way, look out for that book-eating butterfly. Its caterpillars have such voracious appetites that they have been known to consume entire library budgets. This is especially worrisome in the L.A. region.

More to follow...