I placed Tilley in the nursery.  I transformed the Dandy’s traditional cane into a vacuum, his blue shirt into a baby wrap carrier, and his top hat into a nursery shelf.  Tilley Jr. is playing with the quizzing glass and reaching out for a puzzle butterfly.  I took inspiration for the rug and wallpaper from the spots and antenna from Rea Irvin’s original butterfly.

The twelve finalists are selected next Monday,  the 14th.

The first two books were easy get from the library, but I had trouble finding The Yearling, the book I had never read.  Then I stumbled upon this gem at a second-hand book sale.

Hands down, this edition wins the award for ugliest book cover of all time.   Open it up, though, and it’s filled with the original pen and ink drawings by Edward Shenton.  Gorgeous little pen and ink drawings.

I fell in love with this book.  The hardest part of all was choosing a passage for the contest.  It’s such an emotionally engaging story with many dramatic scenes – struggles with snake bites, fights with bears, and general survival in the backwoods — but also touching moments between the boy and his fawn (and family) as he grows up and finds his place.

I think it was my research into the Southern Floridian flora and fauna that pointed me to the passage to draw.  It’s something perhaps a little less poignant or touching, but still reflects the world of The Yearling.

Elegant long leaf pine trees and swaths of saw palmettos…such a cool landscape.  I just needed to throw in a bunch of cute little black bear cubs (which could not be better suited to B&W).

The winner is to be announced by January 9th.  I hope to see all the entries in the gallery of submissions soon.

My Blown Covers entry for Halloween.  As a parent shopping for Halloween costumes for little girls, I marvel at how risqué the costumes are.  Little witch or call girl?  Sadly, sometimes you gotta wonder.

Winners and gallery are here.

Have a happy and safe Halloween!

Autumn makes me think of gloomy skies, corn and pumpkins.  But it also makes me think of decorating with those tacky dollar store scarecrows that (yes, I admit), have adored the front of my home.  That made me think of how funny one of those would look in a Manhattan high rise.

So…

On a cold and grey Autumn day, a young girl returns home from school.  There is an endless view of rooftops from her home, but no Autumn foliage to hint at the season.  It’s warm inside, so she removes her shoes and socks.  Then she proudly sets her school-made creation on top of the Noguchi coffee table, between the Mies van der Rohe Barcelona chairs.  Tho dog, accustomed to neutral colors and clean lines, can’t help but react with fear.

Notice that the legs of the coffee table kind of make the legs to the scarecrow?  That’s a Brancusi Endless Column sculpture in the background.  I’ve had a sentimental fondness for Brancusi ever since I studied his work in college.  His birds have always been a favorite.

See the winners and gallery here.  Don’t miss all the glorious entries by Klaas Verplancke.

My daughters noticed this little guy,

along with a trove of bottlecaps, beads, and broken zipper.  The shark cap and rare blue bead were exciting finds.  Not pictured is the wild artichoke seed that, sadly, fell out of my pocket.

My son found a duck made of Eucalyptus bark,

and I found a Duck Rabbit.  My rabbit doesn’t just sniff, it sings!

What a great day to read Duck! Rabbit! written by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and illustrated by Tom Lichtenheld.

Wait.  Listen.  Did you hear that?

I hear duck sounds.

That’s funny.  I distinctly

heard rabbit sounds.

And what is a child to do with a collection of beads and bottle caps, besides making temporary dioramas like this one,

filling them in various toys to cart around the house, and lining them up along the couch?

Here’s a favorite book of ours that offers up some gentle and playful solutions:  The Button Box, written by Margarette S. Reid, illustrated by Sarah Chamberlain.

Swirl them, sort them, pretend play with them and use some for sock puppet eyes.  I love that, in the end, all the unattached buttons go back in the box.

My first idea was the obligatory penguin on ice shot.  And there were so many penguin and polar bear images that there was a separate slideshow created just  for them!  Here’s my attempt at upping the drama.

Leopard seals are one of the Emperor Penguin’s prime predators.  They’re cute, but quite vicious.  They kill by grabbing onto the penguins feet and smashing the penguins bodies repeatedly on the water.  And moving on…

My next image shows a gondola/taxi riding down a street in Harlem.  I had time to finish the sketch, but not the color.  Really some gorgeous and colorful buildings in that neighborhood.  I think it makes an apropos street  for a future New York a la Venice.

I think owing to the longer time-frame for the entries (we get about 5 days now to send in an image), there was an excellent batch of winners this round, plus many fine ones in the slideshows.  I really admire Vincent Des Jardins’ entries.  And he placed twice!

“Play with me, Minnie.

Play with me, please.

We can stand on our heads.

We can hang by our knees.”

“Oh, no.

I can’t play.

I can’t play with you, Freddy.

Not now.

Can’t you see?

I am eating spaghetti.”

I did a double take when I came across this earlier edition from 1987 which notes an original copyright from 1977.  Same story, but…

pictures by Jack Kent!  The Kent of Just Only John, Joey Runs Away, There’s No Such Thing as a Dragon?  I love his books.  But…well…take a look and compare a page from both editions.

Here’s the first page by Kent:

And here’s Gerberg’s.

Gerberg expands the image to a double spread and shows Minnie with her back to us.  There’s only a hint of what’s in the bowl in her lap, saving the big surprise for the next page.  The last image in his edition beautifully harks back to this one.

There are subtle improvements on every page, with the text layout and image variation.  Really, it’s a night and day improvement.  I guess even the greats have their disappointments.

The Gelman and Gerberg pairing is awesome.  Check out another of theirs, Stop Those Painters! (1989).

Painters painting grass and trees.

Painters painting birds and bees.

Stop those painters.

Please! Please! Please!

Similarly silly and fantastic.

Now just who is Mort Gerberg?  Well, turns out he’s been a contributor to the The New Yorker since 1965!  Wow, I even remember some of these cartoons.  Ha, maybe I just couldn’t read his signature!  I love this guy.

And Rita Golden Gelman?  What an unusual life.  Since 1987 she’s had no permanent home, travelling the world as a “modern day nomad.”  She also sponsors an organization called Let’s Get Global that encourages graduating high school kids to explore other countries before going off to college.

Here are my two hot day reads, great to look at when you’re cold in the winter or when you’re hot and irritable and need something to distract the little ones from beating each other up…

1. A recent purchase, The Hot Day by Sheila Greenwald (The Bobbs-Merrill Company – 1972).

Funny and old-world charming.  Only three colors in this book.  A schoolbus yellow for the hot, some grey for neutral, and light blue for the cool.  Blue comes from a fan.  It’s the only one in the house and belongs to the boarder who has a room in the family’s home.  On that hot, hot day, that fan and its room become a source of envy by all those youngsters.  When evening comes and Momma and Poppa go out to dinner and the boarder goes out to the theater, you can guess where all those youngsters go.  Yes, they delightfully and wickedly get their cool.

2.Hotter Than a Hot Dog by Stephanie Calmenson, illustrated by Elivia (Little, Brown & Company – 1994)

This one uses lots of yellow and pink to make you feel hot and sticky and blues and white when you finally get the cool.  Grandma and her granddaughter flee to the beach to escape the city’s heat.  Great back and forth playing with words between the grandma and child.  ”I’m hotter than a salamander in the sun,” says Grandma.  The child responds with, “I’m hotter than a turkey in the oven!”  All the sensory details and descriptions  – the iron dragon of the hot train, the ouch of the hot sand, the ouch of the cold water — like “jumping into a bowl of ice cubes,” she says — allow you to feel it all and return with them happily at night when it’s cool.

I struggled with a couple sketches of a kid asking their parents for a dog (in a household of cats) or another pet (in a house with a multitude of animals).  No one else went that route, so in hindsight, maybe I should have gone with it!

However, like I said, it wasn’t working — so the day before the deadline I scrapped it for my other idea of a cat on a shelf blending in with the decorative wallpaper behind it.  As I searched for some art nouveau patterns to help inspire a swirling cat tail-like floral imagery, I came upon this painting by my beloved Gustav Klimt.

Bingo!  Cat tails and cat eyes galore!  Even a bird to entice the kitty.  Who else, I ask you, could have painted this but a cat lover?

I find it easy to get wistful at watching a youngster just starting out on their school journey.  While the fruit vendor looks on thoughtfully, the child’s whole focus is on the apple in his hands.  As young as the boy is, he already knows that the little apple represents something grand to come.

Funny how last week’s theme, which I missed out on, was food, and here I am drawing a fruitstand.

It is always a joy to view the entries.  The gallery is here, winners here.   Runner Up #8 by Klaas Verplancke is a real nostalgic beauty.