come on now, new york times

In their Children's Books special issue for the fall, the New York Times has a slide show of the top 10 illustrations from picture books of the year. Excited to see some stunning imagery, I clicked on the slide show...

...only to be met with kinda crappy photos of open books where you can hardly see the pictures.

It looks like somebody just laid the books down on a black tablecloth and took a picture of them, not caring that some kind of light is reflecting off the glossy paper and making it impossible to see what the illustrations look like.

Really, New York Times? That is the best you can do?

So I guess if we want to know which are really the best illlustrations from this year, we will have to go out and look at the books ourselves.

If the Name is (Barbro) Lindgren, the Books Will Be Fabulous

One thing I love about the old book hunt is the way a long-forgotten illustration or character will re-emerge, leaving me absolutely baffled. "Baffled" is not an expression that looks good on me, so when it happens I start with Amazon, move on to Abe, and have gone as far as Google's image finder. Recently I'd been having trouble with the tale of the bad baby, a title that should belong to Beatrix Potter. I searched everywhere; all I remembered was a disobedient, highly mobile baby falling into a toilet and beating up on the dog. You'd be surprised (I mean, really) at the crap "bad baby" turns up on Google. Or maybe you wouldn't. Here it is, the fruit of my searching...The Wild Baby by Barbro Lindgren, illustrated by Eva Eriksson. There are several other titles, The Wild Baby Goes to Sea and The Wild Baby Gets a Puppy**For those interested in collecting, the Wild Baby series is out of print and the title book is currently going for high prices in online sales.

Barbro Lindgren and Eva Eriksson also did a "Sam" series, still in print, with titles including Sam's Cookie, Sam's Potty, Sam's Ball, Sam's Bath, Sam's Teddy Bear. Sam is tres cute and has the same line-drawn, watercolored artwork as the Wild Baby, and if the names were the same we might assume Sam is the wild one grown into toddler-hood. If you have any of these books, hold on to them. Yawn.

Millions of Cats and Total Book Lust

My late night browsing revealed this wonderful post from the Children's Picturebook Blog about how to tell if you have a first edition of Wanda Gág's Millions of Cats or not. They estimate its worth at about $4000. Now I am suddenly salivating over this book. (Do owls salivate?) The blog authors write:

The historical importance of the book is underappreciated by the general public, however not so within the bibliophile hobby, as the steep market value will attest. The book is still in print today, which is quite remarkable for a children’s picturebook. How many other picturebooks from the 1920’s are still in print today?

For those of us who can't spring for the first edition, I still recommend it for building your library or your child's library. It's a classic story with fine woodcut (I think?) illustrations - imagine a million cats eating all the grass off a hill! You have to see it to believe it.

Books We Love (the Frances books), part 1

Books We Love will be an ongoing service as Owl and the Glass Cat do their utmost to bring you back in touch with the classics you've grown to forget. You don't need to have children to appreciate these books--well written, beautifully illustrated, & funny!

Owl finds the phrase "second childhood" particularly offensive to both children and the elderly, and she respectfully suggests that it be banished from the language. Here at Owl and the Glass Cat Review, we believe that second, third and fourth childhood are all potential stages of development.

Tribute: Best Friends for Frances

The Frances books, written by Russell Hoban, illustrated by Lillian Hoban (with the exception of Bedtime for Frances, illus. by Garth Williams), are delightful. All of them. And the badgers look so friendly! Absolutely. In Best Friends for Frances, our heroine is disappointed when her best friend Albert fails to invite her out on his "wandering day," which involves "throwing stones at telephone poles. A little frog work maybe. Walking on fences. Whistling with grass blades," and a spectacular lunch. In response, Frances takes her little sister Gloria out on an absolutely terrific-sounding picnic equipped for egg tosses, frog jumping contests and a veritable feast hauled in a little red wagon. Frances and Gloria march out carrying a sign that reads "Best Friends Outing. No Boys," but Frances relents when Albert apologizes and promises to not to exclude her again. Albert and Frances are great eaters, here and in Bread and Jam for Frances. Check out Lillian Hoban's many drawings of hard boiled eggs in eggcups, accompanied by multiple (even cardboard!) salt shakers.

A Baby Sister for Frances
A Bargain for Frances
A Birthday for Frances
Bread and Jam for Frances
Bedtime for Frances
Best Friends for Frances

The Hobans' full oeuvre may be chronicled later, but here's a special, advance shout out to Lillian Hoban's masterpiece Arthur's Honey Bear. The Arthur books are charming, too, and Arthur the Chimpanzee is so cute and sweet-faced in Hoban's crayon(like) drawings. This story is resonant with another classic, though not a Hoban book, called Ira Sleeps Over. Boys and their bears. Girls who are badgers. The Glass Cat may take a nap now, but first, please admire her lovely pink brains. Audibly. That's it. Good night.

Hoot hoot for free books!

So I forgot that I won free books on the internet, until they arrived in the mail today. I entered a promotional contest from The Brown Bookshelf, a fine blog on, for, and by African-American children's authors. They sent me not one, but TWOOO hardcover picture books:


Snowball by Nina Crews: Illustrated in a cut-and-paste photo-collage-looking style, it reminds me of Ezra Jack Keats' classic The Snowy Day, but with real people.

When the Horses Ride By by Eloise Greenfield, illustrated by Jan Spivey Gilchrist: A book of anti-war poems with mixed media collage illustrations--looks like paint, pen-and-ink, and photocopies. I really like the illustrations in this one; they feature kids from all around the world and wars from all around the world. It's a heavy subject, but the illustrations and text deal with it lightly in a way that feels honest and authentic. Probably you're not going to be collecting a whole library of picture books about war and peace, but the illustrations make this one worth it.

I'm definitely holding onto these and will probably pass them on to my future niece/nephew!