Live, From New York....8 cosas meme

Tired, hot, sticky, exhausted, elated, excited and thrilled I'm lounging in my friends apartment going through emails at the end of a long, long day. I got in to New York last night and promptly went out to Times Square, then back here to the theatre district for food.

This morning I hit the fashion district and made a HUGE dent in my wallet. Then I went to Javits to attend panels, pick up my press reg and attend the Latino Book Awards (more on that tomorrow). It's hot in New York, hot and sticky but that only slightly dims the charm for me. I used to live here and loved it but eventually got homesick and went home to L.A.

Every time I come back, I fall in love with the city again. I'm on the 19th floor here at my friend's apartment and have a gorgeous view of the whole city and the Empire State Building. I'm sitting on the balcony typing and watching the city at night. There is no where in the world like New York City - the only other place I could live besides L.A. It's lovely to be here.

Tomorrow, the exhibit hall opens and I can't wait. I'll try to post the news and views if I don't pass out from exhaustion.

While checking my email, I found I'd been tagged for the 8 things meme by Gail Gauthier at Original Content. Here goes nothing:

The rules:

Each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

Eight facts/ habits about me:

I'm speak Spanglish most of the time, de veras!
I'm Chicana (can't you tell?)
I'm an Aztec dancer
I am 45 and have four amazing children and ten grandchildren!!!
I love to cook and am quite good at it.
I have wonderful friends like the one that is letting me use his apartment while I'm here
I also work in Animation. Go here and see what I do: AWN.com
I love shoes - ask anyone.

Now to tag 8 people:

Tracy Grand - JacketFlap
fusenumber8

oh to hell with it - It's one in the morning here and I'm beat. I can't find 8 people and comment.

BEA Anyone?

Like many of my fellow book lovers, I will be at Book Expo America or BEA from May 31-June 3. It's my favorite conference ever. I'll be meeting up with fellow kidlitosphere bloggers, old friends and meeting new ones. There's panels aplenty and lots and lots of books.

My posting has been sparse because I'm in pre-BEA frenzy which means I've been setting up meetings using the My BEA tool, getting all my work done so I can leave my desk in a relatively neat state, making sure I have enough business cards, packing and the usual madness that begins the week before a trip.

I will be posting news on the conference every night on this blog so stay tuned. I'm bringing a camera so there will be photos of author signings, etc. I'm attending some very cool panels and the Latino Book Awards so look for news of that. I'm also attending the Children's Book and Author Breakfast and will be in the Saturday Book and Author Breakfast as well. It should be fun.


If you're attending and we haven't yet met, send me a note. I'd love to see you at BEA.

The Virgin’s Guide to Mexico

The Virgin’s Guide to Mexio
Author: Eric B. Martin
Publisher: MacAdam/Cage
ISBN-10: 1596922109
ISBN-13: 978-1596922105

The Virgin’s Guide to Mexico is a compelling tale of a young girl and her search for identity. Alma, a bright but homely student who is nothing like her beautiful, Mexican mother decides to take a year off after being accepted into Harvard. She plans to go to Spain but her parents don’t allow it so she’s stuck in Texas having to go to the local college for a year.

Alma finds some letters of her mothers from a grandfather she never knew she had that lives in Mexico. Curious as to why her mother never speaks of her life in Mexico and having that typical teenage disdain for her parents, she runs away to find her grandfather and the secrets her mother hides. Alma hopes that Mexico will welcome her. She has a vision of Mexico as something out of a dream, a warm and welcoming place. She’ll find her grandfather and somehow, everything will be better.

Alma’s first foray into Mexico is frightening so she heads back into the US, disguises herself as a boy and attaches herself to a group of guys heading over the border.

Through Alma’s eyes we find out about the true Mexico, not the beautiful imagined dream. There are strange characters and unsavory ones, a strange old man who lives in a shack filled with beautiful paintings and the guys she hangs out with. The underbelly of Mexico is exposed with visits to whorehouses, bars and parties. Underneath the beautifully written prose is this dark hint of menace throughout. It’s a little unsettling and keeps you riveted to the page.

Alma’s quest alternates with that of her parent’s to find her. Her beautiful mother wonders what she did wrong, while her dot com rich father is determined to find her.

Eric B. Martin weaves a multi-dimensional and emotional tale of love, secrets, misunderstandings and modern Mexico. He sheds light on the tremendous poverty and challenges facing Mexico and it’s people. Martin also manages to show the shimmer of brilliance and beauty, the glory that was once Mexico and at times still is.

Lloyd Alexander

AmoxCalli is black today - Lloyd Alexander has died.

I received this early this morning.

Dear Community,

There is sad news. Lloyd Alexander died this morning. He was under Hospice care and was at home in his own bed where he wanted to be.

His wife, Janine, to whom he was married for sixty-two years, died two weeks ago - also at home. (He met and married the French Janine in Paris at the end of WWII.)

His last book, THE GOLDEN DREAM OF CARLO CHUCHIO is out in galley form. Holt publication date is August. It is vintage Alexander.

Lloyd said about CARLO, "I have finished my life work."


Rest in peace beloved storyteller.

Escape from "Special"

Escape from Special
Author: Miss Lasko-Gross
Publisher: Fantagraphics
ISBN-10: 156097804X
ISBN-13: 978-1560978046


Escape from "Special" is a witty, funny and gorgeously illustrated graphic novel about a young girl named Melissa from the time she’s about four or five till just before she enters high school. I loved Melissa because she was smart, opinionated, irreverent and sarcastic.

Her story is told in anecdotal snapshots of the memories of her life as she remembers it. There’s no glossing over or making it pretty, this is raw. Her hippie type parents Jaqui and Todd put her in one school after another and the story makes great fun of the new agey types of schools as well as those schools that do their level best at trying to compartmentalize children. Melissa’s intelligence and her disdain for the attempted pigeonholing shine through the book even when she is put in a so-called “special” school for children with learning disabilities.

Melissa wants to escape from it all. She challenges everything and as I read each wonderful little chapter, I agreed with her. I loved it when she challenged her parents as they try to cram religion into her. Melissa’s response is great. She says it’s too late now, that they should have tried that crap on her while she was still young enough to fall for it. That had me laughing out loud.

There’s great stuff in this story and a lot of struggling going on. There’s the struggle to rise above the crowd, not fall into the trap of conforming, being part of the herd while still trying to find a place to belong. There’s the struggle to be herself while fighting her own insecurities. Melissa’s struggles reflect the deeply confusing interior life of a teenaged girl trying to find herself and be herself while doing her level best not to stand out. She wants to fit in and not be noticed as much as she disdains those to do fit in.

The gorgeous illustrations have a quiet and intense depth to them and seem to reflect the inner Melissa as much as the wonderful chapter titles like Cheese Steak of the Damned. At times the illustration is moody and bored, at others scared of the dark black and white and others angry with washes of color to reflect her emotions. It's an intense palette and a fascinating technique. Text and art intertwine and emote with a particular poignancy.

Escape from "Special " is highly recommended with a word of caution for those averse to a little strong language. The language fits and is even funny but some may have a problem with it. I personally thought the use of the word “cuntiness” entirely appropriate and side splittingly funny.

Book Description from the publisher:
A moving debut graphic novel about the pain of childhood.Fantagraphics Books is proud to follow up our launch of rising star R. Kikuo Johnson (author of the acclaimed Night Fisher) by showcasing Miss Lasko-Gross in her graphic-novel debut. Escape from "Special" is the coming-of-age story of Melissa, who we first meet as a small child and depart from at the end of the book just before she enters high school. Willful, funny, and perceptive, Melissa unsentimentally questions religion, identity formation, and treacherous female "friendships" as she tours with her parent's band, battles with her therapist, and bounces from school to school. Subjected to the whims of her bemused parents and, as the years pass, rejected by her peers, the opinionated Melissa copes by watching horror movies, psychosomatically vomiting to get out of temple, and making comics.Escape from "Special" recalls a not-too-distant time when girls flaunted their knock-off Esprit and shared best-friends necklaces broken in half.

The semi-autobiographical story unfolds in a series of brief anecdotes, expressionistically dredged as if from memory, without self-regarding exposition and uncorrupted by a nostalgic haze. Drawn in black and white and washed in moody blues and full spectrum grays, Lasko-Gross's art, with its detailed backgrounds and expressive, clean-line characters, exquisitely conveys the story's blend of humor (sometimes of the gross-out variety) and keenly observed insights. Miss Lasko-Gross, who has the sensibility of a love child of Linda Barry and David B. midwifed by Judy Blume, has created a graphic novel that should appeal not only to the growing readers of graphic novels, but to teens grappling with similar unresolved questions.

Fred Patten Reviews The Ancient Book of Myth and War

The Ancient Book of Myth and War
Author: Scott Morse, Lou Romano, Don Shank, and Nate Wragg
Publisher: Red Window/AdHouse Books
ISBN 10: 0-9774715-1-9
ISBN 13: 978-0-9774715-1-5

The four artists whose paintings compose this glossy hardcover 80-page art book/folio are young but veteran comic book creators and animation studio artists. All have recently worked or still work at Pixar Animation Studios as sketch artists and designers.

In these 35 full-color experimental works (although a few are monochromatic), the four artists “each take a personal approach to their myths and heroes. Their stories include retellings of ancient myths as well as the creation of new legends” (from the Introduction by Harley Jessup).

All four work in modern art forms, from abstract to impressionistic. Scott Morse’s bold paintings illustrate specific classic myths (the Deluge, the Golem of Prague, Oedipus Rex, Finn MacCoul, scenes from Native American folklore) and more general scenes of “war” (a Wild West barroom brawl, a modern urban “The Battle of Algiers”). Lou Romano’s surrealistic works are more generic scenes of Greek history and mythology; “Spartan”, “Trojan Horse”, “War Monster”. “Zeus”, “Perseus & Medusa”. Nate Wragg has created a cartoon ancient soldier, “Pathetos the Warrior’, and painted him in battles around the world against “The Deep Sea Hydra”, “Yeti”, “Cyclops”, “Demonic Centaurides”, “The Ancient Fire Sasquatch” and more. Don Shank, the most varied artist, has created his own myths and battles (“Orange Goddess”, “Fight”, “Map of the First Galactic War”, “Archway Usher” “Stab”) in paintings that range from Dali-esque “realism” to pure abstractionism.

Each painting, on a right-hand page, is faced with the left-hand page’s artist’s notes, giving the title, description of what the scene represents, and medium. The latter range from “Gouache on watercolor paper” through “Cell vinyl on board” and “Collage” to “Digital”. More and more modern artists, especially those who work in the cartooning industries, are painting entirely in their computers, and it is impossible to tell these works from “hard copy” acrylic or gouache or watercolor works on artboard. The Ancient Book of Myth and War is impressive both as a collection of modernistic fine art, and as a showcase of animation studios’ artists’ personal artistic talents.