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THE DOG ~ [contest piece for #50PRECIOUSWORDS 2021]


Author and friend Kathy Halsey turned me on to author Vivian Kirkfield’s #50 Precious Words Contest – a story for kids in 50 or less words. I thought I’d have a go. 

This is basically a true “tail” of my dogged determination to get a furry friend, pitted against my mom’s dogged determination to not allow – or love it.

THE DOG
by
Bonnie ‘fireUrchin’ Lambourn

I begged, “Pleeeeze!  Let me.  I NEED a dog.”
Four years.
Daily.
HOURLY.

The relatives prodded . . .
nodded.

Reluctantly Mom caved,
but her eyebrows twisted like cheese curls
at the black mop with legs and wagging tongue –  
who then skulked to the corner.
40 minutes sulking.

Earned . . .
a bowl of food. 

[wc= 50 words ]

Featured

What is it about picture books that keeps me paddling through the currents?

Right now, the currents are getting this new website set up. My old one was no longer editable, so had to face that struggle of facing this… and while it is a simple setup for many, I’m a “pantser”. Picture book people know that means I jump in and face the waves rather than read loads of instructions.

As an artist, prior teacher and dancer, I’ll validate myself by saying – I’m a kinesthetic, visual, learner. Even if I read directions and follow them to the letter, and get it right first time around… I remember what I wade through better. Eventually I’m a swimmer who will save myself from the wild wave… but right now…. this blog post is a mostly a test to see if it lands in the right spot.

©bonnie lambourn / fireUrchin ~ 2021

Our Every Move

Daily writing prompt
Which aspects do you think makes a person unique?

My very first year in art [1972] at Parsons the New School, I also took a class in experimental dance. A quirky choreography assignment here leveled up my ability to notice and see the distinct unique qualities occurred there that shaped and altered my awareness – every bit of understanding about and my own practices in art, writing and life.

We were sent out into the streets of Greenwich Village for an hour with a pad and pen to write notes on our observations of 13 distinct walks by individuals. They had to be distinct, which forced us to notice things we normally might overlook. A slight uneven gait, a head down – or a straight back, someone who turned or moved quickly, a shuffle, how the arms swung or hands in pockets.

When we returned to the studio, we took a handful of our most interesting observations and walked them ourselves. Then we expanded the movements. A small arm swing might become a complete rotation. A slight turn to the right a spin.

Then we took all these diverse move and created a moving image of intersections – an abstract painting of energy with bodies.

I carry these noticing and thoughts into my concern for others, my character creations for picture book stories.

I carry them into my body every time I explore music with movement – a practice I resumed decades later on in the realm of ecstatic, transformational, contact improvisation and authentic dances.

It may seem an odd part of our uniqueness, but out of all those specific and possibly dismissible traits, some that might be judged negatively, I learned to see a rich array of perspectives that together increased all possibilities.

I’m suddenly reminded of the somewhat haunting paintings of George Tooker of people all walking the same exact way in the same clothing looking the same. . . this link has a perfect description* from one of these paintings The Subway – https://whitney.org/collection/works/3052

*[The last line of this description = As Tooker remarked, he chose the subway as the setting for this painting because it represented “a denial of the senses and a negation of life itself.” ]

If this denial is negation of life itself, it seems to me the uniqueness of all living beings is a celebration of life and a triggering of curiosity in us begins with wanting to explore what makes other beings tick and stimulate our minds and hearts – as well as inspire our creative drive.


FUNNY – I like to read comics bk

Mossy and Tweed: Crazy for Coconuts by Mirka Hokkanen

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I adore this book! It is hysterically funny. I don’t normally love slapstick, but Mirka Hokkanen has captured the style of cartoon slapstick that all kids know isn’t real – and clarified it well early on when Tweed is flattened like a pancake by the coconut. I am trying hard not to reveal the funny punny like places, but the author doesn’t miss a beat in her timing and inclusion of funny ideas into the art and story. My favorites are those mischievous pixies, and the old emotional ‘Unicorn’.

At the end I missed the funny home improvements until going back for a reread. I think, like me, however, kids will want to read this time and again. Plus a second Mossy and Tweed are on the way soon!

It’s a book beginning readers can handle alone, or you can enjoy laughing along with kids as you read it aloud.




View all my reviews

Storybook Review

Evergreen by Matthew Cordell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Matthew Cordell seems to have a magic for creating the genre he chooses without worrying about what the industry says are genre restrictions, and I’m grateful for his lead in this. Of course, that he has a Caldecott Medal under his belt for Wolf in the Snow [one of my all time favorites] helps – but also puts some pressure on subsequent books to hit that mark.

No worries, this book is nothing like Wolf – other than Matt’s love of animals shining through. However, here he’s gone back to tried and true formats from the past, stretched them a bit, and created a super funny folktale-like story in 5 parts. With the meta theme of Little Red Riding Hood intertwined, but here the character Evergreen filled with anxiety to make the trip to bring healing soup to a sick granny, it heightens the twists and turns along this tale that completely avoids it being another wolf story, and the surprises along the way – especially the end – which I won’t spoil here – make for hilarity enlarged!

I wonder if Matt didn’t tongue-in-cheek name this character and book title Evergreen because that is the term used in KidLit for a book that stays in print, able to reach readers over many many generations.

Some people might not know that Matthew Cordell is an avid animal photographer, but his interest is authentic, and though this book is a very humorous take in both story and art, I feel his intention at sharing this love with kids shines through.

As for ages, it’s a great story for either reading aloud to a younger kid with patience, or early readers to get the feel of a somewhat longer picture book.
Reminiscent of Frog and Toad in format and art style, but 5 parts instead of 3 or 4, and all progressing to tell the same story in chapter style.



View all my reviews

THE DOG ( contest piece for #50PRECIOUSWORDS 2021)

Author and friend Kathy Halsey turned me on to author Vivian Kirkfield’s #50 Precious Words Contest – a story for kids in 50 or less words. I thought I’d have a go.
This is basically a true “tail” of my dogged determination to get a furry friend, pitted against my mom’s dogged determination to not allow – or love it.




THE DOG

by Bonnie ‘fireUrchin’ Lambourn

I begged, “Pleeeeze!  Let me.  I NEED a dog.”
Four years.
Daily.
HOURLY.

The relatives prodded . . .
nodded.

Reluctantly Mom caved,
but her eyebrows twisted like cheese curls
at the black mop with legs and wagging tongue –  
who then skulked to the corner.
40 minutes sulking.

Earned . . .
a bowl of food. 

[WC= 50 words]

KidLit Review

Acorn and Button by Laura Petrisin

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


A debut publication for Laura Petrisin as both author and illustrator, she’s bent the genres back in time a bit to revive the hybrid of story and pictures with a beginning chapter book.

Similar to many books many of us grew up loving – in the manner of Frog and Toad – but with the addition of beautiful watercolor illustrations, and of 7 adventures instead of 3 or 4, the characters have distinct voice and personalities, with traits that seamlessly work to entertain while showing the benefits of getting along and building a friendship between two who in the world of human kids in school might sooner become bully and victim.

The twist here is the “bully” character – Button – is pointing out manners. Acorn is unassuming, slightly gullible, overtly friendly though shy ready pal open to learning. Somehow he manages through the adventures to become a hero – while still not wanting to be in the spotlight for his rewards.

My favorite chapter was perhaps the one about fireflies because it shares in both a gentle and a scary way that fireflies deserve their freedom. It is this same idea that makes me love Button fully in one sentence …”I was stuck in a sleeve once and I didn’t care for it.”

As a child I found myself always imagining inanimate objects as alive, wondering what they experienced, and how they felt. Maybe this is a stretch, but as an adult this never fully left me, and I realize now that I’ve studied indigenous ways and thought a bit, this is what is meant by sentient life – every single thing is alive in its own way. While an acorn is part of the natural world, a button is part of the world we humans created. As soon as buttons are created they served a purpose. In a sense they were not free to live their own lives.

Petrisin has set Button and Acorn free to serve many purposes but the best for kids is how much fun they bring to solving life’s challenges.

I was a teacher for 30 years, and feel the hybrid format – while not norm in publishing houses these days – is ideal for various ages learning to read – from listening to an adult or older child read – to anyone for whom reading without art is still difficult. Illustrations don’t give the whole story away, but encourage those for whom reading is still difficult. Since Acorn and Button are of indeterminate age, with wonderful descriptive vocabulary at learning level, there is no reading “down” but no extreme difficulty. I hope this will find its way into classrooms and school libraries.

BONUS – Since reading this book, I signed up for the author’s email list of related info and WOW. Many authors offer free coloring pages, puzzles, etc. Petrisin does, but she also writes from the characters. We learn more about their lives, feelings. What a delightful continued reading experience!



View all my reviews

I regularly review KidLit on GoodReads.com – and occasional adult lit.

© Bonnie ‘fireUrchin’ Lambourn 2023

Amazing early MG GN!Lost in NYC: A Subway Adventure by Nadja Spiegelman

Lost in NYC: A Subway Adventure by Nadja Spiegelman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


What an amazing book! It should be listed however as by Nadja Spieglman & Sergio Garcîa Sanchez. Sanchez is a professor of comics and a celebrated experimental comics artist – well deserved in that!
He is one of the authors in this collaboration as well – “About the Authors” clearly explains this was based on his own experiences of riding the subways, taking reference photos, and the two main kid characters are named after his own kids. Also – The colorist is his wife.

I wish I’d had this even at age 16. I’d moved back after 9 years away, to live with relatives for the summer. At my age, others expected me to take the subway on my own. It made me anxious and I really got lost a few times. Rode an entire line to turn around, because I was so scared to get further lost, not feeling I understood the map system and nobody to explain it to me. No cell phones back then.

Not saying this book teaches the entire subway routes, but through an adventure where a kid brand new to NYC and another student get lost on a trip to the Empire State Building, the lessons their teacher has imparted in the beginning sank in enough to help them through it. We see arrivals there from three different routes, and the artist manages to help us see the main characters throughout complex city scenes that could compete with Where’s Waldo, but with more realism and up close characters. Even where the main characters are shown in multiple positions within a complicated panel, they were easy to spot. Even when the panels go in complex ways, or talk opposes normal reading direction, it’s easy to follow or see in a second what he’s designed – which makes for more fun – and totally captures the feeling of NYC.

In the end, not only did the characters feel better, more confident and open, but that feeling was infectious. I lived in NYC in college, in Brooklyn and urban NJ for over a decade of my adult life, yet still have some anxiety when needing to take the subway. But this book is full of delightful fun – perhaps the perfect read while on the subway. Definitely before to help prepare one.

The facts throughout and the references in back matter about the subway system and Empire State Bldg elevator system are fascinating reads for any age.It makes you want to rush to NYC and start exploring. If that’s not enough, the back story where Sanchez tells how his photo taking created concern for a police officer who began chasing him, and his subsequent story within a story throughout this book had me going back to find the scenes of Sanchez and policeman.

It’s a short book, a fast read, but one that kids will want to explore many times over.

Belongs in any classroom imho, as it gives kids anywhere a window into the worlds of NYC culture, historical, science, and engineering facts about building tunnels, elevator systems, etc in such a fun way. The art alone is worth 5 points.



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Shifts from Story Storm – and being from a displaced tribe

I’m not trying to share everything I have found inspiring this year engaging daily with Story Storm 2022, but this one feels a bit vulnerable – so it feels worth sharing.

Funny, I found myself writing a draft inspired by a Storystorm post this week – that was so simple. It was about finding a random word in a dictionary that jumped out at you.

I am presently holed up in a hotel – displaced by a disastrous water pipe flooding in my apartment building. But I had managed to go back and get my desktop out, and keep at this, and maintain some semblances of my world between the chaos and the crummy days that hurt. So I used a random verb generator, then brainstormed as directed, and somehow a first draft was born about a visit to Grandma for lunch / Bubbe’s Bagels n’Nosh – with Yiddish words sprinkled in. Not sure I can make it work. It’s been a long time since Yiddish words were part of my daily life, so I’ll need to check on spellings and such, but it felt like a home far removed from my present life but still there.

I’ve been torn about whether or how to share that part of my upbringing and life – my beliefs have traveled outside of religion, while my culture remains part of me – now mixed in with any other parts.

I think there are many individuals and families as well similar to me, that don’t fit in neat boxes of identity, with lots of intersectionality happening.

Various days of Story Storm posts have also got me to thinking more about how to sprinkle the life that is easily invisible into some of my stories or characters within.
My desire and attempts for decades has been to represent the diversity of kids I’ve known in my life, had in my classes, loved and feel were practically invisible in children’s books. My ideology and idealism remains to share the vision of the world I wish to be – but one book can’t do it all.

My biggest problem is those boxes. I respect every person’s choice in how they identify, as well as he myriad of possibilities that may have sourced and influenced their lives to make them a rich melange, but not the sort of melting pot idea that was taught when I was a kid. That melting pot idea was an attempt to assimilate us all into one bland porridge, and it didn’t work anyway.

My father’s desire to be accepted as a white person in a white society was as strong as his desire to be a proud Jew, and as strong as his desire to live free. It makes sense, because he came over from a closed town in the Ukraine overrun by pogrom violence at age 11. He went to school till 5th grade barely and went to work at age 14 sweeping in the sweat shops of the NYC garment industry to support his mom and two little sisters. A story similar to many others, just as my maternal grandfather was a tailor who brought over 15 families. Poor or rich, they all faced similar displacements.

I know my present displacement is nothing compared to theirs, and it isn’t even my first one. Even if I pass for white, even though they stamped white on Jewish passports later on, perhaps to help protect us from harm, I choose to identify the way it feels is more true in every way to me. Yes, I understand white privilege, and that it doesn’t;t matter if I had many challenges and hardships in my life. I do not deny that society afforded me these – though on a few pointed occasions when someone found out I was from a Jewish family the tide turned, it was rare.

It is in part because I was born here that it is urgent we disclaim white status, and the use of defining people by the color labels of a construct which divides and pits groups of people against one another, to allow those with money and power to hold down the rest, and those they have done in this country the longest being at the greatest disadvantage and trauma.

I grew up feeling and seeing the unfair partitions. I was very clear at a very young age that while my father, aunts and grandparents found some niche to survive threat, fear and trauma, exchange it for survival and opportunity to work hard, they were given at least some grace of acceptance by most and freedom to work hard and do better. They did not get immediate stares in most surroundings,

Yet I felt the feelings of separation, being of a lower class, and competitions I had no clue or desire to engage with. . . I did not want to be in a race.

But stealth is not a place that fits or feels comforting. I didn’t put down one part of me only to trade it for another group. I found various beliefs and interests, skills and talents, and things I find difficult but important, and discovered some that just don’t fit who I am.

As I age, I am finding more ways to share all the parts of who I am to those who don’t bother to ask, and extend how I am seen. I don’t want to be in a box, or even in 7 different separate boxes. I might like it if I could have 7 different “earth suits”, but I have only one.

As I write and draw I am thinking about the words, and the holidays, the foods and people who are still part of my life, and ways to not withhold them, and possibly intertwine them the way I wish it to be.

2022 storystorming

I started off Storystorm as I did last year – excited – then deflated – feeling a bit uninspired by new ideas. I should have remembered from 2021. That feeling got a huge reboot back to excitement after a few days.

Quickly a day arrived where ideas bounced against the next day’s ideas, and against a totally separate book launch event by/for Peter H. Reynolds. I almost didn’t draw the heart along with the authors and artists onscreen. But then came this heart-faced character I really liked.

Suddenly on day 10, I had a first draft along with pages of seeds, word play, doodle and other story ideas – and then a first draft for a PB 2 days before my critique group meeting – who claim it a draft nearly there and worth dummying.

That CG Meeting inspired more bouncing ideas between us, and by me following the very next Storystorm inspiration. I found myself writing most of the afternoon and night. A 2nd PB draft with various days ideas and that character was developed.

Can’t wait to see what is next! 2022 feels like a very good year so far.