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Picturing a World

Labor Day, 1908, 2020

'Nuff said? Not quite: a special Labor Day thanks to the essential workers who have put their lives on the lines for the rest of us during the pandemic. They should be paid what they are worth. (One other message this year: vote.)

Via the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.

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Pop-up concert

Oh, look at this!—what a creative, generous response to the pandemic! Cellist Yo-Yo Ma and pianist Emmanuel Ax played pop-up concerts for essential workers at various sites in Pittsfield, Mass., on Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2020. That remarkable stage traveling stage was designed and built by artist Mike Rousseau. It put me in mind of Sylvia Linsteadt's Tatterdemalion or the folks at Hedgespoken. Imagine traveling players performing A Midsummer Night's Dream within its confines. Or shrink it to twig-fairy size for a sly tale. Or send it into a strange future. And meanwhile join these world-class artists in thanking the workers who are somehow keeping our world together.

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Gurney on imaginative fiction

Blog post alert: Author-illustrator James Gurney has posted a Q&A on his world of Dinotopia well worth reading. He makes the point, for instance, that fully illustrated books are immersive and provide triggers to deepen the reader's involvement in imagining that world. One answer to a question, however, startled me.
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Jacket design

Website alert: I'm a sucker for Philip Pullman's fiction and Chris Wormell's art, so I was tickled by a Pullman tweet on a 25th Anniversary edition of Northern Lights. But what really interested me as I poked around from there was an earlier website piece on How Tom Sanderson designed Philip Pullman's The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage. Authors and illustrators get a lot of attention. Jacket designers don't, but their craft is essential to an attractive book. If you're interested in how it's all done, read the article!

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Katharine Cameron

I'm reading The Fairest of Them All by Maria Tater (2020), and naturally the first thing I did was look at all the pictures. The blue-and-white vase in this one caught my eye because I have a friend who is an expert on blue-and-white china. It amuses us both to come across it in odd contexts—in this case, a picture of Snow White's stepmother by Katharine Cameron from Louey Chisholm's In Fairyland (1904). That date for a children's book puts it squarely in my character Mattie's world, and Cameron just might be someone for Amy Richardson to know if I decide to follow Amy's story.

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