Colbert to the ‘Rescue’
Library funding is a particularly sensitive topic in Pennsylvania at the moment, as the governor and the state legislature are struggling to hammer out an overdue budget. But two recent segments on The Colbert Report touch on some of the not-so-funny complications that libraries face when it comes to their monies. On July 27 Colbert reported that seven-year-old voracious reader Dominick Philip had been asked to surrender his library card to the Memorial Library of Nazareth and Vicinity in Pa. when it was discovered (via a photo in the local paper) that Dominic and his family live in neighboring Tatamy Boro and do not pay the per capita tax that supports the Nazareth Library. In a follow-up segment on August 3, Colbert vowed to send the boy, whom he called a “Bookworm Bandit” and “Reading Rambo,” a box of books that he’d be forced to read. Included was Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow and, surely to Dominic’s delight, a boxed set of all seven Harry Potter books.
Click, Clack, Moo: Cows with Hype!
A stage adaptation of Doreen Cronin and Betsy Lewin’s Caldecott Honor book Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type (S&S, 2000) is now playing at New York City’s Lucille Lortel Theatre, and the reviews have been good (the New York Times said director John Rando “manages to, well, milk the most from this talented cast” and Variety noted, “The world finally has the musical about computer-literate livestock it deserves”). Here (l. to r.) actors Gretchen Bieber, Kristy Cates and Michael Thomas Holmes appear as three of Cronin’s boisterous cows in the Theatreworks USA production. The free show runs through August 28; more information is available at the Theatreworks USA Web site. Photo: Joan Marcus.
Happy Birthday, Tomie!
Children’s book author and illustrator Tomie dePaola is getting a head start on his 75th birthday with a celebratory exhibition at The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Mass. “Drawings from the Heart: Tomie dePaola Turns 75” runs through November 1. (His real birthday is still a few weeks away, on September 15.) As guest curator Barbara Elleman, author of Tomie dePaola: His Art and His Stories, notes, putting the exhibit together was not without its difficulties. “Think of the fact that he has created around 250 books and that there is at least 32 pages of art in each book,” she told Bookshelf. “And one can immediately see the challenge in deciding what to include in an exhibit.” Penguin Young Readers Group provided support for the show, which explores dePaola’s appreciation of design and art history. Pictured here are Elleman and dePaola at the opening celebration. Photo: Kristin J. Angel.
Blackall’s ‘Brilliant’ Blog
Illustrator Sophie Blackall (who recently illustrated the cover of Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me) is receiving some high-profile praise for her Missed Connections blog, which is featured in the “highbrow and brilliant” quadrant of the Approval Matrix in the August 10 issue of New York magazine. Blackall’s site offers her illustrations of posts from the Missed Connections section of Craigslist. The illustration pictured here accompanies an entry that reads “Cursive, on leaving, stepped on my foot. Wish I could have stricken up a conversation.” Blackall’s next picture book, Big Red Lollipop by Rukhsana Khan, will be published by Viking next March.
