Portland Picture Book Peers

An opportunity to meet the creator--Powells downtown, March 12 at noon!

https://www.facebook.com/jessixa.bagley/posts/10153391658268683

Anyone coming to the First Up session might be interested in reading this, and the other two posts mentioned in it, about one of the books we will be discussing for the Mock Caldecott. :)

They Call Me Mr. V: A Slightly Different Take on A FINE DESSERT

2 out of 3 of the books we are going to review on Monday made it on the NY Times best illustrated list! Join us as we try to figure out the artistic techniques that make them winners!!

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/28/books/review/28-new-york-times-best-illustrated-childrens-books-of-2015.html?smid=tw-nytbooks&smtyp=cur&_r=2

The New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books of 2015 Here are the winners of the New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books Awards for 2015.

It's MOCK CALDECOTT time!!
The Portland Picture Book Peers will do it again!! Join your illustrator peers in reviewing the best picture books of the year with an eye toward guessing which one will win the Caldecott. We will meet on Monday evenings every-other-week at A Children's Place Bookstore, from 7-9 pm beginning November 2nd and continuing until the Caldecott Awards are announced in January. Notice will be posted soon as to which books we will be reviewing. Don't miss it! :)

Help! ‘Free-Range Kid’ Epidemic Is Spreading to Picture Books | Brightly Where are their parents!? Child Protective Services needs to take a look at the parents of these "free-range" kids' book characters!

Recently picked up this adorable new picture book so we can review it in our upcoming Mock Caldecott sessions, and then tonight ran into Valerie Mackinsky in the children's section at Powells who let me know that the author/illustrator is coming to Powell's on September 27th!
http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780805098259-0

You can find out more about him and the book at his blog:
mikecurato.wordpress.com

It's time to start thinking Mock Caldecott 2015! This year we are going to start a little earlier in order to be able to review more books.

We will meet every Sunday in the early evening, from 4-7pm, beginning Oct.19th, excluding Thanksgiving weekend, and will review 3 books per session. That's 8 sessions before Xmas, ending on Dec.14. January will be for an overview, to help make our final decisions before we vote!

We will start with those I've purchased myself so far throughout the year, and will add our choices as new picture books are released in the next few months. (Submissions/Donations are welcome!)

Keep your eye out for individual event notices/invites for each session! Hope you can join us. (For those not in the Portland area, I will attempt to post our review comments here after each session.)

In September we will be doing a mid-year review of picture books from 2014 in anticipation of our "Mock Caldecott." Here is an article to get you started... (scroll down to the bottom of the article to get to the part about picture books)

http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2014/06/17/newbery-caldecott-2015-the-summer-prediction-edition/

Newbery / Caldecott 2015: The Summer Prediction Edition — @fuseeight A Fuse #8 Production Sloooooowly the predictions begin. As I post this I’m hitting the sweet spot right between Book Expo and the annual American Library Association conference. Which is to say, this is the moment in time when some folks have seen the fall galleys from BEA while other folks are about to see them at AL…

The studio is finally ready! Come check it out at the Attic Institute, 42nd & Hawthorne! Out first meeting will be a review of picture books by Portland authors and illustrators. The meeting will be held this Friday the 13th at 7pm. After the meeting at 9pm we will go out socializing together somewhere on Hawthorne. :) See event below to RSVP

Congratulations to one of our own, Kate Berube, on her first picture book deal! We're so happy for you, Kate!

SQUEEE! and even WOOOT!! are decidedly not strong enough to express our excitement over author/illustrator KATE BERUBE'S picture book debut, HANNAH AND SUGAR, which was sold at auction to Tamar Brazis at ABRAMS Books in a 2-book deal for publication Spring '16.

Publishers Weekly has the announcement:
http://bit.ly/PWBerubeHANNAHandSUGAR

AND, here's a sneak peek at a HANNAH AND SUGAR sketch by Kate. Hooray!

Well...we were totally wrong, except for Journey. Comments, everyone??

http://news.yahoo.com/american-library-association-announces-2014-youth-media-award-140000472.html

The votes are In! Our Mock Caldecott Medal goes to "Mr. Tiger Goes Wild," scoring 28 points using the official Caldecott balloting system. Honors books go to "Journey," scoring 12 points; "Bluebird," scoring 11; and "On a Beam of Light," scoring 9 points. Can't wait to see tomorrow who the REAL committee chooses!!