It’s a fun job and somebody has to do it.
We’re talking about interviewing 51 artists — professionals, hobbyists and children — about their drawings for our Love of Reading Gallery. It’s all part of the celebration of the second anniversary of the Just One More Book children’s book podcast.
On this edition, Mark speaks with Deborah Zemke about her contribution, You are What you Read.
Besides book illustration, Deborah Zemke is an illustrator for Ranger Rick Magazine.
Be sure to enjoy all of the amazing artwork in our Love of Reading Gallery.
Some books are so perfect, you’d swear the idea must have just poured out of the author’s head and on to the pages of their notebook. It might have taken an afternoon.
Not so with the picture book Bill in a China Shop.
Author Katie McAllaster Weaver took a seed of an idea, an accidentally misspoken idiom, and laboured over it, on and off, for many years.
On this edition of Just One More Book, Mark speaks with Katie McAllaster Weaver about the iterative process of writing and perfecting Bill in a China Shop***, finding support and inspiration in a high school creative writing teacher and her writing group, and always wanting to be a writer.
*** Our review of Bill in a China Shop was recorded 401 episodes ago and is appropriately rough around the edges.
Photo provided by Katie McAllaster Weaver.
We continue to receive fantastic illustrations for our Love of Reading Gallery, and have even spied a sneak preview of a work in progress by one illustrator. Yesterday, we were surprised when we received the illustration that appears at the right of this post. Can you guess who created it?
Don’t forget to stop in to our Love of Reading Gallery to see the great artwork that’s on display for everyone to enjoy.
We generally expect children’s books to educate and entertain children. It’s a special book that inspires a child to experiment and explore the world around them. It takes an author that conducted experiments during their own childhood, experiments like measuring the length of a frog and the distance of its hop to figure out how far a human with frog legs could hop. It takes an author that’s willing to count and pop one hundred thousand kernels of popcorn to demonstrate big numbers.
Our guest on this edition of Just One More Book!! is David Schwartz, author of fifty books including How Much is a Million — which inspired our two daughters to count to five hundred during a walk prior to this interview — and Cybils non-fiction finalist Where in the Wild.
Books mentioned:
Photo from davidschwartz.com.
Last week, in part one of a two-part series, I spoke with Jason Wells, Director of Marketing and Publicity for Harry N. Abrams Inc. about the role and career path of the publicist, the high turnover rate in the industry and the evolution of book marketing and publicity in the digital age.
On this edition of Just One More Book!!, part 2 of my conversation with Jason Wells. This time, we talk about digital marketing and publicity and the future of children’s books in the age of MySpace, Facebook, blogs and podcasts.
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Interest in our 
For someone who says she hates public speaking, Ms. McAllaster-Weaver is eloquent and informative in describing her process. I read Bill in a China Shop to my nephew a few years ago. We both loved it and I bought copies for every child I knew.
I love Bill in a China Shop. Keep dabbling, please. I’d love to read more, picture books, poetry, YA, anything…