One of the many pleasures of Edmund de Waal’s The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance (2010) is its evocation of the thrill of research. As he traces the history of his family’s netsuke (small Japanese ivory and wood carvings), de Waal describes great-great-great grandfather Charles Ephrussi’s art-collecting in nineteenth-century Paris as “‘vagabonding’ … done with
The index and (now proofread!) page proofs for Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children’s Literature (forthcoming this September) are in the mail, heading back to the publisher. Â To commemorate this occasion, here are yet more cuts and a few other changes –Â most of which
OK, “Joy” might be the wrong word – unless we modify that title to “The Anticipatory Joy of Finishing the Index” or “The Joy of Finding a Great Index.” Creating an index can be a mind-numbing slog, and creating it while checking proofs (as I am doing right now) doesn’t make it any more fun. But
Cushlamochree!  It’s a portrait of Barnaby’s fairy godfather, Mr. O’Malley, in … 1962!  Yes, 1962 – which makes it unusual for several reasons.  First, Crockett Johnson didn’t draw Barnaby for its 1960-1962 revival.  Warren Sattler did.  Second, it’s a bit looser than Johnson’s drawings of O’Malley during Barnaby‘s original 1942-1952 run.  As a result, you can
I’d intended to post more of these in process, but literally had no time. The manuscript was due back to the copy-editor yesterday – I mailed it today, and it will reach her Tuesday. Some of her suggestions were dead-on, some were not, and others were somewhere in between. I accepted the first type, rejected the
Immersion in the thoroughly copy-edited manuscript has prevented me from getting more cuts up here, but there are plenty to share.  As noted in the post from earlier in the week, the copy-editor was also charged with reducing the length of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How An Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and
I know. You thought that me posting omitted portions of the biography was over months ago. So did I. Thing is, the copyeditor for Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How An Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children’s Literature (coming September 2012) was also charged with getting the manuscript shorter still. Â And
One of the great things about working on the biography of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss (due out in the fall of 2012) is getting to talk to interesting people. Â One of the sad things is that many of them pass away. Â I just learned that Andy Rooney died last night, at the age of
Inspired by BoingBoing’s notice of my post on Syd Hoff’s leftist cartoons, I’m sharing another letter from the late Mr. Hoff, along with a cartoon from 1939. As those who remember his first letter to me might recall, he and I corresponded – and spoke over the phone a few times – when I was
In honor of what would have been Crockett Johnson‘s 105th birthday, I can exclusively reveal both the title of the book and the name of the winner of my Invent Title for My Book, win a Signed Copy of the Book contest. Â Yesterday (Wednesday), my editor emailed the title that he and his colleagues liked