I am now currently watching Arsenic and Old Lace on TCM. I love this movie. It is one of my all time favorites. Quite humorous. If you have never seen it, I will give a small synopsis of it: 1944 Frank Capra film, starring Cary Grant, Josephine Hull, Jean Adair, Raymond Massey, Peter Lorre, Priscilla Lane, John Alexander, Jack Carson, John Ridgely, Edward McNamara, James Gleason, Edward Everett Horton.
A drama critic and confirmed bachelor, Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant), has written a number of books describing marriage as an old-fashioned superstition. Nevertheless, he falls in love with and marries Elaine Harper (Priscilla Lane), who grew up next door to his old family home in Brooklyn.

Immediately after the wedding – on Halloween, as it happens – Mortimer visits the bizarre relatives who still live there, his elderly aunts Abby (Josephine Hull) and Martha (Jean Adair) and his brother Teddy (John Alexander). Teddy thinks he’s Theodore Roosevelt; each time he goes upstairs he blows a bugle, yells “Charge!”, and takes the stairs at a run (an imitation of Roosevelt’s famous charge up San Juan Hill).

Mortimer finds a corpse hidden in a window seat and suspects Teddy, but his aunts explain that they are responsible They have developed the “very bad habit” of ending the presumed suffering of lonely old bachelors by serving them elderberry wine spiked with arsenic, strychnine and cyanide. The bodies are buried in the basement by Teddy, who believes he is digging locks for the Panama Canal and burying yellow fever victims.

To complicate matters further, Mortimer’s brother Jonathan (Raymond Massey) arrives with his alcoholic accomplice, plastic surgeon Dr. Herman Einstein (Peter Lorre). Jonathan is a psychotic murderer trying to escape the police and find a place to dispose of the corpse of his latest victim, a certain Mr. Spenalzo. Jonathan’s face, as altered by Einstein while drunk, resembles that of Boris Karloff in his makeup as Frankenstein’s monster. Jonathan, upon finding out his aunts’ secret, decides to bury Spenalzo in the cellar and soon declares his intention to kill Mortimer.

Mortimer makes increasingly frantic attempts to stay on top of the situation as his bride waits for him at her family home next door, including multiple efforts to alert the bumbling local cops to the threat Jonathan poses, as well as have the paperwork filled that will have Teddy declared legally insane and committed. He worries whether he will go insane like the rest of the Brewster family, or as he puts it “Insanity runs in my family, practically gallops!”. While explaining this to Elaine, he claims they’ve been crazy since the first Brewster’s came to America as pilgrims. But eventually Jonathan is arrested, while Teddy and the two aunts are safely consigned to an asylum. In the end, Mortimer is overjoyed to learn that he was adopted and is not biologically related to the Brewsters after all. He is actually the son of a sea cook, exclaiming: “Elaine, Elaine, Where are you? Can you hear me? I’m not really a Brewster. I’m a son of a sea cook!”

Hilarious as it is. It can be very crazy. I would love to see the play that it was adapted from. I love when Cary Grant begins poking the character of Jonathan in the leg with a fork.

Ah Cary Grant…. I love him, one of my favorite actors. So charming at times, as in That Touch of Mink with Doris Day, and in An Affair to Remember with Deborah Kerr. Or his wry sense of Humor very evident in Arsenic and Old Lace, and Monkey Business with Ginger Rogers and Marilyn Monroe. The first movie that I ever watched that made me fall in love with Cary Grant movies was Father Goose, with Leslie Caron, (another favorite as far as actresses are concerned, Daddy Long Legs and Gigi.) After that was Operation Petticoat with Tony Curtis.
It is so easy to sit and watch a Cary Grant movie. Its somewhat calming. Laughably so. lol

So many colleagues from the Austin children’s and YA writing community spoke on panels and signed their new books at the 2009 Texas Book Festival this past weekend.  I always enjoy this 2.5 day party on the state capitol grounds.  But I could not go this time because I was on an illustration deadline.

So Saturday afternoon while looking for music on You Tube to ink my drawings by,  I stumbled upon “Foreign Letters” by Israeli singer, composer-arranger Chava Alberstein.  Here’s her performance at a Berlin concert with the Klezmatics.  (You have to click on the “Watch on You Tube”  link.  It’s  worth it.  She’s a spellbinder.)

“Oh, how beautiful. I love foreign letters,” she sings. “They are like drawings. They are like secret signs from magic places, from different worlds.”

Alberstein’s music is typically ravishing.  For her though, it’s about words and language.  She says so herself in songs and interviews.

Chava’s song and the book festival happening downtown got me thinking about the graphic statement of the written word –  of how text =  images and the  alphabets of the world derive from pictures.

On Monday I was reading  a new blogpost by comics creator and teacher Scott McCloud discussing the presentation of text in graphic novels. McCloud linked to an interview with Todd Klein, the graphic artist who did the lettering for Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman series, which required Klein to invent a different font for each character! You can read the interview here.

I thought of children’s author Charles Ghigna, aka Father Goose who posts a new poem on his blog each week full of word pictures for “teachers, librarians, parents friends …and kids.”

I found myself reaching for Liz Garton Scanlon’s resonant new picture book All the World with illustrations by Marla Frazee that happened to be lying by my computer.  Publishers Weekly has just named it to its list of  Best Children’s Books of 2009.

"All the World" by Liz Garton Scanlon and Marla Frazee

Yes — it was as I remembered!
Her poem text was rendered in
pencil.

Or else set in one very
cleverly executed font.

I contacted Liz to find out which.
She’s one of the leading lights in our Austin SCBWI chapter.

Did Marla Frazee hand letter the text?
I asked her.

“Yep,” she replied.

One more celebration of letters on the page!

“…Letters that are the beginning of everything good and bad in this world. With letters you can create anything you want. You can create disasters.  And you can create hopes and dreams — good dreams.” — Chava Alberstein

Two other authors from the  Austin SCBWI gang have books on PW’s list of best children’s books of the year.  The Day-Glo Brothers: The True Story of Bob and Joe Switzer’s Bright Ideas and Brand-New Colors by Chris Barton, illus. by Tony Persiani (Charlesbridge) and The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, by Jacqueline Kelly (Holt.)

This just in: The New York Times releases its “Best Illustrated Children’s Books of 2009″ list tomorrow (Saturday, November 7. ) Yes, you’ve already guessed it:  All the World, by Liz Garton Scanlon with illustrations by Marla Frazee  made the list (and it’s a pretty short list.)

Have your portfolio reviewed by Caldecott Honor illustrator Marla Frazee or the wonderfully talented Patrice Barton at the Austin SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) annual conference Destination Publication on Saturday Saturday, January 30, 2010. Find the full lowdown and registration form here

And have it reviewed a month later by Patrick Collins, Creative Director of Henry Holt Books for Young Readers  at the Houston SCBWI  conference Saturday, February 20, 2010. Download information and a registration form  here.

Mark Mitchell, who wrote this post,  teaches children’s book illustration at the Art School at the Austin Museum of Art and online. You can download his lessons on using color here, through the end of the year.

The Glagolitic Alphabet in action: Codex Zographensis from Medieval Bulgaria

Grumpy, stubborn, half-drunk, sarcastic, and unshaven did nothing to diminish Cary Grant’s charm and unsurpassed presence in his second-to-last film Father Goose, begrudgingly filling the pater familias role to Leslie Caron and a bunch of girly-girls while periodically yelling at and being yelled at by the well-cast Trevor Howard in a light and goofy homage to The African Queen.

I was very excited and happy when I first saw the new Sky Movies magazine when I came across a Cary Grant week which was going to take place in October. Well that week is almost upon us and I will have Sky+ working hard with recording all of the Cary Grant movies which will be shown. While I adore Cary Grant I have only seen him in two movies, so really need to catch up.

Schedule for next week:

Mon 19th  Notorious
Tue 20th  To Catch A Thief
Wed 21st  Indiscreet
Thu 22nd  Houseboat
Fri 23rd  Operation Petticoat
Sat 24th Charade
Sun 25th Father Goose

I was quite shocked to see that one of my favorite films is not in the list “An Affair to Remember”. But any way I am very excited to watch all of these movies, so next week is going to be Cary Grant reviews week as well.

“There are many fine poets writing for children today. The greatest reward for each of us is in knowing that our efforts
might stir the minds and hearts of young readers with a vision and wonder of the world and themselves that may be new to them or reveal something already familiar in new and enlightening ways.”

* * *

“Style is not how you write.
It is how you do not write like anyone else.”

* * *

“How do you know if you’re a writer?
Write something everyday for two weeks, then stop, if you can.
If you can’t, you’re a writer.
And no one, no matter how hard they may try, will ever be able to stop you from following your writing dreams.”

* * *

“You can find your writer’s voice
by simply listening to that little Muse inside that says in a low, soft whisper, “Listen to this…”

* * *

“Enter the writing process
with a childlike sense of wonder and discovery. Let it surprise you.”

* * *

“Poems for children help them
celebrate the joy and wonder of their world. Humorous poems tickle the funny bone of their imaginations.”

* * *

“The path to inspiration starts beyond the trails we’ve known.
Each writer’s block is not a rock, but just a stepping stone.”

* * *

“When you write for children,
don’t write for children.
Write from the child in you.”

* * *

“Poems look at the world from the inside out.”

* * *

“The act of writing brings with it a sense of discovery,
of discovering on the page something you didn’t know you knew
until you wrote it.”

* * *

“The answer to the artist comes quicker than a blink,
though initial inspiration is not what you might think.
The Muse is full of magic, though her vision’s sometimes dim.
The artist does not choose the work, it is the work that chooses him.”

* * *

“Poem-Making 101.
Poetry shows. Prose tells.
Choose precise, concrete words.
Remove prose from your poems.
Use images that evoke the senses.
Avoid the abstract, the verbose, the overstated.
Trust the poem to take you where it wants to go.
Follow it closely, recording its path with imagery.”

* * *

“What’s a poem?
A whisper, a shout, thoughts turned inside out.
A laugh, a sigh, an echo passing by.
A rhythm, a rhyme, a moment caught in time.
A moon, a star, a glimpse of who you are.”

* * *

“A poem is a little path that leads you through the trees.
It takes you to the cliffs and shores, to anywhere you please.
Follow it and trust your way with mind and heart as one,
And when the journey’s over, you’ll find you’ve just begun.”

* * *

“A poem is a spider web spun with words of wonder,
woven lace held in place by whispers made of thunder.”

* * *

“A poem is a busy bee buzzing in your head.
His hive is full of hidden thoughts waiting to be said.
His honey comes from your ideas that he makes into rhyme.
He flies around looking for what goes on in your mind.
When it’s time to let him out to make some poetry,
He gathers up your secret thoughts and then he sets them free.”

* * *

“Workshop advice. Stop attending workshops.
Read other writers if you must, but for heaven sakes
save your soul and stay away from how-to workshops.
At worst, they’ll drain you of your creativity.
At best, they’ll have you writing like everyone else.
Keep what little originality you have left from childhood.
Protect it. Nurture it. Let it run wild. That’s all you have.
That’s all you need. The only way to learn to write is to write.
There is no other way. Workshops and conferences can only
take you away from the real work, the real world, of writing.”

* * *

“Nursery rhymes are magic! They are a child’s first introduction
to the joy of language and to the enchanted world of books. Their
lilting rhythms and rhymes, their short, simple sentences and their
clever repetition of key words and phrases start children’s eyes, minds
and hearts dancing along the rhythmical lines of poetry and into a
lifelong love of lyrical language. It is the joyous power of poetry
that turns listeners into readers and readers into writers.”

What are we teaching people today? L. Frank Baum wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and a dozen-odd Oz books after it. Then a couple of other folks kept churning them out.

Baum didn’t have much luck in the newspaper business. He staged a few minorly successful plays. Ran a store called “Baum’s Bizarre”–right into bankruptcy.  He was a reporter for the Saturday Evening Post. He worked at as a traveling salesman. Then he wrote his first modestly successful book: Mother Goose in Prose. He followed it up with Father Goose. Then, in 1900, he published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. And, in doing so, he produced a timeless classic that will give him a literary legacy that last for hundreds of years. Indeed, it’s already made the first 108 years pretty well.

Cary Grant’s penultimate feature before retirement was this cheerful 1964 effort to overturn his career-long image of urbane sophistication. As the unshaven, messy misanthrope Walter Eckland, a World War II-era beach bum who monitors Japanese air activity for the Australian navy in exchange for booze, Grant makes a convincingly hard-bitten, hard-drinking antihero. Until, that is, a pretty French schoolmistress (Leslie Caron) and her seven little charges (all girls) survive a nearby plane crash and invade Eckland’s raunchy isolation. Directed by 1960s hit-maker Ralph Nelson (The Lilies of the Field, Charly), Father Goose is a glossy comedy that also does justice to its more suspenseful scenes (a deadly snakebite suffered by Caron’s character is especially memorable) and leaves plenty of room for Grant to indulge in some entertaining if atypical screen behavior. All in all, this is a minor treat in the actor’s magnificent filmography. –Tom Keogh

Father Goose is available at Amazon for $10.49. To Order click here
Amazon Product Pages contain a lot of other details on this product as Customer Reviews, Sales Ranking, Special Offers, Alternate products that customers are going for and much more.Want to read these details? click here

Want to get some other Format / Binding / Version? You can search for them from here

Other Products of Interest

• Operation Petticoat
• Houseboat
• Mister Roberts
• To Catch a Thief (Special Collector’s Edition)
• Arsenic and Old Lace

Joyful. Soulful. Absolutely delightful.

We’ve been rocking out to Dan Zanes’ music for kids–for the whole family, really–for over four years now and still do not get tired of it. Tired, actually, is probably not a word in the Dan Zanes vocabulary. This is music to make you smile, sing, tap your feet, and get up and dance.

It crosses all genres and each CD is just as wonderful as the one that came before it, making it next to impossible for me to pick a favorite.

Rocket Ship Beach and Family Dance have a special place in my music heart as they were the first two we got, but we all also love House Party and Nighttime too. And Catch that Train! of course. Its easier to pick songs than CDs, so here are some of my highlights:

1. Welcome Train with the Blind Boys of Alabama, on Catch that Train!

2. Pigogo, an absolutely beautiful and haunting song on Catch that Train! sung by a children’s choir from South Africa.

3. Pay Me My Money Down and Rattlin’ Bog from Nighttime.

4. In the summer and fall of 2005, my son refused to listen to anything other than Hokey Pokey from Family Dance.

5. Polly Wolly Doodle, Go Down Emmanuel Road, and Father Goose from Rocket Ship Beach.

Our current favorite is the new CD featuring Father Goose: It’s a Bam Bam Diddly! Try, just try to put this CD on and not start smiling, if not dancing, the minute the first track “Bam Bam” starts playing.

We’re big reggae and dancehall fans around here, but can’t imagine anyone not loving this CD. As they say on their website, its a “rollicking mix of west indian folk music, rock, gospel, and father goose original tunes.”

In March, we went to see Dan Zanes and the band here in Boulder with some friends. They opened with Welcome Table, my son’s favorite song, and put on a wonderful show, but we were sad that Father Goose wasn’t there.

So, after the show, we asked one of the band members where he was, and heard that he and his wife were expecting a baby any day. Of course, we couldn’t think of a better reason for Father Goose not to be there, and we hope that he, his wife, and their new Baby Goose are all doing well!

This is not about Africa. I know. But my 2-year old loves Dan Zanes and Father Goose so I had to post the profile (linked below) by Rob Kenner in this Sunday’s New York Times.

More than that, it is also another reason why I like Brooklyn.

Full profile here.

How about the best kid’s album that I’ve heard…

Shelly heard about this album on “The World” while listening to NPR last week, and immediately called to tell me about it.

Jamaican rapper Rankin Don becomes “Father Goose” on this album, which was produced by Dan Zanes — who Lane has already become rather familiar with. It’s essentially just a reggae kids album, but it’s really well done and I have actually found myself listening to it a few times without Lane…

I think the only kids album that I have heard which comes close to this, is They Might Be Giants’ “Here Come the A B C’s.”

If you are curious to hear it, most of the songs can be streamed off of the album’s website.

Yesterday I watched two of my very favourite films. They’re seperated by 30 years and are poles apart in genre and style but I can watch them again and again.

First up; Father Goose. Made in 1964 it was Cary Grant’s penultimate film before he retired. During the early days of World War II, South Pacific beachcomber Walter Eckland (Grant) is coerced by his old friend, Commander Frank Houghton (Trevor Howard), into becoming a coast-watcher for the Allies. He is escorted to a deserted island, to watch for Japanese planes passing overhead. As incentive, whisky is hidden in various spots around the island; every time he reports a sighting, he is rewarded with directions to a bottle. To further ensure he stays put, when Houghton leaves, his naval vessel “accidentally” hits Walter’s boat, punching a large hole in its hull.

Later, Houghton finds a replacement. The only problem is, Walter has to go and fetch him from a nearby island in enemy-infested waters. When Walter goes there in a dinghy, he unexpectedly finds Frenchwoman Catherine Freneau (Leslie Caron) and seven young schoolgirls under her care stranded there. She informs him that the man he came for was killed in an air-raid and he reluctantly takes them back with him…

Grant and Caron are superb together and he obviously relishes the opportunity to play a scruffy, grumpy loner, looking after Number 1. The girls provide them both with a ‘family’ and Walter’s hard exterior is slowly demolished to reveal the man he used to be. The constant threat of the Japanese discovering them provides several tense scenes during the course of the film - and a dramatic finale – but essentially this is a fun, romantic comedy.

I won’t say anymore in case you haven’t seen it but I can’t recommend it enough. A great Saturday or Sunday afternoon film. And it won the Oscars for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay! 

Next up is Three Colours: Blue. This isn’t a romantic comedy.

Julie, wife of the famous composer Patrice de Courcy, must cope with the death of her husband and daughter in an car accident that she survives.

While recovering in hospital, she attempts suicide but cannot go through with it. From this point on she decides to disassociate herself from all past memories and distances herself from former friendships. She destroys the notes for her late husband’s last commissioned, though unfinished, work: a piece celebrating “the unity of Europe”, commissioned by the Council of Europe. Despite her desire to shrink into nothingness, life in Paris forces Julie to confront elements of her past that she would rather not face, including her husband’s best friend and musical colleague who is in love with her, and the fact that she is suspected to be the true author of her husband’s music. As if this wasn’t enough, towards the end of the film she discovers that her late husband was having an affair, and the woman, Sandrine, is carrying his child. Julie is a kind and generous woman torn apart and then rebuilt by the after-effects of the accident. She affects all those around her and cannot simply vanish, as she first desires.

Juliette Binoche is astonishing in this film. I had never seen her in anything before and from this point on I became a committed fan. I first saw this when it was released in 1993 as the first part of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s trilogy based on the French revolutionary ideals (liberty, equality, fraternity) and it is still my favourite. Like the other films (White and Red), Blue makes frequent visual references to its title. Scenes are shot with blue filters or blue lighting, and many objects are blue. When Julie thinks about the musical score that she has tried to destroy, blue light overwhelms the screen and the soundtrack throughout is the uncompleted final piece her husband was working on, constantly being re-worked by the characters. The film also includes several references to the colors of the tricolor that inspired Kieślowski’s trilogy. Several scenes are dominated by red light, and in one scene, children dressed in white bathing suits with red floaters jump into the blue swimming pool. Another scene features a link with the next film in the trilogy: Julie is seen accidentally entering a courtroom where the main character of White is pleading his innocence.

It’s a great piece of work and well worth your time (as long as you have no problem with subtitles). You’d need a heart of stone not to be moved by it.