A Dazzling Display of Dogs on shelves this week!

Friends to the Four-Pawed:

my second picture book, A Dazzling Display of Dogs (written by Betsy Franco – yes, that Betsy Franco), has been released and is available at your local bookstore and online. We’re super excited about it over here, and hope you’ll get yourself a copy!

The book release party has been set for March 23, at Diesel Books here in Oakland. Andy and I will probably, as with the Curious Cats opening, embarrass ourselves in front of you. Just to let you know.

Here’s a great review from School Library Journal:

Starred Review. Grade 1–5 – This follow-up to A Curious Collection of Cats (Tricycle, 2009) is dazzling indeed. Each of the 34 poems features a different animal, most of them engaged in true dog behavior. From farting in the car to wheezing and snoring while sleeping, these pups are funny and lovable even when they’re being annoying. The verses and the book’s design are beautifully matched. In “Emmett’s Ode to His Tennis Ball,” the text is enclosed in a circle held firmly in the dog’s mouth. It begins, “Slobbery, sloppy, slimy, sphere—oh, tennis ball, I hold you dear….” Like the poems, the pictures are funny and dynamic. The pages are definitely full, yet careful use of color, typeface, and detail means they never look chaotic. A note says the pictures were started in pencil and then finished using monoprints and Adobe Photoshop. Overall, a delight for kids, their adults, and maybe even their beloved canine companions.—Lauralyn Persson, Wilmette Public Library, IL

Sadly, ‘A Dazzling Display of Dogs’ is one of the last books that Tricycle press will publish. I am so grateful to my editor Abigail Samoun for making this book happen!

See more images from the book here.

xm

Dog Dreams is up on Etsy

Hi Kids.

We’ve been working like mad to get Dog Dreams ready for the July 29th opening. It’s a shiny little gem of a book, and we’re all very excited about it. Huge thanks go to Pam De Luco and Carolee Wheeler (as well as a handful of other kind volunteers at the San Francisco Center for the Book) for the hours and hours and hours of work that has gone into the production of this book. You can see the production photos here.

I have a feeling that this edition of Dog Dreams (100 copies) is going to sell out. If you are interested in getting yourself a copy of the book, go to the SFCB’s Etsy page and order one!

This is a book that I have wanted to make for a long, long time. The idea for Dog Dreams came to me while watching my (then new) dog Olive sleep on the couch next to me. She twitched, huffed, barked, and jerked her way through a series of (seemingly) thrilling dreams. I’m pretty sure she was dreaming the typical dog dreams: squirrels, cats, and ball. But who knows? Maybe she was dreaming of a trip to Paris – or of flying like a bumblebee. Maybe she was simply sitting for tea in the shade of her favorite tree. This book is about this – as well as a little taste (for kids) of what it might be like to be a grownup.

It’s been great fun to immerse myself at the center. I’ll miss having an excuse to go there every day.

xm