Ho-hum news

Oh, nuts. I'm sad to say the UW class has been canceled for this summer. Hopefully it will go on next summer. I am mostly sorry you'll miss Richard Jesse Watson's painting demo, and the smartest person I know, Martha Brockenbrough, talking about picture book writing.

You're in a bit of luck, though, both of them will be at SCBWI Int'l's 40th Annual Summer Conference. More about that here.

The books I recommend for beginning illustrators

• Martin Salisbury's ILLUSTRATING CHILDREN'S BOOKS
• Uri Shulevitz's WRITING WITH PICTURES
• A primer for the whole biz/shebang, Harold Underdown's THE COMPLETE IDIOT'S GUIDE TO PUBLISHING CHILDREN'S BOOKS
• And for authors, you can't go wrong with Cheryl Klein's SECOND SIGHT. It's new and I love love it.

If you had been planning on taking the class, I hope you'll still keep your Tuesday and Thursday nights set aside, devoted to picture book making. I am, and I'll be rereading those books mentioned above, plus a new one that I'm kinda gaga for. And not because the book includes a delicious pasta recipe. Not because of that at all.

Ivan Brunetti's CARTOONING. Structured so each chapter is a week of class. And all of the exercises strike me as fantastically invigorating. Like the city's early season outdoor pools, before they've had a chance to be ruined with heated water. Why heat water? How is that refreshing, I ask you?