Thirty Days of Thanksgiving - Day 15

I almost skipped this  post today.  In three plus years of blogging, I have never done four posts in the same day. Two maybe but never four.  However, I just couldn't see combining gratitude posts. So this will be short.

Today I am thankful for practical things...

...like the coat and boots that arrived in time for my trip to Boston.

...several things at work finally came together.

....and since this is also picture book month, here is my daily picture book recommendation:

Oliver

by Birgitta Sif

Candlewick Press (October 2012)

 

The Book Thief - Release Day

Check out our coverage of the movie release of The Book Thief! This is part of a series by my friend David Yenoki, who also blogs at cleverbee.org. He had the opportunity to meet the lead actors, the director, and the author of the book on which the movie was based.

EDIT: While November 15 is the official release day in the US, some theaters will not get the film until the week of Thanksgiving. It will be showing on up to 400-500 screens by then, so be patient if you don't see it listed at your local theater yet :)

Click here for the other posts:
 The Book Thief: Stealer of Hearts & Books
  Markus Zusak & Writing The Book Thief

In my younger and more vulnerable years I had wanted to be an actor. At my father’s advice, and this might be unfair to completely suggest that he was the only one who discussed this with me, I didn’t pursue acting as I matured, giving up on these dreams without ever looking at myself and trying to figure out if I had talent, potential or a future. I am quite certain after watching the film adaptation of The Book Thief that I was a mere amateur hobbyist. The film cast is so talented that their performances are so effortless and never asked me to try and suspend my sense of disbelief.

I was invited to a press event of The Book Thief with a group of bloggers including Alethea Allarey from Read Now Sleep Later, Katie from BookYurt and a collection of “Mommy Bloggers” whom I had not the pleasure of meeting previously. One of the highlights of this event was an opportunity to sit and talk with two of the stars of the film, the young Sophie Nélisse who stars as Liesel Meminger, and the acclaimed Geoffrey Rush who plays her Papa Hans.

Sophie Nélisse turned thirteen years old during the production of The Book Thief film. She previously won awards for her role in a French Canadian film, Monsieur Lazhar, an academy award nominated foreign film. She made Monsieur Lazhar when she was just ten years old. Her performance in that film is amazing and her emotional range left me convinced that is what a real child actor can do. Markus Zusak, author of The Book Thief saw Monsieur Lazhar and suggested it to the film adaptation production staff who were already considering her. They had seen over a thousand audition tapes before they got to Sophie. Sophie’s mom recorded her audition tape in the backyard using an iPhone. Film director Brian Percival says that Sophie had a presence that he liked to Madonna.

Sophie being so young it should not be a great surprise that she didn’t know about the events of World War II and what happened in those times. Brian gave her a list of things to watch and read including Hana’s Suitcase, a book about the suitcase of Hana Brady, a Jewish orphan who was killed during the Holocaust.

Sophie had no idea whom Geoffrey Rush was and when she was told that she was also going to be in a movie with Emily Watson, Sophie had thought they had said Emma Watson, famous for her role as Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films. When Sophie told her friends that she was in a movie with Geoffrey Rush, their response was “Who’s that?” which reflects her personal unfamiliarity with him. She was told that he could act and then she watched his Oscar award winning performance in Shine and was afraid that he might be crazy like his portrayal of piano prodigy David Helfgott.

At the U.S. premiere of The Book Thief at the Mill Valley Film Festival the presenters played tribute clips from Geoffrey’s performance in the movie Quills as the Marquis de Sade. He was naked in the clip and in an interview afterwards apologized “Sorry, Soph.” (That is the only part of the movie Quills she’s seen!)

On and off set Sophie and Geoffrey had a lovely time together. Sophie says they had dinner together – but she doesn’t remember it. This was possibly an inside joke between the two of them as there seemed to be many fits of laughter. Sometimes on set Geoffrey might forget a line and she would remind him because she has an excellent memory. But as an actor she found that he had quite a lot to teach her, including his preparations for the role with his copy of the book filled with post-it notes. Sophie hadn’t read the book but instead to get in character she tried to steal some books from a nearby bookstore. She did take the books but this was a conspiracy between Sophie’s mother, who had warned the bookstore staff and paid for the books, and Geoffrey, who encouraged Sophie to do it. Geoffrey did admit that in his younger and poorer days he stole a book himself. Or rather he didn’t return a book from the library. It was a big volume of the lyrics of Cole Porter.

Markus Zusak confessed to being moved to tears at a scene in the movie where Liesel hugs Papa after he discovers that she has stolen a book from a book burning. The onscreen chemistry between them is very tender and moving. This is perhaps assisted by the contrast between Liesel and Emily Watson’s Mama character. Geoffrey and Emily decided to play the roles like characters from the Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Papa is the “happy woodcutter” and Mama is the “mean stepmother.”

I didn’t get a chance to meet Emily Watson, but I would like to mention the strength of her performance as well. She plays a hard working German mother. She curses loudly and frequently, often berating her loved ones to do better and be better and informing them that their inability to be better is because they are lazy pigs. But this gruff attitude makes her vulnerable moments that much more moving because it is then that the audience realizes that she truly cares deeply for Papa and Liesel. I was very fond of her performance in the film because I had no idea that she was an English actress. I would have thought she was German!

The Book Thief opens in wide release today. You should go see it. And if you see me at the theatre, you can ask me for some tissues. You’ll probably need them.

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For more information, check out the official website www.thebookthief.com
Like the movie on Facebook
Follow @thebookthiefmovie on Twitter
Use the hashtag #TheBookThief on Twitter and Instagram

Based on the beloved bestselling book, THE BOOK THIEF tells the inspirational story of a spirited and courageous young girl who transforms the lives of everyone around her when she is sent to live with a new family in World War II Germany. It stars Geoffrey Rush, Emily Watson, Sophie Nélisse, Ben Schnetzer, and Nico Liersch. It was directed by Brian Percival (Downton Abbey), with a screenplay by Michael Petroni, based upon the novel by Markus Zusak. The film was produced by Karen Rosenfelt and Ken Blancato for Fox 2000.

The Adventures & Misadventures Middle Grade Tour Spotlights Elisabeth Dahl

For the next several days, I will be highlighting the amazing authors on The Adventures and Misadventures Middle Grade Tour.  Today I feature - Elisabeth Dahl.

My question for all the authors:
A fictionalized character of you (as a middle grader) will be the main character in a book.  What author would write the book and what would it be about?

Elisabeth answered:
I was a kid living in the seventies and eighties and moving a lot (both on my own and with friends) around my city neighborhood. Although that neighborhood was in Baltimore and not New York and there were more mail carriers than time travelers around, I'd have to say Rebecca Stead would write my story.

Check out Elisabeth's debut book:

For more information about Elisabeth: website | blog | facebook | twitter

Don't forget that there is a giveaway happening too:
 a Rafflecopter giveaway

FOSSIL Blog Tour & Special Guest Post with Bill Thomson

At the beginning of November, I had a chance to meet up with the amazing, Bill Thomson in person.  He emailed me to say he would be in town and did I want to get together.  Well, I didn't need to think about it.  Of course, I wanted to meet up.  I picked Bill up at a local artist's studio and we headed over to Kidspace Children's Museum in Pasadena.   It's a great space to hang and I wanted to introduce Bill to one of the staff at the museum.  As we walked around the museum, we talked about Bill's newest book, FOSSIL and about children and imagination and science and more.

After leaving Kidspace, we headed over to Montrose and stopped by Once Upon a Time Bookstore.  We were lucky that owner Maureen Palacios was in and I had a chance to introduce Bill to her.  I must have done a pretty fabulous job book talking Gris Grimly's Frankenstein because Bill picked up a copy while we were there.

We then headed to a small barbeque place for dinner where we managed to talk books and creative process for a couple more hours.

Here's a few things you need to learn about me...I will never make a great reporter.  I managed to not take a single picture or take notes throughout my whole time with Bill.  It just felt wrong somehow.  It would have completely messed up the tone of the afternoon/evening.  Another thing about me, I was plotting the whole time about how I might be able to create several events around Bill and his books.  Did you notice that I was taking him to places that could be potential event spots? *smile*

Now, here is the fun stuff.  During our dinner, Bill was talking to me about how he sometimes makes creative decisions with his art so that it will work better for children who are viewing his books.  I was fascinated with what he was sharing.  He then offered to share some images with the readers of my blog.  If you haven't figured this out yet, Bill is one of the nicest people I have ever met, and I am very blessed to have had the chance to spend so much time with him.  

This is what Bill shared with the readers of my blog about creating the Pteranodon in the book.

From Bill - Here are the steps used to create the illustration:

My initial thumbnail sketch establishes the basic idea.

Then I take the reference photos so I can make the details looks as convincing as possible. I shot photos from higher vantage point matching my thumbnail sketch, but I thought a lower perspective worked better. I shot over 10,000 reference photos for this book, and usually take multiple vantages for each illustration to see what works best. I have a very skinny nephew named Sam and used his back as the basis for my pteranodon. The pteranodon was a mix of a figure that I painted, Sam’s back, lizard photos, ptranodon research, and stuff I made up. I was originally going to make him brownish, but then opted for a reddish color so he would stand out from the other colored fossils and also to add more color to the book.

Looking at the reference photos, I make a tight pencil drawing.

Then I paint a light coat of yellow acrylic paint over my entire pencil drawing, and add black acrylic paint on top to establish the darkest areas.

I paint over the entire illustration with a light coat of purple oil paint and remove the areas of sunlight with an eraser. This creates a yellow and purple under painting, establishing base colors for light and shadow.

I always paint backgrounds first. The flat blue color of the sky was painted with an airbrush to keep it smooth, and the ground painted with a sponge to create texture. Many of the illustrations in the book had actual rock mixed in with the paint, but the ground in this illustration was from a farther vantage point.

Then I create a tight acrylic painting on top of the under painting. This is the most time consuming part of the process.  And finally, I go over the entire illustration with colored pencil to refine the illustration. This final step is also quite time consuming, but brings the illustration to life with subtle details and textures.

Other illustrations with closer views of the ground included actual volcanic rock in the paint:

To create texture in ground on the closer scenes, I mixed rock in with my paint and dabbed it on with a sea sponge.

While the printing process can’t reproduce the three dimensional aspects of the rock, it does capture how the paint reacts to it. I liked including actual rocks in the paint for the illustrations of a book about fossils.

And then you have this amazing book trailer:

For more information about Bill Thomson:

Bill Thomson has been called “a master at visual storytelling.” He is the illustrator of several children’s books, including Chalk (Two Lions/Amazon Children’s Publishing, 2010), which received many accolades. Thomson is also Professor of Illustration at the University of Hartford. He lives with his family in Connecticut. Visit Bill at www.billthomson.com.

To download a copy of the educator guide or student activity guide click on the images:

To check out all of the stops for the FOSSIL Blog Tour:

Sat, Nov 9	Booking Mama	http://www.bookingmama.net/
Mon, Nov 11	NC Teacher Stuff	http://ncteacherstuff.blogspot.com/
Tues, Nov 12	Just a Little Creativity	http://www.justalittlecreativity.com/
Wed, Nov 13	There's a Book	http://www.theresabook.com/
Thurs, Nov 14	Sharpread	http://sharpread.wordpress.com/
Fri, Nov 15	Kid Lit Frenzy	http://www.kidlitfrenzy.com/
Mon, Nov 18	Once Upon a Story	http://www.novalibrarymom.com/
Tues, Nov 19	The Children's Book Review	http://www.thechildrensbookreview.com/
Wed, Nov 20	5 Minutes for Books	http://www.5minutesformom.com/category/feature-columns/5-minutes-for-books/
Thurs, Nov 21	Geo Librarian	http://geolibrarian.blogspot.com/
Fri, Nov 22	Growing with Science	http://blog.growingwithscience.com/

For a chance to win a copy of FOSSIL, complete the form below.  Winner must be 13 or older and have a US mailing address.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thirty Days of Thanksgiving - Day 14

For the next few days I am going to keep things a bit short.  Somehow with my lack of planning I have several blog tours and giveaways happening.  It's amazing how sometimes I have nothing exciting to post and then I hit a week or two where I have a ton of stuff.  Regardless, I am amazed that my blog has been around for over three years and that there are people actually reading it.  For this, I am thankful.

....and since this is also picture book month, here is my daily picture book recommendation which I read with the 7 year old tonight:

Night Flight: Amelia Earhart Crosses the Atlantic

by Robert Burleigh; Illustrated by Wendell Minor

Simon & Schuster (February 2011)