Calendar Link

Hi All –

I just posted about Crocodiles, Crockodockles and Calendars and forgot to include a link.

Please CLICK HERE for a link to this year’s calendar. Thank you all for your vigilance in finding the missing link!

Julie Paschkis

Crocodockle

For the past six years I’ve made a calendar which I sell to raise money for the ACLU.

This year’s image includes a crocodockle snapping at the American Eagle.

I have never seen a crocodile in real life, but they populate my imagination.

On the Go , collage, J. Paschkis

I call mine crocodockles because they are inaccurate representations of the noble lizard Crocodylus.

Crocodockles can be scary

Illustration from Artist’s Book ALPHABABBLE by J.Paschkis, bound by Claudia Cohen, Two Ponds Press

but they like to go to parties.

Collage, J. Paschkis

They can help point the way

Ms. Weathervane, ink and gouache, J. Paschkis

or lie below the surface unhelpfully.

Voyage, Ink and Gouache, J. Paschkis

Some crocodockles like eating chickens

and some crocodockles prefer the taste of words.

Illustration from ZigZag, by J. Paschkis coming soon from Enchanted Lion Book

If you would like to order a crocodilian calendar please click here. They cost $15 each: all $15 goes to the ACLU.

Hurry before they are all snapped up!

Aurinko by J.Paschkis, ink and gouache

Thank you.

Julie Paschkis

p.s. I am not the only crocodile enthusiast. Here is a link to a wonderful blog post by Andrea Immel about crocodiles in children’s books.

What Crocodiles Eat for Dinner Besides Clocks, Pirate Captains, and Elephants’ Children

GOOD USE OF EXISTING MATERIAL

In our family we give extra points for Good Use of Existing Materials. Mostly this is simplified MacGyvering, done on the fly, like substituting a paper towel when the coffee filters run out, or opening a wine bottle with a screw and a hammer when you can’t find the corkscrew.

MacGyver was a television series about an undercover government agent who preferred to fight crime with ingenious feats of engineering rather than lethal force.

Pajama bottoms that double as capris, an old sweater sleeve reborn as a winter hat, certainly duct tape and bungie cords put to inventive use: all qualify for GUOEM points.

This post itself should earn me some points. It’s a topic I first explored ten years ago on the now-defunct blog of the Vermont College Children’s Writing MFA program faculty. So meta.

My beloved Aunt Norma belongs in the Good Use of Existing Material Hall of Fame. She was a recycler before recycling was a thing; a model of economy and ingenuity. Consider her reuse of milk cartons, for instance. Like many, she used empty milk cartons as containers to freeze soup. But she also cut them lengthwise to hold chicken breasts which she defrosted on the floor in the front of the refrigerator to take advantage of the warm fan there. On her kitchen counter, flattened milk cartons found new life as cutting boards. In her storeroom, she organized stuff into more milk cartons.

Even her Fourth of July party featured old milk cartons. It included a Milk Carton Regatta, motored and non-motored classes, racing across her swimming pool. No milk carton went to waste at Aunt Norma’s.

In my experience, Good Use of Existing Material applies to making picture books, too. The six Zelda and Ivy books are rooted in my childhood as the middle child of five – sibling rivalry is my God-given existing material. More recently, Ocean Lullaby grew from a beach singalong with a grandson on my lap, when I looked out and wondered how the sea-animal families settle down at night. Even on vacation, existing material is waiting to be shaped into stories.

Your own particular existing material is your take on it all – what grabs your attention, what makes you laugh and shiver and cry. The task is to identify the materials we have to work with – including the metaphors, the details and even the individual words – and then to use them ingeniously, with the snick of a key in the lock, to create the story.

Kinda like Macgyver.

– LMK