Into the New Year

I’ve been reading with awe other bloggers’ accomplishments and resolutions. I’m not inclined to look at the pile of books by desk, sofa, and bed and list those I’ve yet to read. It’s a bit of downer when you haven’t cracked hardbacks that are now out in paperback. So what can I do but resolve to read more this year. Novels, as well as a re-immersion in picture books, which I start reviewing this month for Shop Talk: Connecting People and Picture Books  at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.  I’ll be filling in with Top of the Shelf recommendations while writer/editor/educator Barbara Elleman takes a winter break. I look forward to keeping blog company with Andy Laties and Eliza Brown who run the well-stocked shop beautifully. Their entries run from fun to pensive, through quizzes, books on themes, children’s book news, and notices of some pretty amazing sales, so it’s a good blog to bookmark.

And I’ve started writing some picture book biography manuscripts again, a form I’ve always loved, but is hard to sell. Then what isn’t? So I resolve to explore this genre as well as poetry. And my husband is urging me to collaborate with him. I kind of think 27 years of marriage is collaboration enough. We have a different aesthetic, and I like working alone, and really could he deal with me? This morning I was making cranberry bread to take to brunch at friends. Peter asked if he could help, and I asked if he’d cut the cranberries in half. After about a cup he asked why they couldn’t go in whole. I said they could, which my niece Tori taught me by making it once in our kitchen. She threw them in and the bread was delicious. But, I explained to Peter, who also suggested a chopper, this is for a holiday with friends and should be as perfect as it can get.

So do you want them cut vertically or horizontally? he asked.

I’m not that obsessive, I said.

Eyebrows were raised.

Okay, not so obsessive about cranberries (and other things, such as centering pictures on this blog). Editing is different.

Anyway, who knows about collaboration. I’ll try to be more open in 2011. And do more yoga, which may or may not be connected.

Happy new year full of joy, creativity, and love from my family to yours!