Over at the Three Pipe Problem

Catch me today over at the Three Pipe Problem reminiscing about the medieval cure I endured, discussing digital art and revealing hidden art secrets in I Feel Better with a Frog in my Throat.

I Feel Better with a Frog in my Throat receives Oppenheim award!

I Feel Better with a Frog in my Throat was just given a Platinum Best Book Award for Early Readers by the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio folks. This is really such an honor because I always look for the Oppenheim award on the toys I buy for my kids. I had completely forgotten that they have a book award too. Congratulations to the other books in this category! Please check out the winners here.

Illustration Friday: Old Fashion Medicine

Raucous Readers will have to forgive me for the repetitive theme this month - my new book, I Feel Better with a Frog in my Throat is in stores now.  I figure that since it takes me so long to actually complete a book that you won't mind my blatant self promotion every 5 bazillian years.

This week's Illustration Friday fits perfectly with a page from I Feel Better showing one of my favorite old fashion cures for sore throats - putting a dirty sock around your neck. Why did people believe this cure worked? That's in the book.

Unfounded Medical Claims: This is not a bedtime book. Will cause rapid brain growth in your child.

I have started to get some reviews in. Here are the ones I have so far:

From Kirkus:
Disgusting and futile medical practices are always a pleasure to contemplate. Beccia, following closely in the spirit of The Raucous Royals (2008)—dry-witted artwork, conversational text, engaging historical detective work—asks readers to guess which “cures” may actually have helped a handful of ailments. Take a nasty cough, for example: Should you take a heaping helping of caterpillar fungus, frog soup or cherry bark? Common good sense will lead readers to wag their heads no when it comes to sprinkling mummy powder on a wound or drilling a hole in your head to relieve a headache, though some counterintuitive measures will come as a surprise success: spider web for an open wound, frog slime for a sore throat, moldy bread to treat a cut. The author provides intriguing background information on the cures—where they arose, why they were thought to be efficacious—and pulls more than one gem out of the nastiness, such as the property of silver to kill bacteria, giving birth to a familiar expression: “In the Middle Ages, wealthy-born babies sucked on silver spoons to protect against plague....” (note, bibliography) (Informational picture book. 6-9)


From Booklist
Author-Illustrator Beccia has gathered some of history's strangest cures for what ails you. Some of these are silly (puppy kisses), some are sticky (spider webs), some are stinky (skunk oil,) and some are sweetly sentimental (a mother's kisses) Do any of them work. You bet, and part of the fun is guessing which ones (don't you dare turn to the page where the answers are revealed). Arranged by malady (coughs, colds, fevers, etc.) each section is typically introduced by three possible cures, with wounds getting nine choices. The pages that follow reveal which cures work, why, and when and where they might have originated. Beccia's droll text is greatly enhanced by her witty single - and double-page illustrations, filled with humorous details. Boys will especially enjoy the ickier cures (anyone for urine drinking?), while teachers and librarians will welcome the careful research and the useful appended bibliography.


-Michael Cart

Quiz Time! Win a copy of I Feel Better with a Frog in my Throat

I Feel Better with a Frog in my Throat is now in book stores! And that means one thing.Well, actually two things. One, your child will never look at medicine the same way and will probably have a few two many leech facts roaming around in their brain. And Two....giveaway time!

I have said it over and over again - Celebrities are the new royalty, but now here is some art to prove it.

1. Angelina Jolie

2. Anne Hathaway

3. Cameron Diaz

4. Alice Cooper

5. Anderson Cooper (that other Cooper)

6. Willie Nelson

7. Dakota Fanning (awwww)

8. Robert Pattinson

9. Natalie Portman

10. Jim Broadbent

11. And last, my favorite: Amy Whinehouse

The Rules:

To play, list the following in the comments section:

1. The title of the painting

2. The artist

3. Who it depicts (if we know)

Whoever gets the most answers correctly by Friday will win a shiny new copy of either I Feel Better with a Frog in my Throat or The Raucous Royals. Your choice.

I am going to have some more medicine related quizzes next week and I will post the latest book reviews. (deep breath) Thankfully, they are all good!

If you are planning to buy the book from Amazon, using the link below is always appreciated. I get a small kickback that goes to supporting the cost of maintaining this blog, newsletter, library late fees, history books and hot chocolate consumption.



Sources: I will provide the sources for this beautiful digital work at the end of the contest.
You can find more of these amazing digitally manipulated paintings here. 

Golden Kite Art Exhibit

The winners of past Golden Kite Awards are going on tour. Here is the info:

National Center for Children's Illustrated Literature
July 8, 2010 - October 1, 2010
102 Cedar Street, Abilene, TX 79601

Over 49 illustrators (including me) will be included in the event. If anyone is in the Abilene TX area and gets a chance to see it...let me know. I would love to go but that little bald guy with the milk demands is going to keep me at home.

New England Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators Conference

You know that feeling you get when you know you have forgotten something important. You get heart palpitations, sweaty palms and images of your house burning down from that oven you are sure you left on. I had it all weekend. Accept I didn’t forget my keys, my wallet or even to brush my hair (common in my case). I forgot my kids.

Early Saturday morning, armed with caffeine and a well-intentioned GPS, I made my escape to the New England Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators Conference (NESCBWI) and not even the sound of three screaming children could make me turn around. (a 6 month old, a 2 year old, and a token husband)

Here were some of my favorite talks (I could not attend all of them):

New York Times bestselling author, Cynthia Leitich Smith kicked us out of our morning stupor with her personal journey of how she came to write about pixies, shapeshifters and vampires. She had lots of good advice on what to expect if you quit that cushiony desk job to become a children's book writer. She also talked about how to reinvent yourself once you get cast into one genre. That's something I could relate to. Cynthia is definitely a Raucous Royal...one of those renaissance women who could split dna, find a cure for cancer AND get kids reading. She was also really funny which was good because I just needed to laugh to make me forget about the kids I had abandoned.

If you have a teen with a penchant for shapeshifting then you must check out some of her books.

Deborah Sloan and Mitali Perkins gave an amazing talk on “Managing Your Online Presence.” My head is spinning with all I learned. I had no clue what Facebook could do nor did I know that there are PRIVACY SETTINGS that you MUST set. I didn’t know you could feed your blog into facebook. And I didn’t know you can make lists of contacts organizing people with helpful titles like, “fellow history geek buddies” (that would be anyone who reads this blog) and “old high school boyfriends who might want me dead” and “people who have an epiphany that I have the same last name as them.” Currently, I really only use facebook for people I know and people who have the same last name as me. (My family is from Sicily. You just don’t ignore friend requests from Sicilians). I still don’t know how to “friend” someone unless I see one of those nifty “friend suggestions.” I am going to go figure that out today. (I can hear the chorus of duuuuuuuuhs over cyberspace right now)

Check out Mitali Perkins blog. I am pretty sure that it is done by her evil twin because there is no way she could write such amazing books and still have time to have this good of a blog.

Leda Schubert gave a really amusing and insightful talk on “Telling it True.” Leda and I share a love of circus history. And you must check out her incredible book – Ballet of the Elephants. I had to leave Leda’s talk half way through to pump milk (more on that later) but I left with some great tips.

Melissa Stewart gave one of those inspirational + informative + humorous = darn good talk on “It’s a Great Time for Nonfiction”. She talked POV, Style and Tone. I learned that studies are showing that kids (especially boys) prefer reading nonfiction and that kids that read nonfiction are more likely to graduate. She gave some interesting examples of how different writers tuned conventional formats on their head.

Marla Frazee….Gasp, Faint, Throw up. (in that order). I wasn’t really planning to go to the NESCBWI conference until I heard she was speaking. Marla Frazee is my idol. I am pretty sure that a 13 year old asking a Jonus Brother (the extra cute one) for his autograph would have been calmer than I was. Marla and Allyn Johnston gave a talk showing examples of picture books that they have worked on. It is hard to describe, but seeing her revision process really made me understand how good narrative art works. I must confess that sometimes my art is pretty, but doesn't tell enough of a story. It's something that I plan to work on.

Which brings me to Carrie Jones, Jo Knowles and Kate Messner's talk on blogging. They advised not being disparaging on your blog, not giving out too much information, not letting your blog keep you from writing your book, and not always talking about yourself. (check, check, check and check.) I guess I will have to work on that too.

Lastly, I really enjoyed Cynthia Levison’s talk on writing for Nonfiction Magazines. I have never written for magazines and had no clue where to start. I am still not sure if my writing style would work in a magazine format, but I might give it a try some day.

MOOOOOOOOOOOOO
The only dark moment in the conference was that unfortunate incident where I almost drove my lucky pencil through the eye of the woman at the front desk of the lobby. (Really, I love my lucky pencil. I would have hated to get blood all over it. )

This story borders on the lines of TMI, but I am hopped up on caffeine right now so I am going to tell it anyway. Since I am still nursing, I needed to store my breast milk in the hotel lobby’s fridge. So I asked one of the staff if I could use the hotel's fridge. Simple request. Done all the time. Never a problem. Well, she immediately looked at me as if I had just asked to grow the ebola virus next to her Little Debbie Snack Cakes. Now, I must give a visual. I did NOT give her visible containers of my bodily fluids. I gave her a small 6 x 6 cooler. Shown below:

She said “No, I am sorry I can’t do that.” I asked why. She just repeated that she could not do that. I explained to her that my son would not have anything to eat tomorrow if I didn’t get that milk home safely. No, I have no extra. The kid is 21 lbs. He eats more than a small baby calf. He is a WICKED big baby. (said in my best Boston accent)

I was then sent scrambling asking strangers if I could store my son’s next meal in their fridge. Thankfully, the Applewood Restaurant let me use their fridge. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to the Applewood Restaurant.

So other than this one undignified moment, The NESCBWI Conference was another great event. Just leave your commercial breast pump at home. Lactating writers not welcome.

For the King book trailer

I am just getting caught up reading my favorite blogs and I just love Catherine Delors' Book Trailer for her next book, For the King. (It will be out in July but you can preorder now to get the best price.) Personally, I do really think book trailers work. This one makes me want to get swept away in the character's world.

I am not sure they work for children's books for younger kids so I am debating whether or not to do one for my next book. I do think the trailer for The Raucous Royals helped get the word out but I can't see an 8 year old sitting still to watch a book trailer?

Catherine's trailer was done by Kris Waldher over at Art and Words. Great job Kris!

The Historical Fiction Bloggers Round Table

My favorite blogging queens, hot new fiction books and one infamously shaped table are now holding court over at The Historical Fiction Bloggers Round Table. First up is a book that is on my must read list - O, Juliet by Robin Maxwell.

So drop that spicy egg nog and head on over to the new site.

Battling hormones with good news

I have been so cranky this week and crying over everything. Yesterday, I was convinced that when my supply of chocolate milk ran out (a pregnancy craving) that the world was a desolate and bleak place which no sane person would want to inhabit. But then look what I found....good news!

First off, Scandalous Women is soon to become a book. (said in my announcer voice) That's right...by 2011, history lovers can enjoy Elizabeth Kerri Mahon's site in a book store near you. So head over to Scandalous Women and congratulate one raucous writer of history.

Next, Kris Waldherr's beautifully illustrated tarot card deck has officially gone digital. So if you are wondering if you will find true love or financial success, just whip out your iphone and ask your personal psychic.

Lastly, and not quite as exciting...Enchanted by Josephine is having a drawing to win a free copy of The Raucous Royals. And if that doesn't make your heart skip a beat, then you should check out her historical fiction fest.

Fortune not on your side? No worries. Use your smarts instead. Head on over to Everything Tudor for another....yes another chance to win a copy of The Raucous Royals. Just write a short paragraph on your favorite royal.