BINDERY: an afternoon with children’s books authors Jim Averbeck, Julie Downing, Christy Hale, and Yuyi Morales

The Bindery hosts a special afternoon of readings by children’s books authors Jim Averbeck (Trevor), Julie Downing (Tessa Takes Wing), Christy Hale (Water Land: Land and Water Forms from Aroud the World), and Yuyi Morales (Dreamers). Please join us!

 

Trevor 
by Jim Averbeck

 

Trevor is a lonely yellow canary looking for a friend.

He stretches his wings the width of his boring cage and notices the tree outside stretching its branch. And on the end of that branch? Another canary! But he’s so shy and quiet.

Trevor knows just how to make him feel comfortable.

This is an elegantly told, truly unique tale by author Jim Averbeck and illustrator Amy Hevron, of a canary who befriends a lemon and finds that you don’t have to be two of a kind to form a meaningful and lasting friendship.

 

Jim Averbeck works, plays, and evades the law in San Francisco, California. His first book, In a Blue Room, was a Charlotte Zolotow Honor book. His popular books Except If and Oh No, Little Dragon! feature charming protagonists with pointy teeth. His book, The Market Bowl and his middle grade novel A Hitch at the Fairmont were Junior Library Guild Selections. His book, One Word From Sophia, was an IndyNext Top 10 for Summer 2015. Check out his newest picture books: Trevor, from Neal Porter Books and Two Problems for Sophia from Margaret K. McElderry Books. Spy agencies can find Jim online at jimaverbeck.com. Author photo by Sonya Sones.

 

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Tessa Takes Wing
by Richard Jackson, illustrated by Julie Downing

 

It’s almost morning and everyone’s asleep. Everyone except Tessa.

 

Quiet as a mouse, Tessa takes flight . . . UP . . . UP until she’s flying high above her crib. Her first stop: her sister Maggie’s blue elephant! Then, Maggie’s fire truck . . . and her polka-dot umbrella. But she better be quiet and quick before her daddy hears and stops all her fun!

 

Julie Downing was born in Denver, Colorado, graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design and currently lives in San Francisco, CA, where she can see a corner of the Golden Gate Bridge from her studio window. Noted for rich, jewel like watercolor illustrations, she has illustrated over 45 picture books. Julie’s work has been featured at The Society of Illustrator’s Original Art Show in NYC and has been exhibited at galleries throughout the United States and England. She has won numerous awards for her work, including a Parent’s Choice Award, the New York Public Library Best Books Award, APAAL Best Illustrated Book, and the Irma Black Silver Medal. She was selected to appear in Talking with Artists Too, a book about 12 of the nation’s best Children’s’ Book Illustrators. Julie also teaches illustration to both graduate and undergraduate students at the Academy of Art University and UC Berkeley Extension. You can see more of her work at juliedowning.com.

 

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Water Land: Water and Land Forms Around the World
written and illustrated by Christy Hale

 

A lake turns into an island.

A cozy bay into a secluded cape.

A gulf with sea turtles transforms into a peninsula surrounded by pirate ships.

 

This unique information book for the very young switches between bodies of water and corresponding land masses with the simple turn of a page. Readers will delight as the story of Water Land unfolds and will see just how connected the earth and the water really are.

 

Christy Hale has illustrated numerous award-winning books for children, including two that she also wrote: The East-West House: Noguchi’s
Childhood in Japan and Dreaming Up: A Celebration of Building, an ALA Notable, a Boston Globe Horn Book Honor Award Recipient, an International Reading Association Award winner, a California Eureka! Award winner, and much more. An art director, designer, and educator, Hale teaches Writing for Picture Books at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. She lives with her family in Palo Alto, California.

 

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Dreamers 
by Yuyi Morales

 

Caldecott Honor artist and five-time Pura Belpré Award winnerYuyi Morales tells her own immigration story in this picture-book tribute to the transformative power of hope … and reading.

In 1994, Yuyi Morales left her home in Xalapa, Mexico and came to the US with her infant son. She left behind nearly everything she owned, but she didn’t come empty-handed.

She brought her strength, her work, her passion, her hopes and dreams…and her stories. Caldecott Honor artist and five-time Pura Belpré winner Yuyi Morales’s gorgeous new picture book Dreamers is about making a home in a new place. Yuyi and her son Kelly’s passage was not easy, and Yuyi spoke no English whatsoever at the time. But together, they found an unexpected, unbelievable place: the public library. There, book by book, they untangled the language of this strange new land, and learned to make their home within it.

Dreamers is a celebration of what migrantes bring with them when they leave their homes. It’s a story about family. And it’s a story to remind us that we are all dreamers, bringing our own gifts wherever we roam. Beautiful and powerful at any time but given particular urgency as the status of our own Dreamers becomes uncertain, this is a story that is both topical and timeless.

 

Born in Xalapa, Mexico, where she currently resides, Yuyi Morales lived for many years in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she still maintains close relations with booksellers and librarians. Professional storyteller, dancer, choreographer, puppeteer, and artist, she has won the prestigious Pura Belpré Award for Illustration five times, for Just a Minute: A Trickster Tale and Counting Book (2003), Los Gatos Black on Halloween (2006), Just in Case: A Trickster Tale and Spanish Alphabet Book (2008), Niño Wrestles the World (2013), and Viva Frida (2014), also a Caldecott Honor Book.

 

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Please note: this event will be at The Bindery, 1727 Haight.

 

Bar opens with doors at 2, event begins at 4pm.

 

RSVP appreciated but not required.

 

If you cannot attend the event but would like to request a signed copy of any of the authors’ books, order below and put your request in the comments field.