Just posted! A webcast with Nidhi Chanani, writer and illustrator of the graphic novel, Pashmina.
Priyanka Das has many identities – friend, high school student, comic book artist. She also has many questions about her absent father, her single mother, and India, her mother’s home country. Unfortunately, her mom isn’t willing to give any answers. Then Priyanka discovers a beautiful pashmina hidden in a suitcase. When she wears it, she’s transported to a fantasy version of India, where an elephant named Kanta and peacock named Mayur are happy to show her the amazing sights, smells, and tastes of her mother’s country.
But there’s also a shadowy figure trying to send messages. Now, Priyanka is even more determined to travel to the real India to learn both her mother’s story, and the story behind the mysterious, magical pashmina.
Pashmina is Chanani’s debut graphic novel, and it is fantastic. Primarily drawn in greyscale, Chanani uses glorious bursts of colors whenever the pashmina casts its spells, accentuating the magic and wonder. Chanani tackles difficult subjects with empathy, honesty and a gentleness that is incredibly respectful to the characters, and to the readers. Pashmina is a powerful, uplifting story, particularly for girls and young women. An artist, illustrator, writer, and teacher, Chanani was honored at the White House as a Champion of Change in 2012.
Follow this link to the BiblioFiles interview
School is in session, and it appears your teacher has a new pet…that could potentially eat him. Wouldn’t you rather have a sweet little hamster? We were delighted to have author Anica Mrose Rissi visit our story time to read her book, The Teacher’s Pet. There’s an interview with Nica at the end of today’s post, AND! We’re giving away 6 signed copies of the book to YOU, our blog readers!
We made a water bottle out of a roll of construction paper and a snippet of drinking straw. The ramps and the little hamster house are poster board. The sawdust shavings are crumpled pieces of yellow crepe paper streamers (the clear winner out of testing a bunch of different types of paper). The food bowl is a 
We also found some alphabet letter stickers in the art cabinet. So we encouraged kids to spell their hamster’s name on the clear plastic lid of the aluminum container. Our hamster was named Twinkles, but there was also a Sparky, Bob, Ricky, and…I can’t quite pronounce this one…
To operate your hamster, place the cork wand behind the cage, connect it with the magnet glued to the pom-pom hamster, then drag the wand to lead the hamster through all of his/her activities!
Please tell us a little about yourself!
Interesting fact about Sean Rubin. In high school, he showed his artwork to Brian Jacques and landed himself a Redwall illustration gig. Another interesting fact? Sean is a self-taught artist who majored in Art and Archeology at Princeton University. One final fact. Sean is obviously, wildly and without-a-doubt talented, and I am delighted to announce his debut children’s book/graphic novel, Bolivar (Archaia, 2017).
There is one person, however, who does notice Bolivar – a little girl named Sybil who is doggedly determined to obtain photographic evidence of her prehistoric neighbor.
Is Bolivar is a picture book with chapters? A graphic novel with picture book narration? Whatever it is, it totally works, manifesting itself as the perfect book for young readers transitioning into reading on their own while also exploring the joys of the comic book format.
I thought that was a funny idea, so I started writing a book about it. However, I soon realized that if there was a dinosaur in New York City, no one would actually notice it… at least not for a while.
In her 
I was born in Brooklyn, and I spent most of my childhood there and on Long Island, which is right next door. After I finished college, I wound up back in the city, this time on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. I love New York. Being a New Yorker is an important part of my self-identity, and there’s no telling how many hours I’ve spent exploring the city, usually on foot.
Although I started writing and drawing the book when I lived in New York, much of Bolivar was completed after I moved to Virginia in 2015. As a result, when I sat down to draw, I used a lot of photography and old observational drawings for references. Soon, I realized that I wasn’t drawing Manhattan as it is today. The city is always changing, people come and go, stores open and close, and buildings are built and torn down—so who’s to say which version of New York is the most authentic or accurate?
My references began mixing with my memories, especially my memories of New York when I was a kid. In the end, I think most of the book is actually drawn from these memories. As most of the book is also from a kid’s point of view, I think this actually helped me empathize with Sybil’s perspective.
Betsy also mentioned that this is “a strange kind of graphic novel/picture book/bedtime novel hybrid,” which might cause some people to have trouble classifying it. How did this hybridization come together?
Personally and creatively, the book really took off when I began listening to what the characters had to say. It’s incredible for me to remember that, in the first draft of this book, Sybil was in one scene and said maybe three lines, and her mother didn’t speak at all. I think Bolivar is still mostly a picture book, it’s just a picture book with five chapters, and the characters have succeeded in talking over the author on nearly every page.
The biggest blessing, and curse, of bouncing between narrative text and panels with dialog balloons involves pacing. In many ways, the panels force you to pick up the pace of your reading. At the same time, they slow down how quickly you’re turning pages. I think the reader will spend more time on a two-page spread that contains a number of panels, and less time on a two-page spread with one, large, open illustration. Ironically, the panel spreads feel faster and the open spreads feel slower. I had to take that into account when establishing the flow of the story.
Of course we both have a connection to Princeton University, so I should probably mention that there are number of Princeton references, too. My favorite of these is definitely the Tigers football helmet in the classroom toward the end of the book.
