Caldecott Medal Contender: Things To Do

by Sam Juliano

Let’s go fly a kite

Up to the highest height!

Let’s go fly a kite and send it soaring

Up through the atmosphere

Up where the air is clear

Oh, let’s go fly a kite!       -Richard B. and Robert A. Sherman,  Mary Poppins (1964)

Elaine Magliaro’s interpretation of the essential activities facing both living and inanimate objects is governed by a subjective point of view.  Though her intended readers can assume the role of each one of her subjects before and after she applies her delightful free verse to a diverse array of what we encounter on a typical day, it is best to submit to the sensory allure of a book fully committed towards erasing the pangs of ennui by way of a spirited tour chronicling the expected manner each chosen article plays in a scene-specific situation.  Magliaro sets a desired tone by instructing her gifted illustrator Catia Chien to enlarge and color code key words in her verse, which are not restricted to any single part of speech.  Appropriately enough the book launches with the responsibilities of dawn, which “shoos away night” and “wakes up the sleeping sun” while simultaneously inducing songbirds to do their thing and letting “dreams drift away.”  A young girl and dog are first seen in an impressionist spread documenting the arrival of  a new days as light filters through an open window in a living room dominated by delicate rendered purple hues.

Birds know well the consequence of missed opportunities and the likelihood of a second chance not availing itself anytime soon.  Magliaro implores our feathered friends to take full advantage of the unfaltering mantra, “Fist come, first served” by descending down to a lawn where feed has been offered up.  A delay will undoubtably result in other birds “seizing the day.”  When breakfast has been negotiated the poet advocates airborne tenacity:  Stretch out your wings on the brightening sky.  Morning’s upon us.  Get ready to fly!  Chien’s overhead capture is an impressionist gem, featuring the metaphorical image of a bird sporting the wing span and tail of an airplane in a now busy sky of many other airborne creatures evoking Richard Bach’s line from his famed 1970 novella:  “and the word for breakfast flock flashed through the air, till a thousand seagulls came to dodge and fight for bits of food.”  The artist makes lush use of saturated acrylic red and green projecting out from the flicked brown and tan cross strokes in a scene witness by the intrepid young girl and her inveterate canine.

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Call Me By Your Name; The Darkest Hour and The Man Who Invented Christmas on Monday Morning Diary (November 27)

by Sam Juliano

Thanksgiving Day provided my family with a mighty fine time, and we trust our readers could attest to the same in every regard.  Now the focus is suffused with the spirit of Yuletide, though the hectic pace is certainly a daunting proposition.  In the meantime movie lovers are being treated to a period of prestige and quality as many are gathering together their traditional year-end lists.  This past week was also the time to take advantage fo Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales for blu rays, DVDs and the like, providing one’s wallet could sustain such hits.

The Caldecott Medal Contender series soldiers on, with the fifteenth entry set to post later today.  Jim Clark and J.D. Lafrance continue to make stupendous contributions, and the 2018 installments of the Allan Fish Online Film Festival and Part 2 of the Greatest Television Countdown draw closer.

Lucille, Douglas McCartney, Broadway Bob and our full brood attended all or some of the three movies we took in over the weekend in theaters, and we treked up to the Sparta/Franklin region as per tradition to purchase our freshly cut Christmas tree.  We saw:

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