I'm fighting a losing battle with blogging today and have opted to have you all go look at Betsy Bird's blog, instead, and think about covers while I go paint.

Betsy spent some time at a major chain checking out new kid books and posted a bunch of great cover comparisons. I've already complained about covers here and here and here and wonder if I'm just a curmudgeon when it comes to the older covers getting updated?

Reissues with original covers are super ideas, though! One of my all-time favorite books, The 13 Clocks, is about to be reissued NEXT week with the lovely Marc Simont art intact AND an introduction by Neil Gaiman -- how cool is that! I can't find my copy anywhere and it was about to turn to dust anyway. The version illustrated by Ronald Searle was probably just lovely, too, but I'm sticking with the Simont one.

Last night in class, guest speaker Julie Paschkis (Caldecott deserver extraordinaire) gave an amazing Amazing AMAZING talk/slideshow. She showed some of the picture books she loved as a child and how they're still influencing her today. I'd say, definitely, that The 13 Clocks is one of those books for me.