Mimi Printable Paper Doll

This is really a test for me. I'm trying to see if I've figured out a way to add a printable pdf file to a blog posting. If it works, I have some more goodies to add soon!

Click on this link here (I hope) to take you to a black and white paper doll of Mimi and friends that you can print out, color, and play with, if you're so inclined. (To print the pdf file, click on the iPaper button on the toolbar and select print.)

You're free to use this image for non-commercial purposes, including printing it out for a class or library storytime. The picture above is of some of the pieces colored with colored pencils, cut out, glued to cereal box cardboard where applicable (i.e., Mimi, Bunny, and Frank), and assembled where necessary (i.e., the book). I'm working on making a full color, 3-D Mimi paper doll to post on my website too, and I'll link to it here as well once I finish it.

I have been ga-ga for paper dolls as long as I can remember. When we were young, my mom used to let me and my sisters pick them out at the five and dime if we'd been good on long shopping outings. My favorites were the ones that came with lots of accessories, like a crib to put the baby in, or little bowls of food with tiny spoons, etc. My grandmother also used to save the Betsy McCall paper dolls that came in her copies of McCall's Magazine for us to play with when we came to visit. (You can find printables of these old paper doll pages at Janie's The Bleu Door site here, as well as links to other paper doll sites.)

I really credit a lot of my skill with scissors to years of practice cutting out paper dolls and clothing. I remember too, my mom showing me how to make my own paper dolls by drawing a doll figure, taping it to the window, taping another piece of paper over it, and then drawing clothes that would fit. I made zillions of my own dolls, figuring out the engineering of accessory furniture and other items as well. And then I spent hours and hours pretending with my dolls. All those skills have served me well in my writing and illustrating!

For using paper dolls with very young children, I recommend using the Scotch Repositionable glue sticks rather than the tabs for putting clothes on - much less frustrating for tiny hands. The repositionable glue stick has a bond roughly equivalent to a Post-It Note, so it's easy to attach and remove and won't leave a huge permanent mess all over your kitchen table. Because the print outs are close to free (just the cost of paper and ink) you can let the little ones have a go at cutting them out themselves, which they'll probably do badly. One thing that makes it easier is to first cut around each piece so the paper is easier to manipulate.

Book Review: Gobble, Gobble Fun!

My friend and collaborator Julie Stiegemeyer has a new picture book out! Gobble, Gobble Crash! A Barnyard Counting Bash, illustrated by Valerie Gorbachev (Dutton, 2008) will delight 3 to 7 year olds from start to finish. And even though you might think it was a Thanksgiving tale, what with all those gobbles in the title and the turkeys on the cover, it's really an any-season bedtime/counting story, so go ahead and add it to your holiday or birthday shopping lists.

There are so many things to love about this book. First, there's the plot, which is a variation on one of my favorite themes: putting one over on a too-stern grownup. A quartet of rambunctious turkeys gobble and tumble and crash into the barnyard one evening just as the farm animals - and the cranky farmer - are settling down for the night. The turkeys rouse the animals, prompting the little ones to giggle and squeal and join in the fun. The barnyard mamas are as annoyed as the farmer - until they overhear his plan for taking care of those turkeys once and for all. The scheme the animals devise to protect the silly turkeys will have young listeners snickering in collusion.

Second, there's the language. The story is told in rhythmic rhyming couplets that are a pleasure to read aloud, with a fun "gobble, gobble, crash" refrain for little ones to repeat with gusto. It's a book that works well both one-on-one and with a large group. Julie uses strong verbs too, making this a good choice for teachers to use as an example in writing workshops in the early grades.

Finally, there are fun counting and searching elements, some of which are extra challenging and enjoyable in this book. In some of the illustrations, the animals are neatly lined up for beginning counters to note easily, but in others, the animals are scattered throughout a complex illustration, making for a more advanced task that stretches early math skills. A couple times Mr. Gorbachev makes the counter's job particularly complicated and interesting, thereby encouraging kids to devise new, more sophisticated counting strategies; this aspect adds to the appeal for slightly older audiences. For example, the reader can't simply count noses to confirm that Mama Mouse has seven babies; she's got them huddled so tightly in her arms that the reader has to search for seven tiny pairs of ears. Sharp-eyed little ones will also have fun figuring out what the farmer can't, namely what has become of those noisy turkeys.

The illustrations are lovely too, with the story beginning visually in the front matter even before the text starts. Gorbachev has a loose energetic feel to his watercolor and pen and ink pictures, and adds lots of interesting details to examine. The colors are muted, as befits a night-time tale, but with spots of bright yellows and reds to draw the reader's attention to the important parts of the action.

You can gobble, gobble up this book at amazon, barnes and noble (where you can read the excellent professional reviews the book has received), and powell's.

Blunchtime! Fairy Drinking Goblets

Sigh. I struggle so much to blog regularly, even though I always enjoy posting. My biggest problem, aside from being over-extended in almost every area of my life, is that blogging makes me feel guilty. I shouldn't be doing something frivolous like writing about kids' books or crafts or whatever, when there are important things to be doing like meeting deadlines or dragging my daughter to visit colleges. And laundry. (I'm not sure why guilt is so effective in preventing me from blogging when it definitely doesn't stop me from eating chocolate or sprawling on the sofa to watch old episodes of House or Battlestar Gallactica - but maybe it's just easier to hide the evidence of those things.) Anyhow, I have a possible solution for my guilt: blunching, or blogging at lunch (instead of doing a sudoku and the word scramble thing). We'll see if this works...


Today I have instructions for making sweet (and functional!) drinking goblets for fairies. Or G.I. Joes, if your kid's tastes run more that way. My mother-in-law taught my kids how to make these (who in turn taught me); she learned from her grandmother. They're easy to craft, make a good prop for imaginative play or a gift to leave for the tooth fairy - and best of all, give you a good excuse for eating a chocolate that comes in a pretty foil wrapper. So feel free to raid your kids' remaining Halloween stash.

OKAY! Blogger's formatting drives me insane sometimes! I cannot get anything to go where it's supposed to. ARGH. Hope you can follow the steps anyhow because lunchtime is OVER and I must stop. SORRY!

Step 1

Unwrap a candy and smooth the foil wrapper with your thumbnail. This one is a York peppermint patty, which has a nearly perfect wrapper for this purpose. Plus, if you hold the peppermint to your ear and snap it in two, it makes a really cool sound.

Eat the candy yourself, explaining to your young child that candy isn't good for her teeth, so you're doing her a big favor.

Step 2

Curl the wrapper around the tip of your finger with the pretty shiny side out.

Step 3

Pinch and twist the wrapper just past your fingertip. The part left on your finger becomes the bowl of the goblet; the part you're twisting is the stem. Stop a few centimeters from the bottom. (Pretty fancy of me being all metric, huh?)

Step 4

Shape those last couple centimeters into the base of the goblet by folding and squishing them into a circle. This is a little tricky and may take some practice. Smash the bottom agains the table to make sure it's flat and the goblet is stable.

Step Ta-Da!

Admire your elegant goblet.

Then unwrap a few more chocolates and let your kid make a complete set for a large fairy dinner party. Then set her (or him) up with some fairy dolls or other little guys, a child-sized teapot or small pitcher filled with a little lemonade or watered down apple juice. If the weather permits, these are nice for kids to play with in a mossy spot under a tree. Otherwise, opt for some mess-proofish place, like on a tray at the kitchen table or in the bathroom. You get to curl up nearby with a cup of tea and read your novel, while patting yourself on the back for encouraging your child's imagination.

Just Do It!

I hope you'll support my guy -- but either way, make your voice heard! And then afterwards let's all work together to make this country an even better place for our children and grandchildren. Thanks!

P.S. I'm ready to resume posting. I promise!
P.P.S. These polling hours are for Pennsylvania -- check your own state's hours.

Me and Mimi : Read All About Us!

The first photo is of me at age five, back when I planned on being Mary Poppins when I grew up, and the second is of Mimi with her bunny. (Hmm. I hadn't realized how much alike we look until I saw these two pictures together.) At any rate, if you want to learn how I shifted my career aspirations from "magical nanny" to "children's book author-illustrator," you can read Susan VanHecke's interview with me for the August children's market column at Authorlink. (It's available free until August 10th). You can also learn about stuff like my slow path to publishing success and get a peek at my anxiety-and-chocolate driven work process. And if you want to see some pix of the original Mimi, the Mimi "bible" I referred to while working on the book, and the lovely cover of the very first book I wrote and illustrated (at age 7), you can visit Susan VanHecke's blog.

Susan, by the way, is the talented author of my upcoming book, An Apple Pie for Dinner, due out from Marshall-Cavendish in fall, 2009. And Susan is not only talented, she is positively prolific: She has three - yes, 3 - books for young people coming out in 2009. (Flak Jacket Rock and Strike Up the Band, in addition to our pie book). And in her spare time, she does a little other writing (like being an Authorlink columnist and writing books for adults) and some gardening (serious enough to get her lovely and productive garden featured on Good Morning America this year. Wow.)

I like the Authorlink interview very much, though I can't get over how they let me run at the mouth (or, more precisely, fingers) when I answered Susan's great questions. My only regret is that I didn't think to work in thank yous to all the people who made Mimi come to life. In addition to my parents and Melanie Cecka, my editor at Bloomsbury, I should have mentioned the important roles of people like my agent, Steven Chudney, who not only got me the contract in the first place, but guided me through the early development of the story and character. Steven really is an exceptional agent, in that he not only knows the children's market well and has a high success rate in placing manuscripts, but he is a good editor, good friend, and able and willing to help his clients develop their whole careers.

I also owe much thanks to my writers' critique group, run by Pat Easton, and including some truly remarkable writers and skilled critiquers like Kitty Griffin, Judy Press, Cynthia Light Brown, David Amaditz, Andrea Perry, Marcy Collier and others (and moved-away-but-still-in-touch members Julie Stiegemeyer (my Cheeps author), Susan Chapek, and Cynthia Cotten. They all patiently listened through a zillion drafts of various Mimi plotlines, oohed politely at my sketches and early attempts at final artwork, and urged me on by offering to take me out for chocolate desserts afterI finished.

And finally (well, not finally, since I really am only scratching the surface of the thank-ees - this is starting to look like the credits at the end of an epic film, which seems a bit much for 400 word picture book...), I owe a debt of gratitude that I can never repay to my supportive and endlessly tolerant husband Steve, who not only didn't whine about having to make dinner every night but didn't even fuss about not having a table to eat dinner off of, because for months every flat surface in our house was covered in pig, bunny, and roly-poly parts. He is a good, good Webbis, that guy. (If you don't know what a Webbis is, then you must read Shirley Jackson's hilarious slightly fictionalized memoir, Life Among the Savages.)

One more little thing: see! I managed to put a picture in the banner place for my blog! Of course I didn't do it quite right or anything (the size is a bit off and it's awfully hard to read the text), but it's better than the bland green stuff that came with the template I used before, right?). The picture is of my play house writing studio at night - I just got the lamp at an estate sale this weekend, so now I can hang out and listen to the crickets while I work after dark. I love my play house.

Now I just have to get busy updating my lists of blogs and favorite illustrators, adding in pix of my book covers, etc. to the layout...

Don't Squat on Me! Plus a Paper Doll in Progress

I got cybersquatted.

And it made me cranky. Very, very, very cranky - but it all worked out in the end. Phew!

So here's what happened. I finally decided to get working on my website that is actually listed on the jacket flap of my book but doesn't exist yet. Oops.

To be fair to myself, this was a crazy busy year, the kind where I didn't have time to do frivolous things like: going to the bathroom (at least not until I was doing the pee dance), sleeping, grocery shopping, cooking meals for my family, shaving my legs, doing laundry, buying new underwear which I desperately needed since I wasn't doing laundry, posting on my blog, learning how to create a website, etc.

But anyway, I went to bluehost.com to buy my domain name and have them host my site, carolbaickermckee.com, which my lawyer husband had assured me could not be used by anyone else as my name is utterly unique, thanks to some Ellis Island goofy spelling plus the magic of marital hyphenation. (I think there are only about 30 people in the entire world with "Baicker" in their name, all related to us, and I'm certain there are only 5 Baicker-McKees and they all live in my house.) And it's against the law to buy someone else's name that you have no legitimate connection to. But someone had already bought my name anyhow! And put up a horrible website that was all links to commercial websites, including from the homepage some porn-ish sights about cheating wives and Russian girls.

I about had a heart attack. Then I called my husband and told him he was in BIG trouble. (Not that I have much leverage as an Angry Woman anymore, not since I gave up stuff like grocery shopping, shaving my legs, and washing the family's underwear. What could I threaten to do? Lose the number of our favorite take out pizza place? Convince Kmart to stop selling him new Fruit of the Looms?)

So then I didn't know what to do! But now I've figured it out, and I'll tell you, in case it happens to you. First, go to a whois site, like betterwhois.com and it will tell you who has registered your domain name and who owns the website. And then use the contact info to visit the owners' websites, in my case a giant buy-lots-of-domain-sites company. And then write them a fierce letter telling them they are violating Section 43(d) of the Lanham Act (read about it here), and that you'd like them to immediately shut down the website and un-register the domain name. Next, get your husband to take out all the inflammatory language so that the email is merely firm but polite. Then wait a few hours for an email that says, "Don't know what you're talking about. We don't own that domain name." And then check and discover your name is now magically available and the horrid website has disappeared and no one has to sue anyone! And your husband isn't it deep doo-doo anymore! Finally, quick, quick, quick, register the name, get someone to host it, and start working away on your site (more on the adventures of that soon).

In more fun news, I'm working on content for my website, including a printable Mimi paperdoll. This is because I have always loved paperdolls. My plan is to have one page to print on cardstock that will have Mimi, Bunny and Frank dolls, as well as other things that work well on stiffer paper, like a yogurt cup that Frank can be inserted into after assembly, a book cover or two, a bowl of cereal with a separate teeny tiny spoon and a banana, complete with smidge, maybe a twinkle star night light, some forks - stuff like that. And then another page that can be printed on regular paper (or maybe a lightweight photo paper - that might be nice) with outfits for Mimi and Bunny (and maybe a collar and leash for Frank?), and interior pages that can be assembled with the book covers on the previous page to make little miniature books, which I also love. Any other great ideas/requests for cool features?

Off to my tree house to work on revisions to my parenting book!

In Memory of a Tigger: Randy Pausch, 1960-2008

• Randy Pausch, husband, father, computer scientist, teacher, recovering jerk, inspiration to millions, and self-professed Tigger died on Friday, and the world is a poorer place for that.
  
  If you don't know who Randy Pausch is, you can read this thorough tribute to him that appeared in my local paper, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Or google him and be prepared to be overwhelmed. But an even better way to get to know him (and it will be well worth the effort) is to watch his youtube phenom last lecture "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" here, and then order a copy of his book based on it that he wrote with Jeffrey Zaslow. And then stick up little post-it notes all over your house to remind you of the particular lessons that will help you live a better, more matter-y (and more fun) life.
  
  First, I have to confess that I usually hate all those schmaltzy, feel-good, life-lesson bestsellers (even though they do reliably make me feel senimental or teary anyway). But this one has hit home. It's not that the lessons are necessarily novel - you've heard much of the same advice, about showing gratitude, working hard, apologizing when you've done wrong, etc., countless times before. Partly it's more effective because of Randy's delivery: funny, honest, self-deprecating. And partly it's because he's a Pittsburgher like me (by virtue of having taught for many years at Carnegie Mellon University and delivered his last lecture here), and we Pittsburghers are an intensely loyal, proud-to-claim-each-other people. And partly it's because he uses metaphors from children's literature, like naming his virtual reality teaching program after Alice in Wonderland. But mostly, it's because I know he has really lived his advice, learning it the hard way and sometimes having to learn it repeatedly.
  
  My post-it notes say:
  "Sometimes all you have to do is ask." I am terrible at asking for help or what I want from other people; I feel awkward, shy, and like I'm imposing - and I'm always sure I'll be turned down - but Randy is right, that much of the time when you just ask, the answer is "sure."
  "Anybody out there who is a parent, if your kids want to paint their bedrooms, as a favor to me, let them do it. It'll be okay." Sometimes I need a reminder, to stop and think about it before I automatically say "no" to my kids (or my husband or myself). It's a powerful thing to have faith in someone, to let them take a risk and try something that may not seem entirely wise. Recently, I let my 16-year-old daughter stay home all by herself for an entire week while the rest of us were a 9-hour drive away. Not only was my cautious, responsible daughter fine, but she proved to me and herself how capable and self-sufficient she can be. (And my sister was only 5-minutes away, in case she wasn't - not a bad idea to have a safety net!)

And finally:

• "Make a decision: Tigger or Eeyore." I'm always tempted to be an Eeyore. But how much better to be a very Bouncy Animal who will try new things without hesitation and who trusts that others will like you and that someone will be there to cushion your fall when you accidentally bounce a wee bit too high.

If you can't be a Tigger, you don't have to be an Eeyore - maybe try being a Piglet or Kanga instead. (Piglet has always been my favorite.)

"Piglet was still a little anxious about Tigger, who was a very Bouncy Animal, with a way of saying How-do-you-do, which always left your ears full of sand, even after Kanga had said "Gently, Tigger Dear," and had helped you up again."

A.A. Milne