Storytime w/ Anden Wilder: Elaine
Featured Book
Elaine
"A big city chicken named Elaine goes in search of what makes a true artist"-- Provided by publisher.
This book will be available for purchase at the event.
About This Event
A quirky chicken named Elaine journeys through the big city in search of artistic inspiration in this funny picture book about self-discovery—a perfect story to inspire young readers to explore their own creative pursuits! Meet Elaine: a big city chicken with a lot of love for the world. And what she loves the most is her city: the hustle and bustle, the tasty pizza, and best of all, the art. But when Elaine looks around, she sees all sorts of different artists. Painters. Sculptors. Performers. But what kind of artist is SHE? Come along with one ingenious chicken as she goes in search of what makes a true artist. Told with vibrant illustrations and witty text, this is a story about the beauty of sharing yourself with the world. Anden Wilder is an award-winning illustrator and the creator of picture books, including Scamp and Tulip’s Mess. When she isn’t making books, she also makes paintings and is a teacher to artists of all ages. Anden hopes to inspire kids to be their most creative and truest selves through her work.
Event guidelines: RSVP is highly encouraged but not required. Additional copies of the event book will be available for purchase in-store. The reading will be followed by a book signing. As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event, even if you have a ticket; email us and we'll work it out. If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request accessibility accommodations, please contact eventhelp@booksaremagic.net.
Featured Author
Wilder, Anden
Anden Wilder is an award-winning illustrator and the creator of the picture books Tulip’s Mess and Scamp. She attended the Maryland Institute College of Art and graduated with a degree in painting. With a great love for reading and children’s literature, she went on to receive a Masters Degree in Educational Psychology and Early Childhood Literacy. She is a mentor for aspiring illustrators at SCBWI and is a professor of illustration at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design. She lives in Denver, Colorado with her family.
About the Venue
Books are Magic · Brooklyn Heights
Welcome to the independent bookstore serving Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens and Brooklyn Heights! Books Are Magic is a family-owned independent bookstore with locations in Cobble Hill/Carroll Gardens and Brooklyn Heights in Brooklyn, committed to being a welcoming, friendly, and inclusive space for all people. We believe that books are indeed magic, and that literature is one of the best ways to create empathy, transportation, and transformation. We are enthusiastic about offering thoughtfully selected voices and stories on our shelves, and about hosting affordable events featuring emerging writers as well as long-adored authors. Books Are Magic is a place for children to feel comfortable, for young readers to grow into lifelong readers, and for our neighbors to be introduced to vibrant new books. Books Are Magic is owned by Emma Straub and Michael Fusco-Straub. You can read more about Emma Straub's books here.
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Lauren Elkin: Vocal Break w/ Rachel Syme
From the acclaimed author of Flâneuse and Art Monsters, a fierce, insistent, ecstatic investigation of the female voice, its power and vulnerabilities, and the ways women sing and speak their way through the world. For millennia, women’s raised voices have been called unruly, uncivilized, dangerous. Singing women were cast as sirens: mythical creatures who lured sailors to their death. A vocal break is where the voice shifts from lower to higher registers—from one thing to another. What can be made in this space of transition? Lauren Elkin draws on her own experiences as a young soprano in the 1990s as well as showcasing a full-throated, full range of other singers, including Édith Piaf, Maria Callas, Cyndi Lauper, Kathleen Hanna, Tori Amos, PJ Harvey, Beyoncé, FKA twigs, and Billie Eilish. Looking closely at the way power and identity shape our voices, she immerses readers in an eclectic soundscape, from musicals and pop music to folk, punk, and opera. As she seamlessly blends cultural history, criticism, memoir, and feminist manifesto, Elkin lays out how women have used their voices to defy convention, genre, capitalism, racism, sexism, and the forces that attempt to keep them quiet. What makes women’s singing so powerful—to the point at which others feel the need to control or manipulate it? Vocal Break is Elkin’s insistent, joyous call: Girls to the front, NOW! Event guidelines: Each ticket includes either a copy of the featured book or a $10 Books Are Magic gift card. Additional copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event. A signing will follow the talk. The conversation will be livestreamed for free online here . As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event, even if you have a ticket; email us and we'll work it out. If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request accessibility accommodations, please contact eventhelp@booksaremagic.net.
Rachel Calnek-Sugin: Universe of Grace w/ Katie Yee
A dazzling, kaleidoscopic debut novel about the life of a precocious girl in Philadelphia trying to figure out who—or what—she might be. One afternoon, on a visit to the Bronx Zoo, a jaguar tells six-year-old Grace Goldberg-Li that she isn’t human. But this is something that Grace has already suspected. Her life seems normal, but no one else, not even her beloved sister seems to be experiencing things as brightly and painfully as she does. As she approaches adolescence, Grace begins to think that she might be an alien. Maybe this would explain the urge to steal every beautiful object she can find, or the peculiar voice in her head that’s fixated on the apocalypse of climate change, insisting that everyone she loves is going to die. In adulthood, Grace still doesn’t have the answer to the strangeness that seems to be outside and inside her. Is it the world that is unusual and falling apart? Or is it her? She will attempt, over and over, to remake herself and find a place in it. She will fall recklessly in love with a gorgeous doctoral student; she will merge into a tree during the pandemic; she will become the best employee that Wendy’s has ever seen; she will travel to the ends of the earth and keep going. Tender, profound, and endlessly imaginative, Rachel Calnek-Sugin’s Universe of Grace is a transcendent coming-of-age story in a world that’s uncertain and wondrous in equal measure. Covering the span of a single life and everything it touches, Universe of Grace shows us that we are each more interconnected, vast, and variable than we can ever know. Event guidelines: Each ticket includes either a copy of the featured book or a $10 Books Are Magic gift card. Additional copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event. A signing will follow the talk. The conversation will be livestreamed for free online here . As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event, even if you have a ticket; email us and we'll work it out. If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request accessibility accommodations, please contact eventhelp@booksaremagic.net.
Sophia Veltfort: This Vital Absence w/ Lily Akerman
Seductive, unsettling, and impossible to put down, This Vital Absence is a novel about inheritance that transforms into an uneasy reckoning with the stories we tell to survive. Sylvia is the daughter of two loving mothers, but she has always wanted to know her father. When she moves back to New York City, a dossier arrives from her moms, with a new lead: Dean, an anesthesiologist who may bear some responsibility in the death of a pop star. At the same time, Sylvia meets Molly, a woman with her own family mysteries, with whom she makes a deal: they will help each other in the search for each other’s biological families. These three are drawn into a series of narrative games, games that leave Sylvia and Molly reeling and faced with a choice about the kinds of stories in which they are willing to participate. With the propulsive prose and psychological intensity of Patricia Highsmith, Veltfort probes questions of inheritance and intimacy, the allure of obsession, and misunderstandings that shape our lives. Event guidelines: Each ticket includes either a copy of the featured book or a $10 Books Are Magic gift card. Additional copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event. A signing will follow the talk. The conversation will be livestreamed for free online here. As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event, even if you have a ticket; email us and we'll work it out. If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request accessibility accommodations, please contact eventhelp@booksaremagic.net.