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Storytime w/ David Ezra Stein: Interrupting Chicken Raises Her Wing
Past event
Featured Book
Interrupting Chicken Raises Her Wing
This book will be available for purchase at the event.
About This Event
See Event Guidelines Below Will Mr. Popperman ever call on the little red chicken? She knows the answers! A beloved, ever-excitable character can’t help but be in the frame when Caldecott Honoree David Ezra Stein leads a class trip to the museum. The little red chicken’s class is going to the art museum today, and their teacher, Mr. Popperman, is cautioning them to be on their best behavior. This means raising their wing when they want to say something and not calling out. But there’s so much to see and learn at the museum! For instance, what feeling does Edvard Munch convey in his painting The Scream? What animal would you add if you were the painter of The Peaceable Kingdom? Chicken knows all the answers, but amazingly, she’s never called on, even when she calls out, raises her wing (while calling out), or jumps around moaning (but not calling out). Will Chicken ever have a chance to express herself? With insight and signature visual humor, David Ezra Stein brings back the Interrupting Chicken in a scenario that kids everywhere will find all-too-frustratingly relatable. David Ezra Stein is the author-illustrator of many picture books, including the Caldecott Honor Book Interrupting Chicken and its sequels; I’m My Own Dog; Ice Boy; and Dinosaur Kisses. He lives with his family in Kew Gardens, New York. 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
David Ezra Stein
David Ezra Stein is the Caldecott Honor–winning illustrator and author of Interrupting Chicken as well as many other award-winning picture books, including Dinosaur Kisses; Hush, Little Bunny; and Leaves, winner of an Ezra Jack Keats Award. He lives in Kew Gardens, New York, with his two children and a bunny named Bun Bun. David Ezra Stein is the Caldecott Honor–winning illustrator and author of Interrupting Chicken as well as many other award-winning picture books, including Dinosaur Kisses; Hush, Little Bunny; and Leaves, winner of an Ezra Jack Keats Award. He lives in Kew Gardens, New York, with his two children and a bunny named Bun Bun.
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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Storytime w/ Anden Wilder: Elaine
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.
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.