Wednesday, January 25th beginning at 6:30 PM Wong Herbert Yee, the Theodor Geisel Honor Award winner, will be demonstrating his process for writing and illustrating books. You don’t want to miss his dynamic presentation! The Picture Book: From Concept to Creation will take place at the  Bloomfield Township Public Library 1099 Lone Pine Road. The Book Beat will be supplying books for the event. Please contact the Bloomfield Township Library (248) 642-5800 or the Book Beat (248) 968-1190 for more information.

About The Author: “I was born in Detroit, Michigan, one of seven. My first grade teacher tacked a drawing of mine, Horse with Feedbag up on the bulletin board. From there I went on to study art at Wayne State University, graduating in 1975 with a BFA in printmaking. I had my fair share of rejections at the start, but through perseverance my first picture book, EEK! There’s a Mouse in the House was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1992. My latest early reader, Mouse and Mole Fine Feathered Friends received a 2010 Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor Award.” -from the author’s blog site.

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Knockout Picture Books for reading aloud & for early readers:

Belle, The Last Mule at Gee’s Bend (hardcover)

A true story from the civil rights movement

When African-Americans in a poor community– inspired by a visit from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.– defied local authorities who were trying to stop them from registering to vote, many got around a long detour on mule-drawn wagons. Later, after Dr. King’s assassination, two mules from Gee’s Bend pulled the farm wagon bearing his casket through the streets of Atlanta. As Alex looks into the eyes of gentle Belle, he begins to understand a powerful time in history in a very personal way.

A true story inspires the moving tale of a mule that played a key role in the civil rights movement– and a young boy who sees history anew. Staff Favorite Ages 5 and up

The Cats in the Doll Shop (hardcover)

A Russian/Jewish story for ages 7-11

The Cat in the Doll Shop by Yona Zeldis McDonough is a fictional book aimed at the younger crowd. This book is a sequel to The Doll Shop Downstairs.

Anna, whose family owns a doll shop, discovered a cat in the yard behind the store. What made it even more exciting is that the cat is about to have kittens….

A Sick Day for Amos McGee (Hardcover)

Michigan Author & Illustrator  & Winner of the Caldecott Award 2011

“…short and gentle enough to make a fine bedtime story for any child who is getting tired of Goodnight Moon.” – One Minute Reviews

“The artwork in this quiet tale of good deeds rewarded uses woodblock-printing techniques, soft flat colors, and occasional bits of red. Illustrations are positioned on the white space to move the tale along and underscore the bonds of friendship and loyalty. Whether read individually or shared, this gentle story will resonate with youngsters.” – School Library Journal,  Staff Favorite: Ages 2 and up

These Hands (Hardcover)

A Detroit Inter-generational Civil Rights Story

“Loving view of gains across generations.” – Chicago Tribune,  Ages 6-9

“With tenderness and pride, a grandfather shares the many skills of his hands with his grandson, who is a happy student. Those hands can tie knots, play the piano, perform card tricks and swing a baseball bat. The text is beautifully cadenced. “Well, I can still teach a young fellow / how to do a waterfall shuffle / —yes I can.” But then comes the mood-shattering remembrance. Those hands, not so very long ago, could not touch the dough in the Wonder Bread factory. Those hands did not stay still: They joined in protest with many other hands and voices and achieved equality. The little boy learns all his lessons well, with a tasty loaf of bread as his crowning achievement. The author has based her story on conversations with an African-American bakery union activist, according to her author’s note. Cooper’s signature artwork in muted shades of yellows and browns intensifies the warmth of the intergenerational bonding.” –Kirkus Review

No Dogs Allowed!

A sublimely touching and funny story… a charmer for cat and dog lovers…

Feline friends Bud and Gabby are back! But this time—and much to Bud’s dismay—there’s a dog in the picture. The dog’s name is Cookie, and although fun-loving Gabby enjoys Cookie’s company, grouchy Bud does not. In fact, Bud gets so fed up with Cookie that he kicks her out of the house. “No dogs allowed!” he declares. But when a big black rain cloud approaches and Gabby looks worried, will Bud have a change of heart?

I am Small

Cuddle up with your little penguin this winter!

“Dodd chooses a carefully designed spatial arrangement of the text and simple, visual language, repeating the refrain “and I am small” as the little one encounters all that largeness, creating empathy and understanding for the timid little penguin without being overly sweet or cloying.A lovely, reassuring bedtime story with a simple message of parental affection that littlest listeners and readers will take to heart.”  -Kirkus

Neville

One of the BEST storytelling books we’ve come across this year! Staff Fave: Ages 4-8

Written by the acclaimed author of “The Phantom Tollbooth, ” this is a simply told story about a boy who moves to a new neighborhood and finds a unique way to make friends. With whimsical illustrations by award-winning illustrator G. Brian Karas, here is a read-aloud that’s great for storytime, and is sure to be a hit among fans of Juster, Karas, and anyone who is “the new kid on the block.”

I Will Not Read This Book

Excuses, Excuses… Ages 4-8

“I Will Not Read This Book” is pitch perfect for anyone who has ever dealt with a reluctant child. Much of the reluctance comes from doing things on their own, and as we see in this book, once someone the boy loves has someone to read with him, the reluctance goes away.  -crackingthecover.com

Too Many Frogs!

Cupcake colors animate Nana Quimby’s kitchen and her friendly urban neighborhood, while silly noises (“thump-thump-bang-bang-bonk”), repeating phrases, and improbable numbers (“She opened the door, and a million frogs hopped, jumped, bumped, and bounced across the kitchen floor”) keep this sweet tale moving smartly along. Most satisfying is the way that the children get to order Nana Quimby around, and the humility with which she obeys them. Ages 4–8.

Check out author Hassett’s Frog-filled Home!

The Crown on Your Head

YOU WERE BORN TO SHINE!

Aimed at smaller children, The Crown on Your Head makes statements and then backs them up with a simple explanation most children will understand. Every colorful page of the book portrays a child living life to the fullest. If you’re looking for a short picture book capable of expressing your love toward a child, this may be the book for you.  Ages 4-8

Queen of the Falls (hardcover, signed 1st edition)

Classic Chris Van Allsburg

“His first non-fiction work, Queen of the Falls (2011) is also one of Chris Van Allsburg’s best.  Indeed, in some ways it marks a return to form….” – Nine Kinds of Pie

“Queen of the Falls is an amazing tale of the power of nature — and of the little old lady who might be considered the precursor of today’s reality-show stars. And for kids, it’s a vivid demonstration that you don’t have to be young to do something really, really dumb in pursuit of fame and fortune.”  -WIRED

Signed, first edition copies of Chris Van Allsburg’s Queen of the Falls are still available! Staff Favorite: Ages 6 and up.

Mouse and Lion (hardcover)

A Uniquely Retold Aesop Classic for All Ages

“No, this isn’t the story you think it is. Note that the top billing is reversed. Rand Burkert — who wonders whether Aesop was an apocryphal African storyteller — suggests that different Aesop’s fables show the lion sometimes as a tyrant but sometimes still teachable. Few artists can make the coats of both a lion and a mouse call out equally for a touch, but Nancy Ekholm Burkert’s careful pen-and-ink drawings and watercolor washes do just that and help us enjoy the newness.” – Chicago Tribune  Ages 4-8

Love Mouserella (hardcover) $15.99

This may inspire children to write to someone they love, for Ages 3-7

Mouserella misses her grandmouse, so she writes her a letter. At first she can’t think of anything to say, but once she starts, the news begins to flow – she found a cat whisker at the zoo, she taught her ladybug to fetch, she made shadow puppets with Dadmouse during a blackout – and just like that, the events of the past few days come to vivid life in her letter, as does her love for Grandmouse.

Children will enjoy reading the story from top to bottom, like a real letter, and Mouserella’s funny drawings and lively adventures will spark their imaginations and just might inspire them to start a correspondence of their own.

Jonathan and the Big Blue Boat (hardcover) $16.99

Exceptional art, sensitive story reunite a boy and his bear. Ages 2-5

When Jonathan loses his best friend, a stuffed bear named Frederick, he sets sail on the Big Blue Boat to find him. Along the way he assembles a ragtag crew, including a mountain goat, a lonely circus elephant, and even a friendly whale. Adventure and intrigue (and pirates!) follow.

Stars (hardcover) $16.99

Twilight is a liminal moment, especially in a child’s day.

A star is how you know it’s almost night,” looking over the shoulder of a little boy, dog-walking, looking toward a star in the twilight sky. In a loose star-celebrating narrative, Mary Lyn Ray and Marla Frazee direct our gaze to the mind- and heart-lifting power of stars — both in the night sky and in the star shapes around us. The text recognizes the power of stars children are given at school, for instance, or meritorious stars they might make for themselves. Blue-sky-thinking, luminous children are set against a sky-blue palette.  -Chicago Tribune   Ages 2-6

Never Forgotten (hardcover) $18.99

Forceful & Iconic – a treasured keepsake for African-American families

In eighteenth-century West Africa, a boy raised by his blacksmith father and the Mother Elements–Wind, Fire, Water, and Earth–is captured and taken to America as a slave.

The willingness to turn the dark history of the past into literature takes not just talent but courage. McKissack has both. All ages. -Publisher’s Weekly Ages 6 and up

Making a Friend

What you love will always be with you  

Bestselling author, Alison McGhee reminds us all that nothing that has been cared for can ever disappear for good, for, “What you love will always be with you.” And, this tender story about the power of friendship will stay with readers long after they turn the last page. Ages 4 and up

A Nation’s Hope: The Story of Joe Louis

Introducing Joe Louis to a New Generation                                                                                                       a NY TIMES BEST ILLUSTRATED OF THE YEAR 2011!

On the eve of World War II, African American boxer Joe Louis fought German Max Schmeling in a bout that had more at stake than just the world heavyweight title; for much of America their fight came to represent America’s war with Germany. This elegant and powerful picture book biography centers around the historic fight in which Black and White America were able to put aside prejudice and come together to celebrate our nation’s ideals.  Ages 6 and up.

Bun Bun Button

This heartwarming story celebrates the special bond between grandparents and grandchildren, and is perfect for children who imagine their toys have secret adventures when no one’s watching. Ages 3 and up.

Patricia Polacco (www.patriciapolacco.com) was inspired to tell this story when a young visitor to one of her programs brought the much loved and tattered real-life Bun Bun Button up to her table – and gave it to her. Patricia is the beloved creator of over fifty picture books, and is also an energetic and enthusiastic public speaker – she visits over one hundred classrooms every year.

We Are All Born Free Mini Edition: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Pictures

“This is an important book, best shared with children in a setting where discussion of both the rights and the illustrations is encouraged.”  – PW

This beautiful collection, published 60 years on, celebrates each declaration with an illustration by an internationally-renowned artist or illustrator and is the perfect gift for children and adults alike.

Memoirs of a Goldfish (hardcover, signed )

Michigan Library Association Book Choice ages 3 and up

With his bowl to himself and his simple routine, Goldfish loves his life..until assorted intruders invade his personal space and bowl. Goldfish rethinks the pros and cons of a solitary life. And discover what he’s been missing.

Middle Readers & Young Adults

Pie (signed 1st edition, hardcovers)

“A delicious, fun read, this book of pie and mystery is a treat whether read with alamode or alone. It’s an ideal book for classroom sharing as well, after all who doesn’t like pie?” – Waking Brain Cells, Appropriate for ages 9-12.

“PIE, set in Ipswitch during the summer of 1955, is a high-spirited, hoot of a whodunit for upper elementary and middle school readers.  This tale is going to inspire a mess of pie baking in your neck of the woods…Those who are familiar with a certain famous and esteemed children’s literature award are going to get quite a belly laugh out of reading the history and details of the national pie making award that Polly wins an unprecedented thirteen times in a row.  And as sure as life imitates art, I bet that there will be a passel of people dishing about PIE when the year-end lists are being compiled.” – Richie’s Picks

Vordak the Incomprehensible : Rule the School (hardcover, signed edition)

“Prepare to be conquered by the world’s funniest supervillian”

But this isn’t just an instruction manual for school-age world dominating wannabes. Grown-ups will get plenty of tips themselves, and the humor with which the book is written is great for all ages. I, particularly, took plenty of notes in my Take Over the World notebook. When I wasn’t laughing maniacally, that is. -WIRED.com  Ages 9 and up.

The Unwanteds (fantasy, signed, hardcover) Ages 13 and up

“Imagination runs wild in this creative adventure.” – NY TIMES

The Hunger Games meets Harry Potter… [The Unwanteds] is sure to be a double hit.” ~ Kirkus Reviews

“Reading Lisa McMann’s THE UNWANTEDS was like discovering a brilliant, lost children’s classic—except it’s never going to be lost, because readers will never, ever forget the magic they’ll experience in its pages.” –James A. Owen, author and Illustrator of HERE, THERE BE DRAGONS

The Big Crunch

Hautman skillfully subverts clichés in this subtle, authentic, heart-tugging exploration of first love, but his sharp-eyed view of high-school social dynamics and the loving friction between parents and teens on the edge of independence is just as memorable. Grades 8-12. –Gillian Engberg, Booklist

A funny, clear-eyed view of the realities of teenage love from National Book Award winner Pete Hautman.

Jen and Wes do not “meet cute.” They do not fall in love at first sight. They do not swoon with scorching desire. They do not believe that they are instant soul mates destined to be together forever….

The Chronicles of Harris Burdick: 14 Amazing Authors Tell the Tales

The Visionary Art of Chris Van Allsburg Inspires Best-selling Writers

“There are no clunkers here. Each contribution has its own telltale flavor of menace, leaving readers to discover their favorites. For those wishing to catch a good fright while simultaneously having their leg pulled, Jon Scieszka’s light-gauge horror story toys gingerly with the genre’s conventions, mingling chatter about dust bunnies with a veiled reference to cannibalism. Readers who would rather step headlong into “Twilight Zone” territory will enjoy M. T. Anderson’s creepy account of a boy who accidentally learns that reality is nothing more than a fabrication designed for his benefit, or Walter Dean Myers’s resonant fable about a book that has a different ending each time it is read.” –NY Times, Reading level: Middle grades -Ages 10-15

Tuesdays at the Castle

This delightful book from a fan- and bookseller-favorite kicks off a brand-new series sure to become a modern classic. Ages 8 and up.

“This enjoyable romp turns mischief into political action and a stone palace into a cunning character. These kids are clever, as is George’s lively adventure. May pique castle envy.” —Kirkus Reviews

The Apothecary

“…intricately constructed plot, well-paced suspense, credibly rendered fantastical elements, thoughtfully drawn characters and authentically detailed settings, satisfies on all levels.” – NY Times, Ages 10-14 years.

A mysterious apothecary. A magic book. A missing scientist. An impossible plan. It’s 1952 and the Scott family has moved unexpectedly from Los Angeles to London. There, fourteen-year-old Janie gets a homesickness cure from the neighborhood apothecary and becomes fascinated by his defiant son, Benjamin Burrows—a boy struggling with his destiny, who isn’t afraid to stand up to authority and who dreams of becoming a spy.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

Found photography drives ‘Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children’

“It’s a gothic tale with a teenage protagonist, which is why the publisher is marketing it as a young adult novel, but I read it and liked it, and I’m in my 30s. The book came about when Riggs started collecting found photography at flea markets and swap meets about three years ago.  He kept coming across strange creepy pictures of kids and felt like he wanted to do something with them. ..” –LA Times

A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. And a strange collection of very curious photographs. It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. Staff favorite; Ages 13 and up.

Blood Red Road (hardcover, signed)

“Better than The Hunger Games. . . . This book will blow you away.” – MTV Crush

“Recommended to fans of sci-fi post-apocalyptic fiction.  Readers who are missing new installments of The Hunger Games might find a kindred book spirit here.” –Early Nerd Special

“Young’s powerful debut, first in the Dustlands series, is elevated above its now familiar postapocalyptic setting by an intriguing prose style and strong narrative voice that show a distinct Cormac McCarthy vibe. It’s a natural for Hunger Games fans.”  _ PW

Blood Red Road has a searing pace, a poetically minimal writing style, violent action, and an epic love story. Moira Young is one of the most promising and startling new voices in teen fiction. Ages 13 and up.

“When Alice’s Aunt Polly passes away, she takes with her the secret to her world-famous pie-crust recipe. Or does she? In her will, Polly leaves the recipe to her extraordinarily surly cat Lardo . . . and then leaves Lardo in the care of Alice. Suddenly Alice is thrust into the center of a piestorm, with everyone in town trying to be the next pie-contest winner … including Alice’s mother and some of Alice’s friends. The whole community is going pie-crazy . . . and it’s up to Alice to discover the ingredients that really matter. Like family. And friendship. And enjoying what you do.”

Books will be available for purchase at the event. For more information or to reserve copies please call Book Beat 248.968.1190

Purchases from local, independent stores support an essential part of our community. Your support is appreciated.

If your class is interested in attending this event, please contact Janet Batchedler at (313) 481-1409 for more information.

Devin Scillain may best be known as a nightly news anchor on WDIV Detroit, but he is also an accomplished musician and children’s author with over a dozen titles to his credit, including the bestsellers A Is For America and Fibblestax. His latest title is Memoirs of a Goldfish, which tells the charming story of a simple goldfish and his solitary life that is upended when assorted intruders invade his fishbowl.

Memoirs of a Goldfish is the featured title for 2011’s Michigan Reads! Children Program, which highlights the importance of reading and sharing books with children, especially toddlers through early elementary, and to recognize the vital role libraries play in providing access to the quality books, programs and services that lay the foundation for reading and school success.

Blood Red Road is the epic journey of Saba, a girl from the wastelands known as Silverlake.  After her twin brother, Lugh, is abducted by four cloaked horsemen, Saba is forced to leave Silverlake to rescue him.  What she finds is a lawless, ugly reality where the Wrecker civilization has long been destroyed.  But she also realizes what a fighter, survivor, and crafty opponent she is.

Saturday, Oct. 15 from 2:30-4:00 pm

“The Hunger Games meets Harry Potter… [The Unwanteds] is sure to be a double hit.” ~ Kirkus Reviews

“Every year in Quill, thirteen-year-olds are sorted into categories: the strong, intelligent Wanteds go to university, and the artistic Unwanteds are sent to their graves.  On the day of the Purge, identical twins Alex and Aaron Stowe await their fate. While Aaron is hopeful of becoming a Wanted, Alex knows his chances are slim. He’s been caught drawing with a stick in the dirt-and in the stark gray land of Quill, being creative is a death sentence.  But when Alex and the other Unwanteds face the Eliminators, they discover an eccentric magician named Mr. Today and his hidden world that exists to save the condemned children. Artimé is a colorful place of talking statues, uncommon creatures, and artistic magic, where creativity is considered a gift… and a weapon.” From the author’s website lisamcmann.com

Please call Book Beat (248) 968-1190 if you have any questions regarding this event.

The exhibition “Bones” will display the art and vision of Yasuo Tanaka during a consecutive three day opening at the Book Beat gallery/bookstore on Friday, October 21st from 6-8 PM,  Saturday, October 22nd from 5-8 PM and Sunday from 3-5 PM.  The artist will be making “portraits in a wheelchair” during his residency and will have original sculptures, ink napkin drawings, photographs and books for sale. Artist Dick Cruger will also be in attendance and will present their collaboration Parallel Universe, a photographic book correspondence between Tokyo and Detroit.  The Book Beat gallery is located at 26010 Greenfield in Oak Park. Please call 248-968-1190 for more information.

Tokyo artist Yasuo Tanaka (b.1942) is a uniquely  gifted artist that uses bookmaking, design, puppetry, wire sculpture, photography, and ink drawing in fantastic and striking combinations. Tanaka has produced a curious and quietly poetic body of work, a bizarrely stylized skeleton world radiating a simple universal message and philosophy. A surreal, childlike and humorous quality pervades all of Tanaka’s art that presents to us a Borgesian metaphysical vision about eternity, death and life wrapped inside his purely visual reality.

Detroit book artist and sculptor  Dick Cruger, began a friendship with the artist Yasuo Tanaka about 10 years ago. Dick was introduced to Yasuo through the American poet Arthur Barnard who now lives in Tokyo.  Barnard thought the two artists should meet since they both shared a similar aesthetic. Each artist executes their work with technical polish, working in similar areas of storytelling with visual art and sculpture. Together they have recently collaborated on Parallel Universes, book project that combines sites of Detroit and Tokyo told through skeleton and robot figures. The Book Beat gallery will display this body of work and hold the book launch  beginning October 21st.

Tanaka’s small and delicate Tokyo Midnight, is an oblong hand-sewn book of 24 photographs of puppet skeletons posed around nightly urban Tokyo scenes. The title is typewritten on an opaque sheet of paper that covers a small die-cut square on  thick black cardstock  that serves as the book’s cover. The skull of the first skeleton is revealed in a tiny die-cut window as if it is trying to enter another world or  peak into ours… as you open the book there is a dusky scene on the first page, the beginning of a sunrise or sunset. A small moon rests high in the night sky. The skeleton subject looks tired of life and exhausted, its skull bent over drooping, perhaps returning home from a night of drinking, photographing or a long night of witnessing the night action found inside of Midnight Tokyo. We don’t know if the figure is arriving or departing. The ambiguous improvisational nature of Midnight Tokyo describes a multi-level netherworld that is open to many interpretations.

Midnight Tokyo opens up with isolated  single skeletons;  figures alone and lost in thought, one sits at a dinner with a coffee mug watching a clock tick by overhead. Groups of outdoor skeleton’s follow; drinking, buying magazines at a midnight kiosk, a more frenzied group action picks up the pace,  fashionable skeletons are strolling down the street clutching expensive name-brand handbags, a group playing a paddle ball game in the park, a large crowd of skeletons sit watching and cheering on a boxing match of skeletons, a cozy skeleton couple sits on a park bench reading a book as a pair of inexplicable wooden shows sit empty on the brick walkway.  There are scenes of game playing, music performances, a figure photographing roses, a bicyclist in front of a lit up model of the Eiffel Tower, a night ball game, a rainstorm with broken umbrellas,  a boat ride down a river, death figures running and exercising. The last image is large ball, or a sun? or perhaps an entire world of skeletons rising (or setting) over the city as the cross of a church illuminates the urban night sky.

Yasuo beautifully blends in pen-light sketching trails in many of his photos, a technique once made popular in Picasso’s light action drawings from a photographic sequence and film made by Gjon Mili. Tokyo Midnight is a metaphysical book whose power belies its small format and quaint/whimsical qualities. The book is able to use light and darkness in a strong dramatic effect. The work alters our perception of space and depth of field as it subverts our notion of reality, time, life and death. There are no digital effects or photo-shop software used in Yasuo’s work, each image has been carefully thought out and composed beforehand.    

Attaching a long wire handle to his puppet subjects, Tanaka is able to make his skeletons dance and perform activities in synchronicity beside reality. His stage is the rectangular frame of his camera set still on a tripod. Known to travel to Europe with his puppets and tripod camera, Tanaka often sets up among crowds, often preferring to shoot theatrical scenes at nighttime with long open-lens exposures. The photo works make obvious the close connection between the living world and the dead, between the inanimate and the movement of daily life. Tanaka’s shadow worlds are printed in black and white to emphasize the contrasts of light and dark, of white bone against the night. The circular patterns of the book creates a movement of time from indoor personal/private space to public shared space and the madness of crowds. Light shows are an aggressive ongoing element throughout Midnight Tokyo. There are fireworks, lit up skyscrapers, reflections, paper lanterns, neon lights, sun, moon and pen-light drawings. The artist is hyper-conscious of light and composition -and the sublime effect it plays in photography.

Yasuo’s hand-made books are constructed and produced in small editions. He uses fine art printing techniques like continuous tone gravure or hand etchings. The papers and bindings are selected to best reflect on their contents. Tanaka who was once a freelance commercial designer, creates simple black wire figures that he sculpts into 3-dimensional form.He calls these sculpture-drawings, and photographed against a white ground they give an impression of drawings in 3-dimensions..  The skeletons and insect creatures he makes with thin black wire add another dimension to his art. These small sculptural puppets and creatures stand alone as finely crafted miniatures.

Another of Yasuo’s small books is titled One Million One Skeletons. This book of  drawings is spiral bound and contains eight fold-out accordion pages, each folded 6 times and printed on both sides making 96 pages. Each page contains an idea or meditation on the group. There are similar pastimes being examined as in the photographs, yet some sketches also convey a dance or sexual intercourse being performed like instructional positions in a kama sutra book. The swirling ball of skeletons is also present and the message begins to read more chaotic and “group think” then in the fun-loving photography series. One page commands spelling out the words “DON’T THINK TOO MUCH” in bones over a sea of skulls.  It is one of the rare instances that the artist uses words. Is the artist implying thought leads to death or that we should not think about or insert meaning into these drawings – that we should divorce meaning from the visual?  The drawings bring to mind the Day of the Dead rituals of Mexico and the great political skeleton broadsides by Josè Guadalupe Posada. But where Posada infused personalities and the sensational in his grotesques, Yasuo manages a more quiet humorous approach, his cartoons reflect aspects of  Japanese society and the idea of working, standing and playing together as a unit. The bones of Tanaka march together in formal unison creating a repetitive pop landscape of numbness, imprisonment and group interaction.

In one of his rare statements, Tanaka has indicated that these idiosyncratic folk-like drawings are derived from the idea that the skeleton is our one final similarity, the foundation of form contained by all humanity. The skeleton crosses (and eliminates) all borders of nationality, race, class, culture and religion. The skeleton is our shadow and lasting statement on the planet. Tanaka’s skeletons however are far from dead or distant objects. They are animated dead-beings; the bones and raw embodiment of daily life. Tanaka’s miniatures have a similar relationship to the real-life decorative bone tableau’s created in the five chapels at the Cemetery of the Capuchins built in Rome by an anonymous friar in the 1500s.  Tanaka’s skeletons too are seen in everyday activity; eating, playing sports, relaxing, being human. The individual is carefully dissolved by Tanaka’s treatment and what emerges is a kind of homogenous and lively death figure of community activity; a bony image that’s both a single building block (of the architecture of society) and its own universe.  Tanaka conveys both the micro and macro, saying something impregnated with cosmic meaning, yet doing it quietly, in a medium he has created himself and made his own.

The mysterious mazes within Tanaka’s work create a landscape of thinking about  death, an opening  to the idea that death might even hold onto the same drudgery, incarceration, pain, and drunkenness as in life, a message that stands clearly beside the artist’s own statement of unity, fulfillment and joy.

Tanaka’s vision recalls classical Ukiyo-e ghost drawings and their often demented manga offspring. The magical bone writing of Tanaka seem to follow their own codex-like logic as in the mysterious figures found in flattened pre-Columbian Mayan hieroglyphics.  With Tanaka, the repetitive multiplied symbol of death is taken to extremes of cubist abstraction and chaos, suggesting a perpetual struggle or battle with harmony and order. There is also something reminiscent of mobile sculptor Alexander Calder’s miniature circus in the works of Tanaka, each artist content in making self-contained gentle vistas that express life in a transcendent magical way.

For many years Tanaka has been obsessively compiling hundreds, perhaps thousands of his drawings of human skeletons on the surface of delicate paper napkins.  They are labyrinthian objects of order in a private diary – images that hold the memories of past meals and journeys. His drawings contain a magical visual language that echo off again in his photographs. The weightless napkins are generally  about 8 inches square and are unfolded to a surface of about 20″-24″ square. The artist then carefully inks and colors-in images on all quadrants of the translucent square. The initial black outlines act as a border to contain the color. His life’s work fits comfortably inside a small suitcase.

Napkins that are padded underneath the original drawing serve to soak up the ink and watercolors. These formless  “blotter” napkins serve as further canvas for his cartoon/comic ink sketches and offbeat abstractions. He wastes nothing. Tanaka spends countless hours skimming the surface on the thin translucent skins of napkins. A misplaced line or last minute error can completely ruin a work, but the under-napkins may still yield a successful accidental work, a dadaist, surreal strategy of chance. Often the names of restaurants and advertising logos will show through on the napkins reminding us of the temporal and pop nature of these disposable feather-light paper treasures. The Napkin – once a disposable object meant to wipe our faces and clean up stains have been given a new dignity and substance as a container for ideas.

Book Beat will be hosting the first United States exhibition of Yasuo Tanaka’s  artistry.