A Cloud in a Jar Author Interview and Giveaway

ABOUT THE BOOK

A Cloud in a Jar

Written by Aaron Lewis Krol

Illustrated by Carlos Vélez Aguilera

Ages 4+ | 32 Pages

Publisher: Pages Street Kids | ISBN-13: 9781645679936

Publisher’s Book Summary: It’s just after midnight on Walton Wharf West, but there’s no time for sleeping―adventure awaits! Get dressed, grab your oars, let’s not delay. Lou Dozens is here, and we’re sailing to Firelight Bay!

In this modern, young, bold, and inventive adventure, Lou drags her more cautious friend on a daring voyage across the sea. Though their destination is a glorious land of year-round summers, long slides, and picnics a hundred yards wide, the children there have never seen rain, even once.

The mission is simple: bring Firelight Bay a cloud in a jar. But the journey is anything but. Readers will delight in the story’s twists, turns, and unexpected solutions―from a sail of patchwork handkerchiefs to a net crafted from recycled cell phone chargers that saves a beached whale. It’ll take every knick-knack in Lou’s pockets and all the cleverness the pair can muster to safely deliver their gift.

With captivating illustrations and whimsical yet delightfully intricate rhyming text reminiscent of classic children’s poetry, this seafaring quest is one young readers will not soon forget.

Available for purchase on Amazon, Bookshop, and Barnes and Noble.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Aaron Lewis Krol lives with his family in Lowell, Massachusetts, where he writes about climate change science and solutions for the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative. Like many, his early education included many “invention challenges” where students were tasked with building structures from everyday materials, and he’s pretty sure that’s where the idea for Lou Dozens came from. A Cloud in a Jar is his first picture book.

ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

Carlos Vélez Aguilera lived in the oceanside town of Puerto Vallarta for a time and drew from his memory of those beautiful landscapes and the sense of adventure they gave him while illustrating this book. He also poured in his general love of clouds, the sea, and whales. In addition to drawing, Carlos also likes to dance. He lives in Mexico City, Mexico, with his cat, Benito.


AUTHOR INTERVIEW

Life Is What It's Called - What inspired you to write A Cloud in a Jar?

Aaron Lewis Krol - I wasn’t expecting to write a picture book! I just got a first verse stuck in my head—ultimately not even the first verse that appears in the published book:

We left in a rowboat, Lou Dozens and me,
And Salman the cat, who was leading the way
(With his chin in a kerchief to fend off the spray
Because cats like their whiskers kept dry)—
Through the whispering waters of Tangerine Bay
To the sun-speckled Island of Spry.

I liked it. I wondered what kind of person Lou Dozens was. Maybe she had dozens of little household objects secreted in her coat. Paperclips, hair ties, things like that. If they got in trouble on this journey she could quick fashion them into little inventions that would help them keep going. Uh oh, I was somehow well on my way to writing a picture book.

Life Is What It's Called - What are the themes of A Cloud in a Jar, and why are they important?

Aaron Lewis Krol - In A Cloud in a Jar, the heroes get themselves out of trouble using their creativity and inventions until, eventually, they can’t—in the end they only get where they’re going by being kind and making the right friend at the right time. I’d like to think those are two very good ways for kids to see characters solving problems.

Life Is What It's Called - What will readers like most about A Cloud in a Jar?

Aaron Lewis Krol - What I like best are the illustrations—I’ve sat with the words for a few years now and they don’t hold any surprises for me anymore, but I’m still hooked on Carlos’ deep colors and striking perspectives and all the tiny imaginative details that fill every page. And man oh man can he draw a whale.

Life Is What It's Called - What input did you have when it came to the illustrations?

Aaron Lewis Krol - I am so glad that Page Street found Carlos to be my illustrator. As soon as I saw his portfolio I knew this book was going to look even better than it had in my head. I only gave him one instruction going in—in my original draft a cat had featured prominently in the story, but as I edited it down to a manageable picture book length I found I had too many characters and the cat had to go. But I loved the cat, so I asked Carlos to please include a cat joining the characters on their journey. Once Carlos drew him I loved the cat even more. I was invited to give feedback on every sketch and layout Carlos sent me, but almost always he surprised me with something better than I had imagined. If I wanted something adjusted, I would really just give him a couple of adjectives (can Walton Wharf West be more industrial? could the narrator’s hat look more like something a kid would think is dashing and adventurous?), and these fully imagined places and characters would come back to me. He was an absolute delight to work with.

Life Is What It's Called - How is this book different from others on the market?

Aaron Lewis Krol - The rhyme and meter! It’s getting a bit rarer to have rhymed stories for older picture book readers, and when they do get published they are overwhelmingly the same tetrametric couplets. (That’s the Dr. Suess rhyme scheme: “I would not eat them in a house, I would not eat them with a mouse.”) And hey, it’s a mainstay for a reason, and I enthusiastically read these books to my kids. But I also love the classic children’s poetry that stretched out a bit more, let kids appreciate different ways of hearing poetic rhythms. A Cloud in a Jar is a riff on ballad meter, which you know even if you don’t know you know it. (Think Lewis Carroll: “‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said, ‘to talk of many things: of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—of cabbages—and kings.’”) But I also tweaked it a little, to use triplet rhymes in a bit of an off-kilter order. My hope is that it sounds familiar, but not quite like anything else on your shelf.

Life Is What It's Called - Why do you think it's essential to have picture books that inspire adventure?

Aaron Lewis Krol - Isn’t it enough that kids love adventures? I mean, if adventure stories also inspire them to think they can solve problems themselves and travel widely and try new things and make unexpected friends in strange places, that’s all wonderful. But mostly I just think kids have these deep natural wells of imagination, and there’s nothing that taps into that better than a story where bizarre things can happen in a new and fantastical place, ideally with kids like them swept along for the ride.

Life Is What It's Called - What books are you working on next?

Aaron Lewis Krol - I’ve got a second picture book I’m shopping around called Fee! Fi! Fo! Fum! set in a world of giants who fashion their clothes and household objects from enormous discarded things they find in the human world. Right now I’m sweating my way through a children’s novel based on different folktale traditions from around the world, which I’m pretty excited about although I should really not have taken on writing a novel while raising a four-year- old and a one-year-old!

Life Is What It's Called - What do you want readers to know about you as an author?

Aaron Lewis Krol - This is my fourth manuscript and the first one to be published. If you love writing, keep writing!

GIVEAWAY

Enter for the chance to win a hardcover copy of A Cloud in a Jar!

Two (2) winners receive:

• A hardcover copy of A Cloud in a Jar

A Cloud in a Jar Book Giveaway

This post is sponsored by Page Street Kids. The review and opinions expressed in this post are based on my personal view.

Troubles and Doubles and Reflections Askew Author Interview and Giveaway

ABOUT THE BOOK

Troubles and Doubles and Reflections Askew

Written by Dr. Drew Palacio

Illustrated by Apolline Etienne

Ages 4+ | 36 Pages

Publisher: Brandylane Publishers, Inc. | ISBN-13: 9781958754368

Publisher’s Book Summary: With a sigh, she went pacing before a large mirror that stood,

Remarking: “Ugh! I’m hideous! None of this looks very good!”

After struggling to find the perfect outfit, Emily Soo dances the night away at a fun party. But when she gets home, her inner voice Emily Two tries to put a damper on her evening.

Confronting our thoughts, fully facing tough emotions, and affirming ourselves can be difficult.

Can Emily Soo find it within herself to squash her Worry and Woe?

Available for purchase on Amazon, Bookshop, and Barnes and Noble.



ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Drew Palacio grew up in Mendocino County, California. He received his doctorate in clinical psychology from the American School of Professional Psychology in San Francisco and currently practices in Kansas. Clinically, he implores partnership and efforts from local families, schools, and the community. Lastly, Dr. Drew is himself a child a heart, using his love of magic and worldly mystery, whether via comic books, animation, video games, or through the passing daydream, to always stoke his inspiration.



AUTHOR INTERVIEW

Life Is What It's Called - What themes run through Troubles and Doubles and Reflections Askew (The Curious Case of the Two Emily Soos)?

Dr. Drew Palacio - Thematically, the classic coming-of-age story, courage and perseverance, patience and understanding, sense-of-self, discovery, family, and perhaps loss of innocence, by way of the protagonist Emily being juxtaposed before the more sophisticated elements of pre-teen life.

Life Is What It's Called - Why do you think the message in the book is important for readers?

Dr. Drew Palacio - We’re finally in an era where more attention is being paid to the mental health and wellbeing of young people; understanding that our cognition, i.e., the way we think, and, in this case the way we think about the world around us, and ourselves, will impact both how we feel, and consequently, what we do, is a part of that growing awareness.

Life Is What It's Called - What inspired you to write this story?

Dr. Drew Palacio - The stories I write typically end up reflecting challenges I’ve observed young people to encounter throughout their childhood. I say end up, as, while I may have a general idea, or visual/verbal template of the story when I begin writing, it usually takes me getting to the second act to truly know what the story is about. After that insight, I do what I can to ensure the messages align.

Life Is What It's Called - How does your psychology background help you write children's books?

Dr. Drew Palacio - It certainly keeps me abreast of what is in fact a crisis, a challenge, or an uncertainty to young people. It also affords me ways and means to interweave child-friendly, though empirical interventions into each tales resolution, as best I can. Lastly, it keeps me grounded so as to ensure that I don’t intentionally write outside the child’s scope of development, give, or take a word or two that I hope they learn.

Life Is What It's Called - In what ways do you think books will help kids with their problems?

Dr. Drew Palacio - Let me be clear in stating that I do not believe a children’s book is a substitution for positive parenting and active and engaging conversations between the parenting team and one’s child; nor a substation for child-based treatments, if and when necessary. That said, bibliotherapy, as an adjunct to the aforementioned dialogue with family, or professional consult, has been repeatedly explored across varying research disciplines, focusing on a wide array of topics young people may experience, and, with good results in terms of providing another means of understanding, and circumventing those areas of interest and concern.

There is also the added benefit of demonstrating to adults in a child’s life ways and means of ‘how’ to speak to young people about said topics. It is not uncommon for me to receive feedback from adult readers, not only with thanks in now having a mechanism of just how to broach a subject, but, more specifically, that the tale caused them to reflect on their own behaviors themselves.

Life Is What It's Called - What books are you working on next?

Dr. Drew Palacio - I am fortunately rather prolific when it comes to writing as a whole. I have 2-3 completed manuscripts ready for potential publication, provided my publisher is a fan, however, I am currently writing a picture book simply about change, and what I’ll say to that is who ever could know more about change, than a werewolf…

Life Is What It's Called - What do you want readers to know about you as an author?

Dr. Drew Palacio - That I truly do view these little scribbles, as inconsequential as they may be, as the most beautiful thing I have ever done. If I am being honest, it is the best of me that goes into them.


GIVEAWAY 

Enter for the chance to win a personalized hardcover copy of Troubles and Doubles and Reflections Askew: The Curious Case of the Two Emily Soos and Shrieks and Sounds and Things Abound: The Quiet Wants of Julien J.

Twelve (12) winners receive:

• A personalized, signed copy of Troubles and Doubles and Reflections Askew: The Curious Case of the Two Emily Soos

• A personalized, signed copy of Shrieks and Sounds and Things Abound: The Quiet Wants of Julien J.

The Troubles and Doubles and Reflections Askew Book Giveaway 

This post is sponsored by Dr. Drew Palacio. The review and opinions expressed in this post are based on my personal view.

Grandma's House is Haunted Author Interview and Giveaway

ABOUT THE BOOK

Grandma’s House is Haunted

Written by Stephen G. Bowling
Illustrated by Vitali Dudarenka
Ages 4+ | 34 Pages
Publisher: Valley of Mexico | ISBN-13: 9781950957248

Publisher’s Book Summary: Everything is fun until nighttime comes. Are the howls in the dark only in their imaginations, or do ghosts and goblins become real when the full moon rises?

The children love visiting Grandmother. Playing great games and reading cool books goes perfectly with eating her delicious cookies and cakes. But when bedtime comes and off go the lights, things get a little scary as they say their goodnights.

The kids shiver at the creepy sounds from the attic and the strange shadows floating through the air. But Gran’s not worried at all; in fact, she has a secret to share…

Will they find a way to get over their dread, so they can finally rest their heads?

Grandma’s House is Haunted is a delightful children’s picture book, both spooky and sweet. If you like Halloween fun, bumps in the night, and doting grannies, then you’ll adore Stephen G. Bowling’s cheerfully eerie Picture Book that shows children there’s nothing to be afraid of when the lights go out.

Read Grandma’s House is Haunted to happily hide under the covers today!

Available for purchase on Amazon, Bookshop, and Barnes and Noble.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen G. Bowling is an award-winning author, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. Much like Peter Pan, Steve never wanted to grow up. Or rather, while he didn’t mind getting older, he never wanted to lose the child-like enchantment of imagination and wonder. Creating colorful worlds and stories for children has allowed Steve to both preserve his own imagination while sharing the joy of learning with children worldwide.

Steve has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from Brandeis University. He is an entrepreneur who has worked on and holds several U.S. Patents. He heads The Prometheum Foundation, a non-profit philosophical organization that helps teach students critical and analytical thinking, freedom of thought, and entrance into the marketplace of ideas. He is a lifelong weightlifter, an avid student of history and philosophy, and has a fascination with astrophysics.

Discover more about the author by:

• Visiting his website: stephengbowling.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stephengbowling
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stephengbowling

AUTHOR INTERVIEW

Life Is What It's Called - What is the theme of Grandma's House is Haunted, and why is it important?

Stephen G. Bowling - Grandma’s House is Haunted deals with childhood fears of the dark, especially at night. Children have wonderful imaginations that can sometimes play havoc in dim light, and with the unknown under the bed. It certainly did in my childhood. Grandma’s House is Haunted is a fun story that both children and adults can relate to. The story helps children realize there is nothing to be afraid of when the lights go out. When reading the book, children can feel safe and have fun being spooked while exploring fears of dark corners and “strange” noises in the night, and realize the ghosts and goblins are only in their imaginations.

Life Is What It's Called - What do you think kids will like most about it?

Stephen G. Bowling - Kids like spooky things, especially around Halloween, and there are plenty in the book. I think they will relate to the descriptions of what the children in the story are imagining. They will also enjoy delving into the rich detail in the illustrations. As a child I loved looking for all the detail in a drawing, and I still do as an adult.

Life Is What It's Called - How is this Grandma's House is Haunted similar and different to the other books you've written?

Stephen G. Bowling - This book is similar in that the characters find themselves with a problem which is then resolved by the end. As with most of my books, I use rhyming verse to tell the story. I like rhyming verse because it is fun to read and to hear if the story is read to you. Rhyming verse helps children understand the concept of language which helps them learn to read.

The book differs from my others in the subject matter, childhood fears of the dark. My previous books mostly focus on childhood adventures. This book is different in that my main characters are people rather than animals or trees. 

Life Is What It's Called - How is this book different from other "spooky" picture books by other authors?

Stephen G. Bowling - To be honest, I really don’t know. I didn’t write it with any other books in mind, and I admit I haven’t read any.

The book is based on my own experiences as a child visiting my paternal grandmother, who lived in West Virginia. We lived in Connecticut and would travel about twice a year to see her and would stay with her for the trip. She was wonderful and I loved seeing her. But at night her old West Virginia house made a lot of noises; grunts and groans from the pipes and radiators, creaks from the house settling. I wrote the book from recollections of my own fears of those noises, which conjured up all sorts of ghosts and monsters in my imagination. Having a love for monster movies at the time didn’t help. The book delves into feelings of staying in an unfamiliar, albeit beloved, setting especially at night. It also deals with loving adult figures who help us through our fears and plights, as real or imaginary as they might be.

Life Is What It's Called - How do you balance the right amount of spookiness in this book without making it seem too scary?

Stephen G. Bowling - That’s a good question and an important one for a writer. I want children to enjoy the story and have fun while helping them understand that their fears of the dark are created by their own imaginations. I certainly didn’t want the book to create fears by being too scary.

I am always very judicious and careful choosing the words I use when I write. I was especially mindful in this story. Most children are familiar with scary things like ghosts and goblins, particularly through their exposure to Halloween, so I could use a lot of standard scary figures in creative ways. I had thought of using a verse with a “demon” and then decided not to, as it seemed too adult, too scary. I have a few silly descriptions of some of the monsters like “wolves wearing raincoats.” This fits the story as it plays on the imagination children have seeing odd or silly things in dim light, and makes it less scary at the same time. The illustrator did a great job in making the phantoms and monsters child friendly, spooky but not too scary.

The story, the spookiness and unease, the excitement that comes with being scared, builds on scary descriptions of specters and ghosts in the first half of the book. Then Grandma comes to the rescue. All the fears the children have are removed as everything is explained. Everyone is happy and can go to sleep.

Life Is What It's Called - What can you tell us about you as an author?

Stephen G. Bowling - That I hope my stories and books are as fun for children and adults to read as they are for me to write. Childhood is a magical time and should be full of wonderful memories. I write books that I want children to enjoy and remember fondly into adulthood.

Life Is What It's Called - What writing projects are you working on next?

Stephen G. Bowling - My illustrator is currently painting my next book Winslow Scarecrow, which deals with a dilemma the Scarecrows are having about whether they should scare crows or not. I just finished writing a story about Mr. Foulweather, a grumpy, old grump who yells at the Moon every night. Just the idea of someone yelling at the Moon makes me smile. My illustrator will work on that one next. I have also been creating a comic book project which has a game component added to it: a sci-fi adventure for older kids and adults with an interesting point of difference.

GIVEAWAY

Enter for the chance to win a set of five books by Stephen G. Bowling, including Grandma’s House Is Haunted, and a $25.00 Amazon Gift Card!

One (1) grand prize winner receives:

• A paperback copy of Grandma's House is Haunted
• A paperback copy of Calvin the Christmas Tree
• A paperback copy of Simon's Tree Party
• A paperback copy of Simon's Search for the Scary Dragon
• A paperback copy of Rocket to the Moon
• A $25 Amazon Gift Card

One (1) runner-up winner receives:

• A paperback copy of Grandma's House is Haunted
• A paperback copy of Calvin the Christmas Tree
• A paperback copy of Simon's Tree Party
• A paperback copy of Simon's Search for the Scary Dragon
• A paperback copy of Rocket to the Moon

Six (6) runner-up winners receive:

• A paperback copy of Grandma's House is Haunted

Grandma's House Is Haunted Book Giveaway

This post is sponsored by Stephen Bowling. The review and opinions expressed in this post are based on my personal view. Disclosure: I received a copy of this book in order to share my opinion.