The Stacks
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The Comic as Object Project
As part of our Head Alien’s ongoing studies at the University of Alberta School of Library and Information Studies, this project starts with a basic, and I think self-evident, premise taken from a different medium altogether – that a video call is not the same as an in-person meeting…
Who is this ISBN guy?
So, no, this isn’t a post about International Standard Book Numbers, and, no, this isn’t even really directly about the book we are featuring.
But since the back cover of this book provides one of two featured quotes in my Book Cover Project, and the front cover features on my “book wall” pictured at the start of the project, it seemed to make sense to give the book its due as a case study for that same project…
Star Wars: A New Approach
In 2015, no doubt propelled by the-marketing-machine-that-is-Disney acquiring Lucasfilm three years prior, three “original retellings” of the original three Star Wars movies arrived in bookstores and libraries in hardcover format, followed by paperback editions in 2019…
Oh Yes!
As we continue to explore book covers as part of our Head Alien’s Book Cover Project, we wanted to pull an example from our visual storytelling collection. And Oh No! (Or How My Science Project Destroyed the World), written by Mac Barnett and illustrated by Dan Santat, published in 2010 by Disney Hyperion Books, is a great example…
Everything is #@%!ed or Everything is f*cked?
So does this post need a content warning?
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
First published in 1970, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume quickly became a bestselling novel. Forty-four years after its first publication, Atheneum Books released a new edition of the book with a truly brilliant jacket design by Lauren Rille and illustrations by Debbie Ridpath Ohi…
Introducing The Book Cover Project
You may have noticed mention of The Book Cover Project in several recent posts. If you haven’t seen it yet, I’ll include a link below. But first I thought I’d share the associated introductory video presentation here on its own…
Puck's Arena
My introduction to artist’s books, and altered books in particular, started with an undergraduate field trip to the Bruce Peel Special Collections at the University of Alberta, and one work in particular.
At first glance, it seems innocuous enough, perhaps even a bit boring or common? But if there was ever a time to apply the broader advice to not judge a book by its cover, this would be it.
Frankensteining Frankenstein
At the When Words Collide festival in 2021, towards the end of a workshop on Altered Books, I mentioned that the next project I was pondering was something to do with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, riffing off the central theme of the story to assemble a copy of the book made up of parts of different editions.
My small but mighty audience was intrigued, and we decided to plan a workshop around that idea for WWC 2022…
Making the best of…
Life rarely goes to plan. But that’s not always a bad thing.
Case in point: one of the newest acquisitions at Butterflies & Aliens North, a book about making the best out of what life throws your way, that has its own real life story of the same.
Immersed in book culture…
The present moment has brought an interesting alignment between my personal, professional, and student lives… everything focussed on book culture, print culture, reading culture…
Loved to pieces
In the digital world, lack of attention is what often gets a website “deaccessioned” or “weeded” from the world wide web. But ironically, in our equally beloved world of physical books, a lack of attention, of a certain kind, is actually better for a book’s longevity…
