two nifty picture books with cat cameos

(Inspired by schemingreader's query in yesterday's comments.)

You Can't Take a Balloon Into the Museum of Fine Arts by Jacqueline Preiss Weitzman and Robin Preiss Glasser (Dial 2002). I could look at this book for hours -- partly because I love Boston, but also because the artist's selective use of color as a storytelling tool within her hilariously detailed line drawings is really cool, as are the parallels between the MFA paintings and street-scenes depicted. (The cat cameo is on page 16, which also includes a glimpse of the Make Way for Ducklings duckies.)

The Three Pigs by David Wiesner (Clarion 2001). This earned the Caldecott Medal (which Wiesner won again this year for Flotsam). Again, terrific use of art as a storytelling tool -- here, the pigs "escape" from the traditional story into several others (and collect a fiddlin' cat and a dragon along the way), and Wiesner's command of different illustration styles (photo-realistic, storybook, pablum) is wicked.

Psst! Free mini-posters...

...can be downloaded or from getcaughtreading.org, for $5 s/h (up to 12 posters). Celebrities featured include Yoda, Naruto, two of the Avenue Q monsters, Sandra Boynton, Renee Fleming, and assorted congresspeople.

[*rereads the cherrypicks* I do have a diverse friendlist, don't I? Go me! *g*]

[And, I have to confess the one that currently tickles me the most is the photo of former Minnesota Rep. Martin Olav Sabo, because he's holding a (Norwegian?) copy of Tomie dePaola's The Knight and the Dragon, which is one of my favorite-est picture books ever.]