biographies

a special giveaway for alphabet soup’s 5th birthday

~ jama ~ 110 Comments

Hello hello hello!

I’m baaaaaaaaaack — just in time to celebrate five years of Alphabet Soup!

Wow, it’s very hard to believe it’s been that long and that I’m still here after 1400+ posts on 2 different platforms, 348 15 pies, 569 a few cupcakes ☺, 145 book reviews, and many, many days when I asked myself, “Why am I doing this again?”

Who’d have thought a very private, non tech-savvy introvert who’d never even read a single food blog (gasp!), could somehow keep finding something to say week after week?

Wonders never cease.

I named the blog, “Alphabet Soup,”  because at the time I was writing my first chapter book about an alphabet collector who acquires a miniature uncle via mail order for the letter U, and included, “soup” because of my first picture book, Dumpling Soup. I was intrigued, and still am, by blogging as an art form, a unique creative outlet that allows me to indulge my love for journaling and creative nonfiction, letter writing, children’s literature, photography, culinary history, typography, food art, food memoirs and baking.

I have learned SO much in five years, only to realize how little I actually know about everything. I have new respect for professional book reviewers, renewed love for teachers and librarians, even have a new appreciation for editors, i.e., “inappropriate submissions.”

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Author Chat: Amy Novesky on Georgia in Hawaii

~ jama ~ 23 Comments
Amy at the Honolulu Museum of Art

I’m thrilled and delighted to welcome award-winning author and independent children’s book editor Amy Novesky to Alphabet Soup today.

She’s here to tell us more about her latest picture book, Georgia in Hawaii: When Georgia O’Keeffe Painted What She Pleased (Harcourt Children’s Books, 2012), which will be officially released next Tuesday, March 20th.

Did you know that in 1939, Georgia spent nine weeks touring the Hawaiian Islands? She was commissioned by the Hawaiian Pineapple Company “to create two paintings to promote the delights of pineapple juice.” Though she loved the time she spent in Hawaii and painted flowers, waterfalls, and feathered fish hooks, initially she refused to paint any pineapples.

She found the sharp and silvery fruit quite strange and beautiful. She wanted to live nearby so she could study it up close.

But the pineapple company would not let her . . .

Instead, they presented her with a pineapple. Georgia was disgusted. She did not want to paint the fruit now that it had been picked, and she would not let anyone tell her what to paint.

Georgia was just being herself — committed to painting what she saw, as she saw it, in her own way, so that is precisely what she did.

Amy and illustrator Yuyi Morales have done a brilliant job of presenting this little-known chapter in Georgia’s life, a rare instance in which she allowed her art to be used for commercial purposes. Despite the pineapple problem, Georgia was fascinated and intoxicated by Hawaii’s unique and varied land and seascapes — lush flora, interesting lava formations, mountains, gorges, waterfalls, beaches, caves, streams, and of course, abundance of tropical blossoms. She thrived in this natural paradise, as she explored remote areas in Hana, Maui, and strolled along the black sand beaches on the Big Island with her trained eye fixed on unspoiled vistas of singular beauty.

Amy’s lyrical, sensual text and Yuyi’s evocative acrylic paintings rendered in textured jewel tones (forest/moss greens, fuschia, aquamarine/prussian blues, fiery oranges, earthy browns) beautifully echo the iconic artist’s creative spirit gladdened by a place of pure enchantment.

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honest abe is a babe: maira kalman looks at lincoln

~ jama ~ 26 Comments

“History makes you hungry.” ~ Maira Kalman

In her brilliant 2009 New York Times illustrated essay, the inimitable, unfailingly hungry Maira Kalman, who looks like this,

Self portrait by Maira Kalman via WMagazine

tells about how she looked deep into Abe Lincoln’s eyes and fell head over heels.

Her witty, incisive, endearing paean to our 16th President, truly a love letter to top all love letters, made me fall even more head over heels — not only for Lincoln but for Maira.

I couldn’t stop looking at it.

After all, it included Mary Todd Lincoln’s famous White Cake, Lincoln’s favorite apples, “ornamental pyramids of nougat and caramel with fancy cream candy,” veal Malakoff, visits to the Lincoln Diner and Baked Potato King, as well as other “fancy small cakes.”

I want to be Maira when I grow up.

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