Morse, the Man and the Code.

As far as I know, The Secret Plan is the only picture book about bedtime that heavily features kittens communicating using Morse code.
What I didn't know was that Samuel F. B. Morse, the man who invented the telegraph, as well as the Code, was a painter before he turned to inventing. I saw one of his most famous works, Gallery of the Louvre at the National Gallery in Washington, DC.



Here's a visual way to remember the Morse alphabet (based on A.G. Reingold's chart.)
Useful when plotting your next sleepover.



For those more curious about Morse and his code:

A short biography of Morse is here.

There's also an interesting article from the New York Times here about a recent event called the Night of Nights, when the air was once again filled with "the music of Morse." (The article was also my first introduction to the term "radio squirrel.")

Lucca Night

A painting from the sketchbook.

Penny Arcade Cameo

Penny Arcade is one of the most popular and longest running webcomics about video games and video game culture, written by Jerry Holkins and illustrated by Mike Krahulik. Besides the comic, the Penny Arcade guys have also created games, books, podcasts, a gaming convention and a reality show based on their adventures.

I'm lucky to have two eagle-eyed, Penny Arcade fans in the family. My cousin Jon Stauder and his wife Heidi were watching the deleted scenes on the Penny Arcade: The Series - Season 1 DVD, and happened to spot The Secret Plan on a table in the foreground! Heidi is an elementary school teacher and has used the book in her classes, recognized it immediately and leapt up and started pointing at the screen and yelling! Jon emailed me and I was surprised and proud.

Here is Jerry Holkins (aka Tycho) and The Secret Plan:



I was also very excited to learn about another of Penny Arcade's endeavors, Child's Play, a charity founded in 2003 that has raised over 7 million dollars in donations of toys, games, books and cash for sick kids in children’s hospitals across North America and the world. The issue of children, (and their families) dealing with hospitalization is one that hits home for me. To learn more about the organization or to make a donation, check out their site.

At Last...

I've managed to combine my love of terrible puns with my enthusiasm for art history. Please enjoy the cheeky baptistry.

They Don't Let You Have Bees In Here...

Some bee and wasp drawings and Carl Sandburg poems from the sketchbook.

Water Tower Rocket Mural!

Recently I got to join an enthusiastic crew to help paint a mural on the side of M.S. 131 Dr. Sun Yat Sen School, here in Chinatown. "Blast Off" was designed by my friend Shana Siegel, Eve Biddle, and Joshua Frankel for New York Cares.

For more information and superior pictures, here are Shana and Joshua's posts about the mural.
Here's a great time lapse film of the project:

Blast Off from Tom Starkweather on Vimeo.

In addition to being an excellent painter, designer, and photographer, Shana's talents also extend to creating fantastic tiny sofas for cats. Check out her Etsy store, The Upholstered Puss.

Istrice

from the sketchbook.

Come see "Call of the Wild" this weekend in Brooklyn!

My short animated film, "Call of the Wild" will be playing in the "FREE Short Films for Kids in Park Slope" show, part of the Rooftop Films 2011 Summer Series this Saturday, April 16th at 3pm at M.S. 51 in Park Slope (350 Fifth Ave, Brooklyn.) Rooftop Films is a great program that I'm happy to have been connected to since 2003! Check out this year's lineup and learn more about the film festival, here.

From an article in the Park Slope Patch by Kristen V. Brown about this event:

"Film buffs both young and old are in for a treat this weekend.

On Saturday, Rooftop Films and the Fifth Avenue Business Improvement District will host a pair of screenings – one for the younger set of cinema addicts, the other for adults – at M.S. 51 on Fifth Avenue.

The summer film series, known for screening new, independent films in unique outdoor locations across the city, will start off at 3 p.m. with a special screening of short films for kids, featuring fun and family-friendly shorts from all over the world. The films will range from nutty animation featuring knights, robots, monkeys, and people made of sand to live action shorts about ping-pong.

"Most of our shows run too late or just aren’t quite age-appropriate for younger audiences. So we wanted to present special shows that people in this area could attend as a family,"

For the grown-ups, starting at 7 p.m. Rooftop will preview a handpicked selection of shorts the program will screen in the 2011 Summer Series.

Both events are free and open to everyone. This is the program’s 15th year in operation.

"Part of our mission is to work with and engage the local communities where we screen our films, and this is especially true for Park Slope, it being the neighborhood we call home," said Lela Scott MacNeil, Outreach Manager for Rooftop Films."

Here's an early sketch for the scene from "Call of the Wild" that was hailed as 'the best square-dancing bat sequence in the history of cinema', by the Cinematexas Film Festival!

Bookshelves

Here are my bookshelves as part of
Meghan McCarthy's blog about shelves!




Yep, I keep them organized by color. Don't they look nice? It's an alphabetical rebellion against my years of working in a bookstore.

Proofs!

I'm happy to have the first proofs of Subway Story sitting on my kitchen table! It's exciting to see the whole book all laid out. After so much work, seeing it like this really makes it feel real! Above is the first page of the book.