Chronicle Books Blog

When the book Dirty Little Secrets from Otherwise Perfect Moms landed on my list, I didn’t realize at first how close to home some of the “secrets” would hit. I should have known better. As I read the manuscript and set the text, I heard Lauryn Hill covering “Killing Me Softly with His Song”: I felt he’d found my letters and read each one out loud. Yes, my two year old proudly announces, “That’s mommy’s water!” when he sees a bottle of wine. Yes, I often volunteer for a late night diaper run just so I can linger in the magazine section and catch up with Britney, Angelina, and the rest of the gang. Does a one year old really go to “school”? No, but it sure sounds better than “daycare.”

But it was one woman’s confession—“Sometimes I feel guilty for liking going to work so much”—that got me thinking. Work. Secrets. Surely moms aren’t the only ones with secrets? And what better way to feel better about my imperfect self than to coax confessions of imperfection from my fellow designers? Some were a little shy about coming forward, but I know that they feel lighter of heart for having shared. Here are just a few Dirty Little Secrets from Otherwise Perfect Designers:

Sometimes I try to Command Z something and I’m not even at the computer.

Some of my best designs happened by mistake.

After all of these years as a designer, I still can’t draw to save my life.

I never thought I’d shown design inclinations as a kid. But then I remember the greeting card business I started when I was nine and my obsession with creating the perfect monogram.

One night, after a week of long work hours, I dreamed of nothing but pulling green guides across a blank computer screen. For eight hours. Guide after guide after guide…

I can actually remember the days when design was all done by hand.

Nothing makes me madder than a poorly kerned billboard. Why would anyone want to advertise sloppy letter spacing at such a ridiculous scale?

When I’m visiting a friend’s house and left alone in a room, I rearrange objects ever so slightly to make a more aesthetically pleasing display.

I make type too small on purpose, so that when a client says, “Make the type bigger” I can actually make it be the size I want.

I cried openly when I stepped into the Alexander Girard exhibit at the Cooper Hewitt. I felt like I’d found home.

Jennifer Tolo Pierce
Design Director

Craft Pad Giveaway!

After seeing all of the beautiful things that Aya made with the Origami craft pad papers she designed last week and reading all of the great comments left on Average Jane Crafter’s fantastic blog we thought more people deserved to get their hands on an advanced copy of our new craft pads. Two lucky people will receive a copy of the Creatures & Critters Origami Craft Pad and the Sublime Stitching Craft Pad. Just leave a comment below telling us what you dream of making with either pad, a favorite gift you’ve made or received using one of Jenny’s patterns, or simply say hi! We’ll randomly pick two comments and send the winners a copy of both craft pads.

All comments posted before 3/31 at midnight will be entered in our drawing for the craft pads. Check back here next Thursday when we announce the winners. And thanks to all of you who have commented already! Keep it coming. We adore all of you!

Check out more Handbound posts.

Christina Loff
Craft Publicist

Many of the people who buy our cookbooks are moms who want fast, simple, healthy meals that their family will like. And it’s understandable that this is the priority. How many times have you worked hard to make a new dish for your toddler only to have them throw it on the ground or refuse to eat it? Every mom has been there, and they all want to know how to get their kids to develop into healthy eaters that actually enjoy their time at the table?

While there is no easy answer to this question, author Jennifer Carden and her photographer husband Matthew have created The Toddler Café to get parents started in the right direction. They learned with their own daughter that creativity and fun are the keys to keeping kids interested in food.

Some tips Jennifer and Matthew Carden suggest are:
• Putting the food in creative containers, like brown paper, an ice cream cone, or a teacup
• Create creative names for the dishes that stimulates them (like spaghetti could be Wiggly Worms or Oodles of Noodles, depending on what your child likes).

What are your favorite tips or tricks to get your toddler to eat?

Chronicle Books and Boon, Inc. are sponsoring a CONTEST to find the best ideas for getting kids to eat. Whether it’s trying new foods or just getting them to sit still at the table, what works for you? Send an email to author Jennifer Carden to enter!

From your entries, author Jennifer Carden will choose the top TEN entries, who will all receive a signed copy of the book and a Boon Inc. feeding utensil for their child. Plus, we will post all TEN winning tips here so everyone benefits from their brilliant tips.

Of the TEN, a GRAND PRIZE winner will receive a full line of the Boon Inc feeding utensils and dishes and the super-popular Animal Bag, along with some parenting books from Chronicle Books and the signed copy of The Toddler Café.

The contest lasts from March 26 until April 30, so submit your entry today! Winners will be announced on Mother’s Day!!! How appropriate.

Purchase The Toddler Café.

Amy Portello
Publicist

On March 1st, Ivy and Bean and I went to the Asilomar Regional Reading Conference, where school teachers, librarians, and reading specialists from Northern and Central California gathered for seminars and, um, conferring. Hicklebee’s Bookstore sponsored an authors’ panel featuring luminaries such as Barbara Joosse, Robert San Souci, Tim Myers, Andy Runton, Justina Chen Headley, Bruce Hale, Trudy Ludwig, and guess who. I spoke to the audience about Ivy and Bean. Here’s the post-conference wrap up, as told by Ivy and Bean themselves.

Ivy: There were lots of teachers and librarians there.
Bean: There was a lady who had three boxes of books attached to one of those little carts with a bungee cord, and then the bungee cord snapped. That was funny.
Ivy: There were some authors, too.
Bean: They talked, but I don’t remember what they said.
Ivy: I do. There was a guy who talked about reluctant readers—
Bean: Hey! That’s me!
Ivy: –and how they need to be encouraged to find the right book.
Bean: And there was a tall guy who writes books without any words in them at all. Pretty easy job.
Ivy: Owly. That was the Owly guy.
Bean: And there was a guy there who had written NINETY-FIVE books! What a wacko! I figured he’d have one normal-sized hand and one huge hand, but he didn’t. And get this: his brother writes books about HIM. What if Nancy writes a book about me?
Ivy: I bet Nancy would write a book about herself instead of you.
Bean: But she hardly ever has any fun, so that would be a boring book. She’d have to write about me.
Ivy: There was a lady who wrote about bullies.
Bean: You’re not supposed to make a voodoo doll of the bully and stick pins in it.
Ivy: You’re supposed to tell a grown up.
Bean: After dinner, Ivy and I went to all the tables in the dining room and ate the extra pie. Some people didn’t even take one bite of their piece.
Ivy: It had whipped cream on it, too.
Bean: I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: grown ups are weird.

Every six months Chronicle Books welcomes a new set of young designers to its fellowship program. Five designers (one industrial designer and four graphic designers) commit to the six-month design fellowship and, in the process, often end up pitching a project idea or two. They also design the fellowship poster, which is a call for entries for the next season of design daredevils.

This spring, Andrew Schapiro of Davidson College, NC and Bradley Mead of the University of Washington, WA collaborated to design the poster. Inspired by their simultaneous colds and an awareness that their time here at Chronicle Books is finite, the two chose an obituary theme, with humorous, post-mortem descriptions of the different fellowship positions and their demands, in a realistic newspaper layout. Andrew and Brad got several Chronicle Books employees, as well as the other fellows, to contribute to the poster’s text.

In the end, 300 posters were silk-screened on French Paper Company’s Durotone aged newsprint, in two colors by Bloom Press printers in Oakland, CA. The posters are currently being mailed to schools around the country. For more information on the fellowship program, visit: http://chroniclebooks.com/designfellowship/.

Postscript: Andrew and Brad ultimately survived their colds and seem to be enjoying a healthy run in our design department with long and vigorous careers ahead of them. While colds come and go, many fellows maintain a robust relationship with Chronicle after their time here.

Suzanne LaGasa
Designer