Chronicle Books Blog

Each year at Comic-Con we bring a selection of our Pop Culture books to sell. It’s a great place to see how consumers react to our products, and to get feedback and an understanding as to what they want in future publishing. One of the surprises this year, at least to me, was how fast we sold out of our new reprint of The Art of Monsters, Inc. It was originally released in 2001 and was the first “Art of” book that we created. Not only was it the first, but it set the standard for our future “Art of” books which have received accolades from animation fans, professionals and historians who love to see the art and process that goes into making these films.

What surprised me wasn’t that customers liked the book; it was that our face-out display stopped passersby in their tracks. Several trotted up and asked, “Is this really The Art of Monsters, Inc.?” Once I assured them that it was, one remarked, “This book sells on eBay for hundreds of dollars. It’s been out of print forever!” I could see each person counting our stack, calculating whether to buy the 2 ½ pound book and carry it around the convention center, or chance returning later in hopes that we wouldn’t sell out.

By Saturday morning we had sold out. That day and the next several people came by to get a copy (the word was out) only to be disappointed. However, the good news is that since the book has been reprinted, there are plenty to go around in bookstores and online retailers. Matter of fact, you can buy one from Chronicle. The price is still $40, which is bad news for those folks selling them on eBay for three- to four times the amount, but great news for those fans who have been seeking copies.

Next up in our “Art of” series is The Art and Making of ParaNorman, which is fantastic, especially for those of us fascinated with the process of stop-motion animation. And just in case you are wondering, we are publishing The Art of Monsters University in Spring 2013. Hooray for Sulley and Mike!

April Whitney
Publicist

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This July marked the beginning of a new design fellowship session here at Chronicle Books. An opportunity for five recent design graduates to be a part of the design process and learn all that goes into creating Chronicle products. From books and ebooks, to stationery and marketing materials, these designers will have the chance to be fully immersed in the design culture here. We are pleased to introduce three new fellows who will be working with our publishing and children’s design groups. Along with our new additions, you will notice two familiar faces from last session who were asked to extend their fellowships due to their outstanding contributions thus far.

Ryan Diaz, publishing fellow

Ryan hails from Washington State where he graduated from University of Washington in 2011. Ryan has completed some impressive internships with McSweeney’s, the Henry Art Gallery, and Digital Kitchen in Seattle. In his work at McSweeney’s, he designed Love, An Index, their first collection for their Poetry Series among other projects. He impressed us with his thoughtful approach to all his projects, particularly his self-initiated ones. I would be remiss to not also mention his incredible typographic skills! Wow. Ryan loves to write almost as much as design, particularly poetry. He also enjoys reading, yoga, video games, art, and soul music. We are excited to have him here!

Check out some of Ryan’s work:

Daniel Triassi, publishing fellow

Daniel is a California native, who graduated cum laude from Cal Poly in 2011. Daniel is also interested in writing—he finished Cal Poly with a double major in Journalism and Graphic Design. Daniel’s portfolio shows his great attention to detail as well as his playful approach to design. His charming redesign of the Hardy Boys Mystery Series for his senior project won him a scholarship award from Bookbuilder’s West in 2011. Daniel impressed us with his thoughtful concepts as well as his thorough process. In addition to his interest in books, Daniel loves fashion, getting outdoors, watching the SF Giants, and hitting the Alameda flea market where he hunts for unique vintage trophies to add to his growing collection. We are looking forward to having him on our team!

Check out Daniel’s work here:

Tara Creehan, children’s fellow

Tara Creehan is an amazing locally based talent, having lived in the Bay Area for the last 15 years. She received her B.S. from Berkeley, but then felt something was missing and found her way to art school. She just graduated with distinction from CCA and won the thesis award. In addition, she was the recipient of the Richard and Jeane Coyne Foundation Scholarship through Communication Arts. Tara is a food lover—Papalote is her favorite burrito joint, and she just had lunch at Shanghai Dumpling King in the Richmond—and highly recommends it. She previously taught cooking and gardening to kids, and recently returned from Bora Bora where she and her husband enjoyed a second honeymoon! We are thrilled to have such an accomplished designer onboard in the Children’s Publishing Group.

Take a look at some samples of Tara’s work:

Lydia Ortiz, marketing fellow

Lydia finished her BFA in Graphic Design from California College of the Arts in San Francisco last May. At CCA, she received two Student Achievement Awards, the first for her outstanding work on her thesis and the second for Junior Review. Her portfolio shows her unique form-making skills as well as her compositional prowess. Her work also reveals her original and fresh way of thinking about storytelling and combining text and imagery. Lydia is originally from Manila, Philippines, and has called California home for the past nine years. Just looking at Lydia’s work is inspiring, and we are so happy to have her with us for another six months.

Check out some of Lydia’s more recent work:

Jackie Jakob, digital media fellow

Jackie Jakob, our 2010 University of Florida Honors Grad, has spent the last six months working with CSS, HTML and XPGT documents as our first digital fellow. Her knowledge of SVG containers, kf8s, epubs, and media queries is steadily growing and becoming legendary within certain circles. During the next 6 months, Jackie will be exploring metadata within epubs and experimenting with new ways of coding and epub3 standards. Don’t let the fantastic and fabulous life of coding and ebooks fool you, Jackie still keeps it real by spending time with her Golden Retriever, Miley, and pals Mickey and Minnie Mouse. We are thankful to have such a skilled and devoted fellow here for another session!

Take a look at what Jackie has done so far:

Meghan Nowell
Design Studio Assistant

Throughout June & July, a group of amazing bloggers let us into their crafty worlds and opened up about their connection to Happy Home: Twenty-One Sewing and Craft Projects to Pretty Up Your Home, a new book from fabric designer Jennifer Paganelli. Maybe they’ve used fabric from Sis Boom, which is designed by Jennifer Paganelli, or made a project from the book to brighten their own happy home. Perhaps they showed us how they’ve expressed love with a handmade project.

Whatever these lovely ladies chose to tell us, you don’t want to miss the reviews and stories they shared, inspired by Happy Home.

6/4 – CraftyPod
6/6 – Everything Etsy
6/6 – Automatism
6/8 – House on Hill Road
6/13 – How About Orange
6/13 – Coquette
6/22 – In My Own Style
6/27 – Melissa Loves
6/27 – Simply Grove
6/28 – Oh My! Handmade
6/29 – Decorology
7/13 – The Cottage Home
7/17 – The Long Thread

*Special thanks to all of the bloggers who shared their Happy Home Blogger Stories!*

Lorraine Woodcheke
Marketing & Publicity Manager

San Diego Comic-Con has come and gone already, and we’re still recovering from the pop culture overload and the air-conditioning-induced colds. The Chronicle Books team heads to SDCC each year not only to sell books and make connections with our consumers, but also to scout out things we’ll be obsessed with next year. (Disclaimer: Next year we’ll return, and hopefully remember that the lighting in The San Diego Convention center is unkind to iPhone photography!)

Based on our highly scientific method (called the “Best Guess”) we noted that pop culture trends on display included a continued love and reverence of 1980’s cartoons. Masters of the Universe, Jem, Transformers, and especially My Little Pony were everywhere. If there was any doubt that the “Brony” subculture (Adults, especially young men, who sincerely love and embrace My Little Pony) was real, we now stand convinced. Bronies also win the award for coolest t-shirts!

The coolest booth, though, had to be the Adult Swim Booth, which featured a “Cat Grab.” Contestants were dressed in a cat costume, placed inside a glass chamber, and then had to use their pet cone to catch prizes.

Our favorite activity is always costume spotting. So many attendees make amazing costumes, but it takes a special something to earn our deep appreciation!

If you haven’t yet seen Season 2 of HBO’s Game of Thrones, you might not want to look at this costume too closely. If you have seen it, you’ll appreciate the homage.

What we really love seeing is a great costume mashup. In previous years we’ve been delighted by Princess Vader and Stormtrooper Elvis. This year we enjoyed the Renaissance Justice League and the Steampunk X-Men!

Chef Vader, Sith Lord of the BBQ made an appearance with our NYT Bestselling author Jeffrey Brown. Although the texture, aroma, and taste of his “BBQ Binx” were off-putting, and a few of us got sick, we all agreed that it was better than a convention center hamburger.

The beautiful and mysterious Batgirl also stopped by our booth. She claimed to be fighting crime, but after she vanished we realized she’d stolen a wig, two purses, a used set of Dracula fangs, a priceless diamond tiara, and… our hearts!

The very best costume of SDCC, though, again goes to a youngster. His mom carried him as he passed our booth, exhausted. As we called out to Iron Man to stop and give us a picture, his mom said “Hang on, give him a minute…” and after a moment to get into character, he gave us this:

A true original… This is the stuff that makes SDCC exciting every year!

Michael Morris
Designer

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What summer fruits are you (and if you have some, your kids) enjoying the most right now? Leave a comment after this week’s recipe and subrecipes below, and you’ll be eligible to win a copy of Leslie Jonath and Ethel Brennan’s charming and child-approved At the Farmers’ Market with Kids cookbook (offer valid in the US and Canada only).

Mix-and-Match Deep-Dish Fruit Desserts

Cobblers, slumps or grunts, and pandowdies are all baked deep-dish fruit desserts with a topping. A cobbler is finished with biscuit dough; grunts and slumps, two names for the same dish, are crowned with a dumpling-type topping. They are traditionally cooked on the stovetop but can be baked, as here. A pandowdy sports a thick pastry topping. After it comes out of the oven, the topping is broken up and pushed into the dessert.

This recipe is fun for kids because they can choose one of three toppings: cottage pudding, an old-fashioned battercake for slumps and grunts; a drop-biscuit dough for cobblers; and a flaky pastry dough for pandowdies.

Serves 6 to 8

Kids can
Rinse and peel the fruit and cut into wedges
Measure and mix filling and topping ingredients
Help top the filling

For the filling
4 pounds peaches, nectarines, or plums
1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 tablespoons sugar
Cottage Pudding, Drop Biscuits, or Flaky Pastry Dough (recipes below)

1. Preheat the oven to 350ºF.

2. To make the filling: If using peaches, peel them. If using nectarines or plums, leave the skin on. Pit the fruits and cut into 1/2-inch-thick wedges. You should have about 4 cups. Put the wedges in a bowl. Add the lemon juice and sugar and stir and toss to mix well. Put the fruit in a 9-inch round or square baking dish deep enough to hold both the filling and the topping.

3. If using Cottage Pudding or Drop Biscuits, drop the batter by spoonfuls on to the filling, distributing the topping evenly. If using Flaky Pastry Dough, on a lightly floured work surface, roll out the dough 1/2 inch thick. It should be the shape of the dish—round, square, or rectangular—and just slightly larger than the dish. Drape the dough around the rolling pin and carefully lay it over the filling. Crimp the edges of the dough. Cut a few slits in the top to release steam during baking.

4. Bake until the crust is golden and the fruit is bubbling up around the edges, about 45 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack for 10 to 15 minutes before serving.

Cottage Pudding
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg, well beaten
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted

In a large bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. In a medium bowl, whisk together the egg, milk, and butter until well blended. Gradually add the egg mixture to the flour mixture, stirring gently until fully blended. Proceed as directed in the main recipe.

Drop Biscuits
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 teaspoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 cup milk

In a large bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, sugar, cream of tartar, and salt. Stir in the butter and milk just until the flour mixture is moistened. Proceed as directed in the main recipe.

Flaky Pastry Dough
The key to making the flakiest crust is to work quickly so that the butter remains very cold. You can also use this dough for making turnovers (featured in the book), two single-crust pies or one double-crust pie, or tartlets (also featured in the book).

2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup cold butter, cut into 1-inch pieces
1⁄3 cup ice-cold water

In a large bowl, stir together the flour and salt. Scatter the butter over the flour and cut it in with a pastry blender until the mixture resembles coarse sand. Sprinkle the water evenly over the mixture and, using a fork, toss to moisten evenly. Gently press the dough into a ball, then flatten into a disk. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for 2 hours (or keep in the freezer for up to 2 months).

Peter Perez
Associate Director, Marketing

Purchase: At the Farmers’ Market with Kids: Recipes and Projects for Little Hands.

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