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Guest post by Ellis Weiner - in which I give the author of The Templeton Twins Have an Idea permission to swear

Pink Me can't resist a funny man. It's true - you can show me your muscular prose, your scenes of wooing and swooning, but when a writer rips out something that makes me laugh out loud, well then, you can cancel my appointments for the next few days.

That is how, even though I have always foresworn the Blog Tour thing, I am a stop on Ellis Weiner's Blog Tour. Ellis Weiner is funny. His first book for children, The Templeton Twins Have an Idea: Book One, has made the rounds in my house (I read it, both boys have, it tops one of the stacks on our coffee table in the current banner photo, and our copy currently resides on my husband's bedside shelf alongside multiple back issues of The Economist (I assume for bedtime readalouds to the kids but after all I don't know what happens around here when I have second shift at the library)), and made each of us giggle. Why haven't I reviewed it? See about a dozen previous posts subtitled OH WOE I AM OVERCOMMITTED and GAH! LIFE!

Also, Ellis Weiner is from Baltimore, and my friend Eerily Similar Paula and I have been nagging the crap out of him to come home and visit our libraries and schools. So when I had the chance to solicit a guest post, I asked him to reminisce about growing up here. 

 

A Pantheon of Picture Book Creators: Recent great picture books

My gods are better than these gods #remakefail

Maybe it's because the kids are re-reading all the Percy Jackson books, or maybe it's because I'm re-watching Battlestar Galactica and half those characters are named after classical gods and heroes (my children are so much more highbrow that I am right now, it's embarrassing).

But whatever the impetus, I am on a deification kick right now.  And just for the moment, just because these are the great picture books that have crossed my path recently, these are the effigies decorating my shrine:

The Brick Bible: A new spin on the Old Testament as told and illustrated by Brendan Powell Smith - review

 

Am I going to do this? I guess I am.

Let me start from the beginning. In the beginning, there was LEGO. Wait, that's horrible. I can't do that.

No. For me, this is the beginning: