Alina Chau -- Signed copies of her 1st book now in stock!

 Artist and longtime SNB friend, Alina Chau, stopped by the store. 

She signed copies of her 1st book "Marshmallow and Jordan" -- and added an orignal drawing! There are a limited number of these special signed copies w/ drawings.

This bio of Alina is from the back cover of her book: "Alina Chau is an award-winning filmmaker and artist. Her credits include the Emmy Award-winning Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series, and numerous best-selling games. She illustrated The Nian Monster, which received the 2018 APALA Picture Book Honor. Her creative vision is strongly influenced by her Chinese-Indonesian upbringing. As a child, she was always fascinated by her grandmother's stories, colorful sarongs, and delicate wooden sculptures brought from Southeast Asia. The aroma of Indonesian food still brings back loving memories of sitting and drawing next to Grandma while she prepared spices from scratch. Marshmallow & Jordan is inspired by the wonderful memories she and her grandmother shared."

Here's a screen grab from the fun video of her visit on her Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/CsjIvZyNclT/ The video shows her drawing in the books.

These signed copies with drawings are available on both the hardcover https://stuartngbooks.com/marshmallow-and-jordan-hardcover-signed-with-a-drawing.html

and paperback versions. https://stuartngbooks.com/marshmallow-and-jordan.html

This is a substanial book -- 384 pages!!! 

The SNB website links above include several images of the wonderful art. 

"Marshmallow and Jordan" is magic realism for middle-schoolers (and up). This graphic novel in book form follows a basketball team captain, challenged by a life-changing injury, who helps, and gets guidance from, a magical elephant. 

This longer synopsis is from the book back cover:

 "Jordan's days as star player for her school's basketball team ended when an accident left her paralyzed from the waist down. Now, she's still the team captain, but her competition days seem to be behind her...until an encounter with a mysterious elephant, who she names Marshmallow, helps Jordan discover a brand new sport.

Will water polo be the way for Jordan to continue her athletic dreams--or will it just come between Jordan and her best friends on the basketball team? And with the big tournament right around the corner, what secret is Marshmallow hiding?"

A recent SNB newsletter shared info about the visit and an excerpt from an interview-

Children's book illustrator Alina Chau visited the store Sunday and signed all of our copies of her original graphic novel, Marshmallow and Jordan. We first got to know Alina when she was living in San Francisco and working in animation. It's a transition we've seen a number of artists make and here's a long quote from an interview with Alina:

"When and why did you decide to switch from animation to illustrating and writing children's books?

Throughout my animation career, I worked on mostly 3D male-oriented titles with male lead characters. In the beginning, it was fun and exciting because it's quite different from my natural style. However, after a few years, I missed expressing myself on paper. I missed drawing. So I started painting and drawing again after work, just for fun. Then one day, my coworker invited me to join the Totoro Forest Project art show at Pixar. That showed me that there was an opportunity for me to explore the gallery scene and to continue to draw and paint. As my paintings garnered attention, I started getting commission inquiries to the point that I could no longer balance my day job at the studio with my personal projects. It was a good problem to have - I eventually quit my day job to focus on an independent career as an artist. After some years of artistic discovery, I realized that children's book publishing is where I could spread my wings as a visual storyteller. Illustrating picture books or writing & illustrating graphic novels for young adults taps into the same reason why I love animation: it's telling stories through pictures."

SNB also has in stock Alina's most recent book project."Bonnie's Rocket." The story is inspired by engineer Lau Tung Kwan, an engineer on the Apollo 11 space mission, and the grandfather of the book's author, Emeline Lee. Alina did the illustrations and it was her idea to include diagrams in the art for the various experiments.  

These copies arrived after Alina's store visit and are NOT signed.

However, they have a wonderful STEM themed story with lovely illustrations by Alina Chau. https://stuartngbooks.com/bonnies-rocket.html