One Week in January
New Paintings for an Old Diary
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
“Feels like reading a love story that doesn't quite know it's a love story yet, and a success story that doesn't know it’s made it.”
—Emma Straub, New York Times–bestselling author of This Time Tomorrow
Award-winning, beloved children's book author and illustrator Carson Ellis makes a stunning adult debut with an illustrated memoir that evocatively captures a specific cultural moment of the early 2000s and in her journey as an artist.
In January 2001, the young artist Carson Ellis moved into a warehouse in Portland, Oregon, with a group of fellow artists. For the first week she lived there, she kept a detailed diary full of dry observations, mordant wit, hijinks with friends (including her future husband, Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy), and turn-of-the-millennium cultural touchstones. Now, Ellis has richly illustrated this two-decade-old journal with extraordinary new paintings in the signature style that has made her an award-winning picture book author today.
This beautiful volume offers a snapshot of a bygone era, a meticulous re-creation of quotidian frustrations and small, meaningful moments, and a meditation on what it means both to start your journey as an artist and to look back at that beginning many years later.
AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR: Carson Ellis is a Caldecott award-winning author and artist known for her work in the Wildwood Chronicles, The Mysterious Benedict Society, and beyond and the longtime illustrator-in-residence for the band The Decemberists. People who love her children’s books will be thrilled to discover this new book—especially parents who are nostalgic for the days of the early 2000s.
A NOSTALGIC GIFT: One Week in January is the perfect nostalgic gift for anyone who came of age in the heyday of indie rock, offering a glimpse into the lives of a particular Portland art scene.
BEAUTIFUL, ECCENTRIC, AND CHARMING: Dry, specific, mundane, and somehow completely magical—this book is a true revelation. With gorgeous one-of-a-kind paintings by the one-and-only Carson Ellis, it’s transporting and relatable, an unglamorous homage to youthful misadventure, fun, sadness, and all the intense feelings of early adulthood.
Perfect for:
Fans of Carson Ellis’s picture books and illustration
People who grew up listening to The Decemberists and other bands from the 90s Portland music scene
Millennials and Gen Xers
Readers of diaries and memoir
Art book collectors
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this enchanting debut memoir, Caldecott-winning illustrator and children's author Ellis (In the Half Room) documents her experiences sharing a Southeast Portland, Ore., warehouse with other up-and-coming artists in 2001. After rediscovering an eight-page "droning catalog of my life at twenty-five, broke and unemployed, on the cusp of the digital age," Ellis decided to publish it, unedited, with new illustrations. Though the journal highlights some mundane activities, including Ellis's copious pizza consumption and numbing email maintenance, it also endearingly renders her cohort's messy interpersonal entanglements, including her romantic longing for her now-husband, Decemberists front man Colin Meloy, who "appear to be in love with everyone but her." Ellis's distinctive, colorful artwork fortifies the meticulous eye for detail also evident in her prose, with striking images of Meloy tuning his guitar and the bar next door to their rented warehouse elevating the material. This snapshot of a struggling artist will captivate restless creatives of all stripes.
