Tuesday, December 7, 2010

A Former Neighbor

12.07.2010

While growing up, my apartment building had a lot of families with kids and though we didn’t all play together (because of age differences), we still knew each other. Today, the building’s demographic is different and rarely friendly, which makes me sad. It’s mainly a stop-over for trustafarians, frat boys fresh out of college who can somehow afford the astronomical rent, or a group of roommates willing to share a compact space to have a Westside address. But this isn’t my point.

In one of the apartments, lived a Russian family whose son, Marc Kompaneyets (his real name) was, and still is, a very good artist. About a year or so ago he published a book for children titled The Squishiness of Things. When I saw the book I was amazed by and mesmerized with the illustrations. Earlier today I found out he just published his second book titled The Troll Control Expert. It’s somewhat strange for me to know an author and illustrator. Also, he and Rob were in school together and were friends so there’s this double weirdness going on for me.

Marc’s books are for children 4-8 and I highly recommend them. I’m very jealous of his skill as an artist and I never wanted to be an artist or an illustrator. His work in these books is really exquisite. (By the way, purchasing his 2nd book might be tricky because he couldn’t find a publisher for it – which is strange considering they published the 1st one – so Amazon won’t have it and if you Google it, you mainly find reviews and twitter announcements about it.)


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