One Week in January

CLAIRE'S PICK

This book was a balm for me on a cold winter's evening, and one of the few books about which I can say "I read it in one sitting" and not be lying (I am a very slow reader). Ellis has made new paintings to accompany the finding of a diary she kept every day for one week when she was 25 and, like any neurotic, nostalgic, and ambitious 25 year-old, afraid of losing time, or memories, or the memories of moments, and desperate to be, herself, momentous. - CF

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.

Hardcover | 80 pages | 7.80" x 9.30"