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I love edible book art–especially when it’s beautiful, or based on a children’s book. So this “Green Eggs and Ham” Bento box lunch created by Sakurako Kitsa is a feast for my eyes. (Not to mention that Green Eggs and Ham is one of my favorite Dr. Seuss books.)

Photo: Sakurako Kitsa @ Flickr

What’s a Bento box lunch? I wondered that, too. A Bento lunch is basically a packed lunch–only the lunches are often decorative and visually appealing, and contain multiple food items. They can be packed in any container, but it’s common (especially in Japan, but the trend has come here as well) to pack the meal in a Bento box–a box with individual compartments, and sometimes multiple tiers for grains, pasta, or side dishes.

Bento lunches are a way to make food look appealing and fun–for children and for grown ups. I haven’t tried this myself, but I like looking at the photos.

This just tickled my funny bone–the Bookseller has a prize for the Oddest Book Title of the Year* (now in its 30th year)–and some of the past winners are: Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice (1978); How to Shit in the Woods: An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art (1989); How to Avoid Huge Ships (1992); Highlights in the History of Concrete ( 1994); and Bombproof Your Horse (2004).

Those titles made me grin. You can see all the past titles here. The titles are spotted and submitted by publishers, booksellers, and librarians around the world.
Want some more fun? You can actually join in and vote for the oddest title from the past 30 years. The winner will be announced on Friday, 5th September, 2008.

To celebrate, Aurum Press will release an illustrated collection of some of the winners and nominees of past years, How to Avoid Huge Ships and Other Implausibly Titled Books. It features original jackets of 50 of the best-loved titles since the prize began.

*The formal prize from Bookseller is called Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year.

Thanks to Shelf Awareness for the link.

Wordle is both a fun time waster for people who like words, and a useful tool for writers. You can upload any text you want into Wordle, and play with the fonts, colors, and layouts, and it will produce a picture based on the words, visually showing you the words you’ve used most frequently. The most frequently used words appear the largest. You can see where this can come in handy for fiction writers, especially, finding overused words, as well as themes, plot threads, etc that are used the most frequently throughout a book.

The results can be aesthetically pleasing as well as interesting and possibly useful. If you want to keep the image you’ve created just for yourself, don’t save it on Wordle. (Save it via an screenshot utility. You can also save it as a .pdf file; see Wordle’s FAQ for help.) Otherwise, anything you save will be available for anyone to print out or use. You might not want to do that with, say, your novel. On the other hand, I think it could make a small though neat promotional tool, especially if you save it under the book’s title and with your name. I saw a few on Wordle like that–and while I didn’t stay to peruse them, I did see the books’ titles–which is part of book promotion.

Thanks to Justine Larbalestier and her wonderful post on Wordle and how she used it for her novels, for introducing me to Wordle’s usefulness and fun play factor.

You need to have Java installed on your computer or your browser in order to view the Wordle creations.

(Click on event name for more information)

Shanghai International Literacy Festival~ Mar 1 - 15, Shanghai, China

The Man Hong Kong International Literary Festival~ Mar 2 - 12, Hong Kong

Adelaide Festival Awards For Literature Winners Announced~ Mar 2, Adelaide, Australia

Growing Up Asian in America Art & Essay Contest for Youth~ entry deadline Mar 6, San Francisco, CA, USA

World Book Day~ Mar 6, United Kingdom and Ireland

The 12th Annual Charlotte S. Huck Children’s Literature Festival~ Mar 7 - 8, Redlands, CA, USA

Masak-Masak: A Potluck of Delectable Stories from Around the World~ Mar 8, Singapore

Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award Winner Announced~ Mar 12, Vimmerby, Sweden

World Storytelling Day~ Mar 20

World Poetry Day~ Mar 21

Harmony Day~ Mar 21, Australia

Bangkok International Book Fair~ Mar 26 - Apr 7, Bangkok, Thailand

The Toronto Festival of Storytelling~ Mar 28 - Apr 6, Toronto, ON, Canada

Storylines Margaret Mahy Award Lecture~ Mar 29, Pakuranga, New Zealand

Tom Fitzgibbon Award and Joy Cowley Award Winners Announced~ Mar 29, Pakuranga, New Zealand

Bologna Children’s Book Fair~ Mar 31 - Apr 3, Bologna, Italy

Hans Christian Anderson Awards Announced~ Mar 31, Bologna, Italy

From New Zealand’s lively children’s book community, today we feature two great resources. At Bookrapt, brainchild of the Bay of Plenty Children’s Literature Association, you’ll find a great list of resources for writers and aspiring writers: competitions, publishers, advice, awards, literary organizations, industry news and more. If you’re feeling rejected (or just have those northern hemisphere winter blues), check out their list of prominent writers and the number of rejections each received getting a book deal. It’s sure to bring a little sunshine into any writer’s or aspiring writer’s life!

And Storylines, the Kiwi IBBY site, is such rich territory that the rest of this post is littered with links. The annual Storylines Festival in June connects children and families with writers and illustrators. Four literary-related prizes are awared annually. The national Mahy Award in March and the Gilderdale Award in October recognize outstanding contributions to children’s literature. The Gaelyn Gordon Award is for a much-loved book that hasn’t yet won a major award. Support for developing and unpublished writers come in the Tom Fitzgibbon Award for a chapter book and the Joy Cowley Award for a picture book.

Storylines also recommends lists of books (not all New Zealand-published) for children. Their annual Notable Books List this year is of books for and about children with disabilities.