How to use this Page

I wrote in my newsletter last week about my new project with BookPeople. “Our hope,” I wrote, “is that by leveraging the longstanding popularity of Margaret Wise Brown, for instance, Modern First Library will get more great new books representing an increasingly broad swath of our society into more homes and into more readers’ hands. If this grassroots approach works, we hope that other booksellers will emulate it in their own communities and that it will encourage publishers to create and support more books reflecting the diversity in our world.”

Today, I’m pleased to share the Austin indie bookseller’s blog post officially launching the initiative:

Under the banner of this program, we will be featuring a broad range of books, new and old, that we think belong on the shelves of the very youngest readers.

BookPeople is committed to helping all kids find books that broaden their idea of what’s possible, provide fresh perspectives, and open windows to new experiences: all the things that great children’s books always do. And because we live in the vibrant, global society of the 21st century, our book suggestions have been purposefully designed to reflect the diversity of that experience. After all, a child’s first library offers his or her first glimpses of the world outside the family’s immediate sphere, and we think that view needs to reflect a reality that’s broad, inclusive, and complex, just like the world we all live in.

Please have a look at what BookPeople’s children’s book buyer has to say about Modern First Library, and stay tuned for guest posts on the subject by Austin authors Cynthia Leitich Smith, Don Tate, Liz Scanlon, Varian Johnson, and me. In the meantime, check out the Modern First Library starter sets — the folks at BookPeople have worked hard to put those together, and it shows.

I’ve been asked in the past why it is that I don’t write up the online librarian previews by folks like those at Scholastic.  The reason is simple.  I figure that if you have access to the online previews you don’t need a recap from someone like me.  You can see them for yourself!  That said, some of you may have missed the Fall 2011 Scholastic preview that came out last month.  I didn’t think to blog it before, so go wild!  It’s up and ready for your attention, such as it is.

Book trailer time!  My respect for this one hinges on the fact that the kids in the video are as good as they are.  They’ve cultivated a kind of dead-eyed calm that I admire.

Speaking of trailers for books, here we have Liz Scanlon and Kathi Appelt discussing Scanlon’s newest title Noodle & Lou.  In it a worm and a blue jay are buds.  Any time I see a book where folks who eat or are eaten by one another are friends I think of that moment in Charise Mericle Harper’s Fashion Kitty where the main character explains how hard it is to be friends with something you want to eat.  She then shows a boy with a pet chocolate cake saying, “I love you.  But I really want to eat you.” Love that book.

Anywho, enjoy!

Thanks to Kathi Appelt for the link.

A new Harry Potter trailer was released this week.  I have resigned myself to not seeing it until it comes out on DVD.  Le sigh.

Thanks to Early Word for the link.

And finally for the off-topic video, I know that Stephen Colbert briefly linked to this video once.  It’s just so doggone Russian and so doggone cheery (two phrases I don’t tend to pair together) that I can’t help but make it my song of the day. La la la la la!