After posting a video from the episode of Community where Troy meets his hero LeVar Burton I got a penchant for a little Reading Rainbow. The universe, it appears, was happy to oblige. First off you have a woman that I would love to meet one day. If the name Twila Liggett fails to ring any bells, know only that amongst her many accomplishments she was the founder and executive producer of Reading Rainbow back in the day. In the article Just Read Anything! she writes a message to parents and teachers that’s pretty self-explanatory. If you can’t think of Reading Rainbow without the aforementioned LeVar, however, the same website Happy Reading has a lovely interview with the man. I’d love to meet LeVar myself, but I think my reaction would be a shade too similar to Troy’s.
- Mmm. Critical reviews. They’re important. I don’t do as many of them these days as I used to, but I try to work in at least a couple per year. Some bloggers don’t do them at all, and while I understand that I think it’s important to have a critical dialogue in the children’s literary blogosphere. That nice Justine Larbalestier author recently wrote a post called I Love Bad Reviews that covers this. She’s a gutsy gal, that one. I hope she writes a middle grade book one of these days (How to Ditch Your Fairy came close but wasn’t quite there). And if the research author Elizabeth Fama found in the Sept/Oct 2010 issue of Marketing Science is true, then “negative reviews of books of relatively unknown authors raised sales 45%.” So there you go, oh first time authors. It’s win-win!
- Along similar lines is this other snarky link. Personally I’ve nothing against Cassandra Clare. She was a lovely person that I got to meet at a Simon & Schuster preview once. Of course, I’ve never read a one of her books (she’s a YA writer) but bookshelves of doom gave a positive review to her City of Bones and I trust Leila. That said, I enjoyed Part One of the podcast Read It and Weep’s series on that same book (Part Two isn’t out as of this posting). Read It and Weep is a couple dudes and their guest host talking about books and various pop culture icons they dislike. I wouldn’t recommend the podcast for fans of the series, but if you’re curious about the book it can be amusing. Particularly since they will mention things they enjoyed, like the cat-related paging system. I think I’ll have to seek out their thoughts on Percy Jackson soon. Not Twilight, though. It’s been done.
- Everyone and their mother emailed me the amazing Aaron Renier
5 Comments on Fusenews: Hunting the snark, last added: 3/9/2011Display Comments Add a Comment
I love photos of Karl Lagerfeld’s bookshelves. I hear he even owns the bookstore next door to where he lives!
[...] Hat tip to Bookshelf Porn, which I found via Betsy Bird’s Fuse #8. [...]
Betsy,
You know LaVar is making a special appearance at the Children’s Choice Book Awards, right? I’m currenly working on all of my introductions for the evening… Yeah. I KNOW!
=)
JJK
I hadn’t seen the Matilda strip. Loved it!
The first song my daughter ever sung was the theme to Reading Rainbow!
“Butterfly in the sky, I can fly twice as high…….”
I really miss it.
Shelley
Woah, Jarrett!! I knew you were hosting but I had no IDEA that he’d be there. Aw, man. Slip me a $300 ticket, wontcha? Failing that I’ll just do a nice little write-up on it for Monday.