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It is WAY too late in the day for me to be only starting a Fusenews post now. All right, guys. Looks like we’re gonna have to do today double quick time. Sorry, but I’ve a ticking time bomb in the other room (sometimes also known as “my daughter”) and I gotsta gets to bed before midnight. Here we go!
- February means only one thing. The Brown Bookshelf has resumed their 28 Days Later campaign. So stop complaining about the fact that black writers and illustrators aren’t better acknowledged and actually read all about them! This is your required reading of the month. And no, I’m not joking.
- Some sad Obit news. Diane Wolkstein, storyteller and picture book/folktale author passed away after heart surgery in Taiwan.
- Happier news. My mom, the published poet, gets interviewed by Foreword Magazine. Note the copious Little Women references.
- The happiest news of all. This will, if you are anything like me, make your day. Delightful doesn’t even begin to describe it. Thanks to Robin Springberg Parry for the link.
- Were you aware that there was an offensive Flat Stanley book out there? Nor I. And yet . . .
- Hat tip to the ShelfTalker folks for actually putting together the top starred books of 2012. Mind you, only YA titles can get seven stars because (I think) they include VOYA. Ah well.
- My new favorite thing? Jon Klassen fan art. Like this one from Nancy Vo. Cute.
- Meet Eerdmans, my new best friend. Look what they put on their books for the last ALA Midwinter.
Thanks to Travis Jonker for the heads up!
- Hey! Public school librarians and public library librarians! Want money? The Ezra Jack Keats Foundation is giving away grants. Free money! Take it, people, take it!
- The Battle of the (Kids’) Book Contenders are announced and nigh. I’m a little bit late with that info. Ah well.
- One of my children’s librarians has been getting twenty different kinds of attention because she circulated an American Girl doll. Now try and picture how many donations she now has to deal with. Yup.
- An interesting use of the term “whittle”. As in, “I think I’m going to whittle off all the toes on my feet”. Except more drastic, less cosmetic.
- Travis Jonker and the very fun idea to create a Children’s Literature casting call. I’d counter that Josh Radnor is more Jarrett Krosoczka (though I may be just a bit confused since Jarrett was actually in the background of an episode of How I Met Your Mother in the past), Lisa Loeb is more Erin E. Stead, Neal Patrick Harris as either Mac Barnett or Adam Gidwitz, Stanley Tucci as Arthur A. Levine, and maybe Jeffrey Wright as Kadir Nelson, except that Kadir is better looking. Hm. This will bear additional thought.
Fair play to The College of Creative Design. I do like this new ad campaign of theirs.
Thanks to The Infomancer for the link.
Okay. That’s an outright lie, I suppose. Who can be unbiased about their mom? Particularly when their mom writes awesome poetry? Particularly particularly when she has been published by The University of Nebraska Press and her book is out on shelves now.
You can’t trust me (obviously). So I’ll just casually put these quotes from major poets here on the floor and just wander over here to the drinking fountain.
*puts down quotes and starts whistling a jaunty jig*
“Susan Blackwell Ramsey, a poet of unending curiosity, gives us ample evidence here of what the mind can find when it goes looking for what it does not yet see. Her poems have a way of making the world feel just discovered, and convey a sense of attachment to people that is expansive and invigorating. This is a fine book by a wonderful poet.”—Bob Hicok, author of Words for Empty and Words for Full
“Susan Blackwell Ramsey—a poet who sees, remembers, and sorts it all out. Check out ‘Our Third Wedding Reception This Year,’ a sonnet with meter and rhyme all in place, but so conversational that formalities slip away and the story itself unfolds as though the teller were sitting across from us at the window.”—Conrad Hilberry, author of After-Music
“Rife with humor and grace. . . . A Mind Like This showcases a supremely supple and cultivated imagination that unbolts yards and yards of elegant and ardent poems. But the real thrill? Her dazzling wit that lights the whole collection aflame.”—Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of Lucky Fish
And for the record, you can read the titular poem here if you would like to. It’s a good poem, and an excellent indication of what you might find in the book.
Shameless plug out!
“I just finished a poem where St. Francis and St. Clare double-date with Thoreau and Evita and it just makes me very happy.” My mother was the winner of the 2011 Prairie Schooner Book Prize because she is as good as it gets. No brag. Just fact. Prairie Schooner recently interviewed her as well and I recommend looking at it, partly because this my mother we’re talking about and she makes me very proud and partly because it raises the old interview bar, so to speak. Clearly I need to put more work into my own.
- Once in a great while my husband’s occupation and my own will intersect. He is a screenwriter and will alert me to interesting news items on the cinematic side of things. This week he pointed me to a ScriptShadow piece. If you are unfamiliar with the site it’s where a fellow going by the name of “Carson Reeves” reads and reviews the scripts that have recently sold in Hollywood and critiques them long before they are turned into films. Each Friday Carson has something he calls Amateur Friday where folks submit their own screenplays for his review. Last Friday someone handed in a script called Fifi, A Monkey’s Tale. Those of you familiar with the story behind Curious George will recognize this as the original title of that manuscript. The script essentially tells the tale of the Reys’ escape from the Nazis in WWII. Only to punch it up a bit the screenwriter (and I kinda love this) rewrote history so that Goebbels himself wants Mr. Rey destroyed. Something you have to see for yourself, I think.
- Do you like awards? Do you like children’s books that come from countries other than America? Well then, folks, have I got great news from you. After her recent trip to Italy to judge the awards, Jules at 7-Imp let me know that the winners have been announced:
The 2012 Bologna Ragazzi Awards have just been announced! Here are links for interested folks:
Fiction winner and mentions: http://www.bolognachildrensbookfair.com/en/boragazziaward/images_award/fiction;
Nonfiction winner and mentions:http://www.bolognachildrensbookfair.com/en/boragazziaward/images_award/non_fiction;
New Horizons winner and mentions:http://www.bolognachildrensbookfair.com/en/boragazziaward/images_award/new_horizons;
Opera Prima winner and mentions (Opera Prima is for new artists):http://www.bolognachildrensbookfair.com/en/boragazziaward/images_award/opera_prima.
- I long for the day Save NYC Libraries can be shut down, but until that happy day occurs it’s a hugely useful and well-organized site for fighting mayoral cuts. Recently the mayor rolled out his old budget again and yep. You guessed it. We’re
As you may have heard, last week author William Sleator passed away. I met him once during the Midwinter ALA Conference in Philadelphia. He was part of an Abrams brunch in which librarians munched on food and spoke to various authors. I was pleased to get Mr. Sleator’s autograph on a book for a friend and remember him as a nice guy. I also remember another fellow there who spoke to the occasional librarian but was by no means hounded by them. Since that brunch Jeff Kinney and his Diary of a Wimpy Kid books have gone on to fame and fortune but Mr. Sleator was big in his own way and his last book, The Phantom Limb, will be published this October by Amulet Books. A page in remembrance of Mr. Sleator is up here. If you’d like to leave a comment, please do.
- Speaking of ALA Conferences, when I attend one there’s nothing I like better than to slip into an ALA Notables meeting to watch the crew eviscerate the unworthy and laud the laudable. Now the ALSC blog informs us that “The 2012 Notable Children’s Books Committee invites ALSC members to suggest titles for consideration for our annual list of notable children’s books.” Awesome! If there are titles that you think are particularly worthy, please be so good as to visit the blog to find out how to nominate them. I’ve already a couple of my own favorites in mind . . .
- And if it’s “Best” lists you’re looking for, why not check out a new one compiled by the two most prominent young, male, web-savvy children’s librarians out there. You can probably already guess who they are, cantcha? Yes, Mr. Schu and Mr. Jonker have joined forces (when you say their names like that, don’t they sound like Batman villains?) and produced their Top 20 Children’s Books of 2010. A remarkable list, it pays homage to books I adored (The Night Fairy, Farm, etc.) though there will always inevitably be one or two you love that get missed (Hereville, man, Hereville!). Well worth checking out.
- Now it is time to brag. Because while I’m sure your moms are awesome and everything, only one mom won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry for 2011. Yup. That would be mine. Her manuscript, A Mind Like This, will now be published by the University of Nebraska Press. Because, naturally, she’s one of our greatest living poets. Just sayin’.
- This one goes out to the librarians in the field. The Oxford University Press blog has revealed info on 120 years of census data on American librarians. There’s lots of fun info to be culled. Personally I like the fact that “Today, the marriage rate among librarians is the highest it has ever been with 62 percent of librarians married in 2009.&
Taye Diggs isn’t quite good looking enough, either, but he’s another possibliity.
Betsy,
I am very sad that Dr. Zetta Elliott feels the need to move away from the world of children’s literature but understand her reasons all too well. Perhaps what we need more than a “read these books” campaign is a “buy these books” push. I want to adapt the Room of One’s Own bookstore (Madison, WI) campaign to challenge readers of your blog and elsewhere to pledge to buy two more books this year that are written by people of color than were purchased last year.
On a completely different note, I hear that there may be a mother daughter signing in Kalamazoo in April! Don’t completely fill up your schedule until we have a chance to chat! Cheers!
You should do more posts late in the day and in a hurry as this one is pretty darned good. Lots of good links and the “If someone offers you art school, just say ‘No’ ” ads are hillarious.
Me, too, Ed. Maybe we can add a twist to the challenge of buying two more books by people of color… what if we also asked for our money back on one with racist images?
Flat Stanley at Mount Rushmore (Betsy linked to my critique) is one option. So are the LITTLE HOUSE books. Yesterday, Ebony Thomas pointing me to an illustration of Pa in blackface in LITTLE TOWN ON THE PRAIRIE. I added that illustration to my post about Pa remembering how, as a kid, he’d imagine himself hunting Indians (http://goo.gl/oXb3f). Every time I think about that idea being in a children’s book, I’m blown away.
Some years ago, I asked people on child_lit and elsewhere to tell me of another children’s book in which a character expressed that idea (hunting Indians or any people) and the only title anyone could remember was a short story sometimes read in high school English classes.
So—what if we bought two books and returned two others at the same time? Or bought two books and deselected two and wrote to the publisher letting them know we were deselecting the two books and why… Or bought two books and blogged about two we were pledging not to use anymore with children (saving them, perhaps, for use in a high school Social Justice class or the like)…
One thing I learned in my Collection Development class is that by deselecting (weeding) books from a library shelf, there is room for new books. We need room for new books—not just on the shelf—but in our hearts and minds, too. We’ll need to be willing to admit that some books gotta go!
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