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Good morning! We’ve not done a Video Sunday here on Fuse8 in a while, so let’s start with the ritualized boiling of the blood. Which is to say, can picture books be written in an hour? No. But Slate decided to go on and and prove as much. The results:

More interesting, in a way, is the accompanying written piece in which real editors like Alvina Ling and Cheryl Klein critique what the folks here have come up with. Kindly. Very very kindly.

Looks like that Curious George documentary got the Kickstarter backing it was seeking!  Love the promo video they created for it.  Some killer original footage here that I’ve just never seen before.  Check it out:

Thanks to 100 Scope Notes for the link.

A pretty advanced PSA, I must say.  Even if you’re unfamiliar with the song it’s parodying, I think you’ll get a kick out of it.  The book cameos are particularly keen.

My father-in-law wrote me a week or two ago to tell me that, “CBS Morning news had a lovely piece on the research librarians at the main library (5th and 42nd). I think you would enjoy the segment and probably know some of the featured librarians. Hopefully, the website has the video from this morning’s show.”

They did.  It does.  Here is the result.

I used to work a floor about the ASK NYPL team. There wasn’t any partition between the floors so you could hear them talk pretty clearly. It was a fascinating process.

Finally, this is sorta off-topic.  It’s certainly older.  I’m not one for the Cute Kids Saying Cute Things genre, but cute kids with Australian/New Zealand accents?  That’s different.  Particularly when it’s all part of an effort to raise money for sick kids.  And this isn’t entirely off-topic.  After all, there are some very interesting children’s books in the backgrounds here.  Stick around for the song.  It’s not the earnest tripe you fear at first.

Good cause.  Good folks.

Buoyed by the success of Minions, Universal is launched a new kids division.

Among scores of spring themed picture books, families with young fans can celebrate the season with this diverse selection of 5 baseball inspired books.

Children’s book illustrators and anyone absorbed in the curious business of children’s book illustration, Do you find it interesting, as I do that the big commercial for Google’s Nexus 7 features a little girl and her mom reading a Curious George story on the device? Google, in its elegant way used a simple illustrated page from [...]

Another tribute to Curious George-- kind of. A funny parody-reading of Curious George. Enjoy!

#41 Curious George by H.A. Rey (1941)
40 points

Originally published in 1941, It’s a testament to the enduring appeal of Curious George that this title, and its multitude of subsequent books are still widely circulated, and familiar to young readers. I can see why. Kids can relate to George’s innocently mischievous behavior and his relationship with The Man With the Yellow Hat, who acts as parental figure. In a format extended beyond the typical 32 page picture book standard, the simple text and humorous illustrations continue to draw readers in. – Travis Jonker

The plot from B&N reads, “The first adventure in this highly popular series tells how the little monkey Curious George, caught in the jungle and brought back to the city by a man in a yellow hat, can’t help being interested in all the new things around him. Though well meaning, George’s curiosity always gets him into trouble.”

Few picture books inspire people to write heroic stories about their own creators but that’s exactly what happened in 2005 when the title The Journey That Saved Curious George: The True Wartime Escape of Margret and H.A. Rey by Louise Borden was published.  As the story goes, H.A. (or Hans) and Margret cobbled together two bicycles and took off for Marseilles when the Germans invaded Paris.  They were stopped along the way by Nazi soldiers, but when Hans showed them the pictures he had done of the little monkey who would become George the Germans were charmed and let the two go.

According to 100 Best Books for Children, George’s original name was Fifi.  Strangely (har har), American editors didn’t dig the moniker.  Interestingly enough, “Margret Rey served as writer and Hans as illustrator on all the books, although she did not always get title-page recognition.”  Not much in the way of cover recognition either, I see.

Some objections to the book don’t care for how The Man in the Yellow Hat kidnaps George from his native land without so much as a howdy-doo.  This fed nicely into Michael Rex’s Furious George Goes Bananas, which is probably the top George parody out there right now.  Of course, this little monkey has survived everything from full-screen adaptations to his own TV show to the recent introduction of a Curious George application for iPhones.  He’s cutting edge, this guy.  I suspect he’ll be around for a while.

You may read the book here.

And no tribute to George is ever truly complete without this reading by “Werner Herzog” (so to speak).

• “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
  5 Comments on Fusenews: Shelve the books but shelve them slant, last added: 2/24/2012
  Display Comments
  tanita said, on 2/23/2012 1:15:00 AM
  

  Your mom is, as always, kind of amazing. I aspire to her grasp of the sestina…

  Ed Spicer said, on 2/23/2012 5:53:00 AM
  

  And all this time I have been here in Kalamazoo reading about and admiring yet another astonishingly good writer from the Kalamazoo area… I never knew. I can see your mother in you. Wear that pride proudly!

  Ed Spicer said, on 2/23/2012 6:01:00 AM
  

  Thanks, too, for posting the various award lists–I always appreciate seeing what is available internationally (and then become seriously miffed that we don’t have places close to my home that will have the actual books).

  Elizabeth Bird said, on 2/23/2012 8:53:00 AM
  

  Thanks, Tanita! And Ed, if you ever stopped by the Athena Bookshop back in the day you would have run into her. These days she does do some work with the libraries. FYI!

  Ed Spicer said, on 2/24/2012 10:07:00 AM
  

  Loved Athena and visited often. Was sad to see it go away. I’m sure I must have had several conversations with you mom (and George Hebben). The staff in general was excellent and they also provided all the books for the KPL events.

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On Thursday, May 5, 2011, Pamela Paul of The New York Times wrote an article entitled “New Study Finds Gender Bias in Children’s Books.” Paul sheds the spotlight on the study “Gender in Twentieth-Century Children’s Books: Patterns of Disparity in Titles and Central Characters” published in the April issue of Gender & Society. According to the study “there has been a bias toward male characters — men, boys and, yes, animals — in children’s literature over the last century.”

Janice McCabe, the study’s lead author, examined approximately 6,000 children’s books published from 1900 to 2000. “Of those, 57 percent had a central male character compared with only 31 percent with female protagonists.” In addition, “at most one-third of children’s books published per year included central female characters that are adult women or female animals. But male animals or male adults appeared in 100 percent.”

For those of you who are avid readers of children’s literature, like myself, this is certainly not a revelation. I will be the first to admit that I grew up reading Clifford the Big Red Dog, Curious George and Winnie the Pooh, to name a few. What do they all have in common? Well, a quick survey shows that the protagonists in each are male. This in no way diminishes these books as classics in the canon of children’s literature but it does illustrate that a fundamental disparity exists.

In truth, whether they realize it or not, girls and young women long for female protagonists in the books they read. I know I did. Hermione Granger is one of the many reasons I adore the Harry Potter series. She is a brilliant, courageous and strong young woman. It’s incredibly empowering to have a female character that is not only equal to but also excels beyond her male counterparts. How often can you say that? Unfortunately, not often enough. And that, dear readers, is the problem.

Now more than ever girls and young women need protagonists that speak to them. Protagonists whose characteristics they can emulate. Hermione Granger‘s brilliance. Olivia the Pig‘s feistiness. Katniss Everdeen‘s strength.

The audience is waiting. It’s time to answer the call.