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When a video has reached over two million views, it’s usually safe to assume that everyone has seen it.  However, there’s always the possibility that you have not, so with that in mind what better way to start off today’s Video Sunday then by looking at books with a sense of rhythm?  This is the kind of thing that clearly puts the “labor” in the term “labor of love”.

Now as a great number of you know, Monday morning we’ll see the announcement of the Newberys, the Caldecotts, and all the other awards ALA hands out each year.  Seems appropriate then to post a video of past Newbery winners.  First up, this amazing look at Virginia Hamilton, the woman behind the Newbery winning M.C. Higgins the Great (amongst other things).  I am ashamed to say that before I saw this I had no idea that Jaime Adoff was her son.  Ye gods!  The video also features Jean Craighead George of Julie of the Wolves.  You get a glimpse of her Newbery Medal in its velvet case at one point.

Open Road Media made these to sell the ebooks.  Nice covers too.  Check out the one for Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush.  Print publishers should take notes.

Now to look at some hardcore bookshelves.  Here in America we’ve these wimpy little bookshelves that anyone can reach.  In Berlin?  You need a freakin’ harness to get what you want.

When I worked in the Jefferson Market Library, round about five years ago, we showed filmstrips every Thursday.  Now these were actual strips of film.  Films that had been in the library’s collection for who knows how many decades.  So in 2005 I was typing out carbons (true) and sending them to our central media library to request films that I had watched in my own youth.  Films like that old Homer Price live action film about the donut machine and the one with the witches and the pancakes.  But my favorite to show around Valentine’s Day was The Marzipan Pig.  It’s funny that so close on the heels of my interview with Russell Hoban I have actually located a snippet of the film made from this picture book, but located it I have.  If the narrator’s voice is driving you crazy, I’ll clear it up.  That’s Tim Curry.  It makes for a strange little picture book, but a lovely one.  You can also see a snippet of The Man Who Walked Between the Towers too, if you like.

As for this next one, Colin Farrell and Rihanna should only WISH they were this talented.  Go, Danny boy, go go go!

Thanks to bookshelves doom for the link.

This next one is fun for anyone interested in hidden treasures and library news.  Or San Antonio for that matter.  Apologies for the ad at the start.

Thanks to AL Direct for the link.

Also library-related, I had heard of these homemade web animations sweeping the . . . . web (note to self: come up with more one-syllable terms to describe internet) but I’d only ever seen the ones made for authors.  This one is for library students.  Library martyrs of the world, unite.

Thanks to GreenBeanTeenQueen for the link!

Finally, for our off-topic healthy goodness, it’s not the first time we’ve seen this kind of yeast-related animation come to light, but it’s certainly one of the more sophis

Lest we forget that book banning and free speech issues are conversational topics appropriate beyond the brackets of Banned Books Week, a recent news item has me lost for words.  A federal appeals court has ruled, and this is true, that an Ohio high school teacher “has no First Amendment right to make assignments about book-banning or to select particular books for her students.”  Come again?  Well apparently a teacher decided to do an assignment on banned books with her class (of high school students, recall).  So they each picked a book that had been banned. . . and then their parents found out.  So because she was distributing racy literature like, oh say, Heather Has Two Mommies, the teacher’s contract was not renewed and she lost her appeal.  You may read more about the case here.  Thanks to Leslea Newman for the links.

• Now that’s interesting.  I had not heard that Jacqueline Woodson’s novel Locomotion had been turned into a stage play.  Once in a while a book to theater adaptation just makes perfect sense.  This is one of those cases.  I suppose verse novels make excellent adaptations.  Huh!  Food for thought.

• Funniest dang thing I’ve seen all day.  Bar none.

• Feeling the absence of my Top 100 Novels poll results?  Well, much of my information came from Anita Silvey.  Now Anita turns it all around by starting a blog of her own.  Called Book-A-Day Almanac, the premise is that she will recommend a children’s book every day for a year.  At the end of the year, she’ll then turn those posts into a book.  Shoot.  That’s a good idea.  Clearly I’ve got to get around to turning my own polls into books.  Thanks to 100 Scope Notes for the link.

• I really like this habit I’ve gotten into, doing audible reviews of books for the Katie Davis podcast Brain Burps About Books.  In a given year I can properly review only so many books.  Katie’s site allows me to give some weight and consideration to I might otherwise have to ignore, like Kimberly Willis Holt’s gorgeous The Water Seeker.  That’s this week’s review on Katie’s newest podcast 6 Comments on Fusenews: I speak for the trees . . . and oatmeal, last added: 11/1/2010