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Oh, how sad! I remember reading the first book and really enjoying it, though I couldn't really get into further installments of the series.

Oh YAY! My girls will be ecstatic. We *adore* Shaun around here.

YAY! I actually just watched a few of those on Netflix maybe a month ago. So hilarious. I love Aardman--Creature Comforts was probably my favorite.

EEEEEEEEE!!! This is the best news I've had all day!

Awesoooome! I love Wallace & Gromit, but I just learned about Shaun the Sheep not too long ago when I subscribed to Netflix. I love it! And, now I look forward to the new movie too!

I've found reading kids books is a good way to connect to nieces, friends' children, etc. Not why I read these books, of course, but a nice side benefit.

Agreed on both counts! Thanks for stopping by and commenting. :)

I suppose I should be reading Expressions, but I still feel more connected to my old branch of the SCBWI. Still, it's a great source of information, and I'm happy to hear about the Iranian Book News Agency. That's pretty cool.

FYI, It's the James Frey, not Patterson, writing mill. Just sayin'.

Halfway through this I couldn't help but think Editorial Anonymous is going to love this.

You know this person is going to make this a required text for their students.

Whaaat?

I'm looking at this from a totally different point of view. The guy's credentials and whether or not I should be paid for my writing aren't the big issues for me.

For me, the issue is: If producers (publishers/authors/agents) paying reviewers directly for reviews were to become a standard practice, it would make reviewing meaningless. Even with the system we have now, of the review publication paying the reviewers instead of the producers doing so, I wonder if it isn't in reviewers' best interests to write so-called positive reviews. They are the bulk of what I see in journals and if it's what journals publish, aren't they going to prefer reviewers who write them? Aren't reviewers who like everything going to get more work than reviewers who don't?

If producers pay for reviews, you can be sure we'll be seeing far more positive reviews, no matter what the book is like. The people writing the checks are going to seek out reviewers who like everything in order to get the most bang for their buck. And even if they inadvertantly end up paying for a less than glowing review, they don't have to use it. We don't use less than glowing quotes from reviews at our websites, do we? And we don't even pay for those. At least, most of us don't.

When all books are well-reviewed, well-reviewed doesn't mean anything. It will make choosing books that much more difficult for readers.

Exactly, Gail. From a reader's perspective, an honest opinion from someone whose opinions I trust--because they have EARNED that trust through a thoughtful perspective--is a lot more valuable to me in choosing my reading material.

I was attempting to point out the non-obvious issues with an author on Craigslist soliciting reviews - in the JOB section, with payment offered...

I have a feeling that for the most part, reviews are useless anyway. Do you trust the word of random bloggers? Do you trust print reviews more simply because they're in print? Or do you most of the time take book recommendations from word-of-mouth, "my best friend just read this and says it's great" types of things?

And the idea of "reviewers who like everything" brings up again the specter of blog reviewers who never say anything negative -- and the question of whether or not, or how much we bloggers tend to pander.

All good thoughts - uncomfortable ones, but good ones nonetheless.

Cool post. LOVE the Archie stamp!

When I lived in England, I wrote a lot of letters and LOVED their stamps. They did a Laura Ingalls Wilder issue once, and we had an artist friend who designed some botanical stamps. Just beautiful.

I've always bemoaned the "death" of snail mail letters, and want to get back to writing more of them this year. Part of what discourages people is the high cost of postage. I'm old enough to remember a first class letter only costing 5 cents.

I still have some Teddy Bear stamps, an Elvis stamp, and some of the children's book illustrator stamps that came out awhile ago.

OMG! I would LOVE to get mail with Voldemort or Dumbledore on it. Seriously!

*capers about, wishing the US had awesome Harry Potter stamps*

"And, to whom would one send letters with Voldemort postage!?? Exes and bill-collectors, and other people you hope will die??"

Still laughing over this one!

I still write old-fashioned letters, as well as a lot of e-mail, and I love matching the stamps to the recipient. I totally agree with you on Calvin and Hobbes vs Garfield. I had to use Garfield for a bill - that's where all the ugly stamps get used. By the way, the series that had The Very Hungry Caterpillar and a Wild Thing also had six other children's book characters, including Maisie Mouse, who's certainly a "Best of British [something]".

Jama, I have six stamps from a Wild West series that I hope to put in shadowboxes someday... are you framing your collection? Your house is so filled with goodies I missed them, if you have.

Kel - I'm going to see if I can send you a sheet of the other stamps, so you can frame them. Our local PO didn't have them - you have to SEARCH!! Or order them, I guess...

Jennifer - Um, okay. Maybe not DIE. But... you know, it's Voldemort... there's a message there...

Anne - Ooh! Maisie! I LOVE Maisie. Now I'm doubly bummed to have missed those. :(

How much do I LOVE those cartoon stamps? Even Garfield. (You have no idea how obsessively I drew Garfield and Odie repeatedly as a child. This was during my "wanting to be a cartoonist" stage, which actually lasted a really long time and never completely went away...)

Yeah, I'm not sure what I would think if someone sent me mail with a Voldemort stamp on it. That does send kind of a weird message.

Sad news!

Unfortunately, the line "that'll do, pig" always makes me think of the Simpsons, when Groundskeeper Willie says "That'll do, snake...that'll do."

Yes, I'm a huge Simpsons nerd.

Loved the book and the movie, but never heard of the Hodgeheg. Will look for it. Have you read King-Smith's book about the parrot? Liked that one, too.

I sniffed too....I kept hearing "If I had words to make a day for you" playing over and over in my head all day.

NOOOOOOO!

I know this sounds insensitive, but I thought he'd died several years ago. Thus, I'm happy he had some more time.

Heee heee heee!
Gail, you're as bad as I am. Most of the time, I'm completely lost as to whether or not people are still alive...!

Tanita--At both the Christmas and New Year's Eve parties I attended there were discussions of whether or not a well-known person (different in each case) was still alive. I was wrong on one and right on the other.

I guess you know you've made it if strangers are interested enough to wonder if you're alive or dead.

Gail, we should make a board game of this. We'll call it Existent? or Expired? It'd be a hit at parties...

It would be a hit at the parties I go to, anyway.

Too funny.

It is SO CUTE! And I'm a little disturbed that I find it so cute...

There are lots of fun geeky gifts at Etsy. Key chains and jewelry made of gaming dice, etc. etc.

This is a question I find myself asking almost nonstop...and I don't have an answer but I think the fall off in popularity of YA contemporary books is just a symptom of larger problems within our ADD culture. Every time I go to the movies lately there's some idiot that can't be in the moment and has to text rabidly on their phone. Crappy reality shows are the big winners in TV ratings.

Sometimes I wonder if art in general means things to most people anymore or whether such a large segment of the population just want a glittering, bloody distraction - explosions, vampire love affairs, battles to the death. If so, I am woefully incompatible with them, and the stories I want to tell are not ones they want to hear. I still want to tell those realistic teenage stories but I just don't know where that leaves me. Mostly tired and worried so far...

C.K.: Yep. It's something that has always had me sighing, especially since my other vocation is visual art--another part of our culture rapidly falling victim to the ADD trend of looking for the next shiny thing that everyone else also likes.

Extras by Scott Westerfeld was scarily prophetic.

I just finished reading a book called The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains that really depressed me--the internet encourages multimedia sound-bite-style consumption rather than deeper contemplation.

Much as I hate to admit it, society's probably not going to fall apart if nobody can concentrate long enough to read an entire book or understand a painting...but I shudder to think what that attention span will do if it affects, say, airline pilots or teachers or scientists...

I love contemporary fiction. If YA goes completely paranormal / SFF, I would be very sad. I don't think it will though, and i think (hope?) that the pendulum will right itself.

It sounds like you and I are on the exact same wavelength with this issue, aquafortis! As a fan of deeper contemplation, society's preference for wading in the shallow end is really disturbing.

I guess the robots will be doing all the piloting and other concentration heavy work soon enough. Maybe our best hope is that the robots are like Data - obsessed with the finer points of being human and therefore ardent fans of contemporary YA!

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I hope contemporary fiction isn't a slowly fading thing. I love a good Science Fiction/Fantasy book, but not all the time and I am by now really fanged out.
I think aquafortis is right when she says that our culture is falling victim to ADD, which completely meets the need for instant gratification, and the idea of getting instant fame and money now so much a part of reality TV doesn't help.
And I always wonder if in the near future YA novels will have to be written in text styly - ihn (I hope not)

Every time I worry to myself about this, I realize one important thing: we are sharing this concern, which means it's not only me and not only you.

Which means the readers are out there, too.

I take comfort in that small reality.

Is there really a fall-off in the reading of contemporary realism, or is it just that an explosion in fantasy and paranormal has overshadowed realism? Did readers abandon realism for fantasy, or did Harry Potter and Twilight just bring a lot of new readers to YA, those who happen to like fantasy and paranormal?

When you look at the sales figures for Sarah Dessen and Ellen Hopkins, I find it hard to believe that the realistic subgenre is dying. Right now, realistic stories are racking up sales more quietly, but they are selling.

And FWIW, as a reader, I prefer realism--did when I was a teenager, too.

Yes, please continue to write. Contemporary YA. I love realistic fiction. There are teens who don't like fantasy.

Also, I have my fingers crossed that YA readers will soon say enough with the YA fantasy quantity we want quality -be it fantasy or realistic fiction.

REALLY? And I always had such a high opinion of Waterstones (probably by virtue of favorable comparison with U.S. chains, but still).

HA! Painful Lives.

Painful Lives right next to celebrities. Sad but true too often.

So is Painful Lives a subsection of Celebrities or are they two different sections altogether? I'm just hating the name of that category. What a crappy reduction. You may think you're writing a triumph of the human spirit/confront your personal demons type novel only to find out, nope, it's Painful Lives. Is it just me or does that sound like a Smiths B-side that they would have changed the title of before releasing because they released it was crap?

Oh, would it not be horrible to discover, as an author, that they'd shelved your book in "Painful Lives?" *shudder*

I'm afraid Painful Lives is its very own thing, Kel. And yeah, it would seriously be upsetting to have your opus reduced to such a throwaway phrase - painful lives. As if everyone's isn't occasionally.

Sarah, Waterstones is just Barnes & Noble with a post code, not a zip code.

I hate to say this, but traditionally stories about suffering have been considered something that women "relate to," at any rate, if not actually enjoy reading. Until pretty recently women's magazines often carried "ordeal stories," true stories of women's ordeals with dying children, sick or cheating husbands, their own ill health, experiences with natural disasters, etc. They may still do it. In the '70s and '80s "disease of the week" made-for-TV movies were common in this country, and they were almost always about women.

I could go on.

My point is that my guess is that with "Painful Lives" someone is trying to sell to that stereotypical women's market.

Gail--great point. It reminds me of when I was a teenager and read YM, and they started running a recurring feature with readers' true embarrassing horror stories. Well, allegedly true...

WHAT? Wow! Awesome.

Well, it wasn't in vain from my point of view--among other fine things, I got to meet Sarah! I'm going to try to swing Seattle too, but it might be pushing it....

If you go next year, I will have to go as well. At least I'll try really, really hard to get there.

Thanks for all these links!

Wasn't Colleen's story fantastic? I love it. Very excited to read the backstory, too--thanks for pointing that out.

Charlotte, it was great to meet you at the Kidlitcon! I hope you and Kelly F., and Tanita, can make it next year in Seattle. I'm tentatively in!

Thanks, T, for the kind words. They mean so so so much.

And I really hope all you guys will be at the con (in SEATTLE!) next year because I love you and want to see you!

Tanita,

I admit I haven't been writing too many political verses lately. And there most certainly is a LOT of material for humorous poetry considering all the crazies out this campaign season.

I'll be going down to Orlando for the NCTE Annual Convention in November. Two other kidlit bloggers (Tricia Stohr-Hunt and Sylvia Vardell) and I will be participating in a session on November 19th from 9:30 AM to 10:45 AM. Our session is called Poets and Bloggers Unite: Using Technology to Connect Kids, Teachers, and Poetry. Poets Lee Bennett Hopkins, Pat Mora, Jame Richards, and Marilyn Singer will be joining us.

I hope we meet up with some of our fellow bloggers down in Florida.

BTW, It was such a pleasure meeting you at the Newbery/Caldecott Banquet in June! I had a blast that evening. It was fun meeting so many of my blogging friends in person.

Wah! Elaine, I wish I could go, but I'll definitely noise your presentation abroad.

I'm so glad that we're actually getting off-screen and meeting so many awesome people in the children's lit blogosphere.

::shudder::
I went into my senior year in high school, dreaming of being a music major. But in a rare moment of seventeen-year-old perspicacity -- and believe you me, those were rare -- I realized that the music I heard in my head was something I could never hope to reproduce vocally myself or directing a choir. I didn't want to be One Of Those Evil Directors who screams a lot, and realized that if I went into music, that way frustration lay.

Sooooo, it's a good thing I didn't read this article before deciding on being an English major. Geez.

My own experience is that it gets better as you go along (this from the mighty perspective of all of two books). I feel like ALC was barely 1/8th of what I wanted to say, what I meant to do -- but the incoherence of the freshman writer has to improve simply by virtue of doing.

Maybe we're never virtuoso writers, fully able to express our every nuance - but I doubt humans can. We all just muddle along and do the best we're able...

And on THAT disturbing note...

Ok, I'm a little late to the dance here but thought I would throw in my 2 cents worth anyway. I don't think anything I write is what I had in my head. Somewhere between head and paper/computer screen so little editor I would like to banish gets in the way. It does get better, but I was trained to write objectively, no "I" allowed. Tbe only big work I did was a dissertation and it was definitely not what was in my head. Of course, I had my own internal editor, and three outside ones to help. So I think that Michael Cunningham was right to some extent. I practice getting as close to my vision as possible now, but it is slow - at least for me and I can't speak for anyone else.

Thanks for chiming in, Alex (it's never too late!). I think I have trouble with that from time to time--spending a lot of time on academic writing does make it difficult to switch gears, too, to other types of writing.

The internal editor and I got along much better for academic work. Often I look BACK at things I did during my MFA time and am sort of bewildered at the level of hauteur and expertise in the writing. Who was that? I wonder uneasily, and flinch to see my name on the title page.

Of course, though, I didn't particularly care that much about my topics. I mean, yes: I got into Aphra Ben, and I loved my 18th century female poets, and all of the rest. But it was a temporary thing -- and when the classes were over I went on to immerse myself in the next thing. Somehow that was an acceptable temporary partnership - my brain and my internal editor cooperated completely.

And then I started to write fiction - and when my passion got involved, it all fell apart.

love the cybils! :)

You should buy one of those shirts for This One Dude and make him wear it. That would be truly vengeful. :)

I'm so excited we're both doing SFF this year. I will have to resist asking you for insider info, and limit myself to perusing your nominations-period blog posts...

Congratulations to both of you!

Can I mention I'm having hair envy?
Could someone please tell me how to get all my white hair to come in at my temples like that? I may need to plan ahead on this one...

Yes, how cool is the hair? Not to mention the 300 books...

hahah I love that -- BIC. I need that kind of discipline!! I aspire :)

Amen to that... I felt the same way. The privileged vantage point of those in plight is kind of tedious. Gilbert has a way of romanticizing life's difficulties, which I think is what makes her palatable. But, it's also straining to see that perspective when things are so much harder for other people.

Whenever you get a chance, please check out my collaborative blog, DysfunctionalBeginnings.com! All kinds of material (literary, nonfiction, multimedia, video) about growing up, and beginnings in general. We've survived it. Now let's attest to it! :)

i could tell you stories of how she did it -- privately. they are none too pretty.

I know, eh? I hadn't actually researched it--on purpose--because I was kind of afraid. I don't want it to be BACA-worthy. But he's sticking with non-fiction, which is promising--it's not like he wrote the unauthorized autobiography of Bo the White House dog...

Weeellll, the cover's kind of cute. And nonfiction is good - but I really am afraid to look at it too closely, though I could have Editor E. send me a review copy...

Hmmm. I wonder if the book would have been accepted for publication had the POTUS submitted it under a pen name.

Oo-lah-lah -- Me likey!

Hope did a great job featuring Mare's War :).

That is REALLY cool! And yeah, I would've loved a Glog assignment, going through school. While I'm definitely the kind of person who likes scissors and glue, I can't resist tinkering with the computer...

Anyway, very nice job by Hope.

Radiful, what a delightful discovery. Congrats, Tanita. I'm going to go check out some more glogging right now ...

Adorable! He recites it with such enthusiasm. If i had kids, I would teach them poetry, too.

Superman is so excited about the azure sea! LOVE this!

Mockingjay. Though I refused to get sucked into any of the prerelease buzz.

I just want the book. Plus all of that would make my expectations for Mockingjay sky high. And they are high enough already.

The Broken Kingdoms by NK Jemisin
comes out Nov. 3, can't wait to read it.

I'm impatient about MOCKINGJAY, too. Also the third volume of Kathleen Duey's series, since I just re-read #1 so I could read #2 and I'm now completely hooked again!

I just ordered Blameless from Powells - I'm not sure if their site is lying or not but it shows as being on the shelf right now. (It's not embargoed, so maybe they have it?) Amazon shows it as due Aug 31st.

I just want it. NOW.

OK, I'm sorry to gloat, but I just have to. Guess what arrived in my mailbox today? A certain ARC by D.M. Cornish.

Tim Travaglini loves me. :)

OH, MY GOSH.
I hate you. Like, bookishly, anyway.

To quote Professor Pelc (the professor of morbid bibliomancy) from Going Postal,

"All words have some power. We feel it instinctively. Some, like magical spells and the true names of the gods, have a great deal. They must be treated with respect. In Klatch there is a mountain with many caves, and in those caves are entombed more than a hundred thousand old books, mostly religious, each one in a white linen shroud. That is perhaps an extreme approach, but intelligent people have always known that some words at least should be disposed of with care and respect."

Of course, maybe these books are sports almanacs or self-help books, so don't really have that much value?

Or maybe they were going to be discarded anyway, so they're simply being rescued and given another opportunity at life, albeit with a very different function....and I must say, art does seem like it *could* be a respectful and caring way to dispose of unwanted books.

I guess it's the sheer number of books that gets to me here--I can't help thinking to myself that SOME of them must be individually worthwhile...

And then I also wonder, does the art piece suffer any shrinkage by attrition? Is anyone sneaking off with books? I'd be awfully tempted.

Well, maybe that's the point -- people taking off with them? Although -- I had to think of them getting rained on. Erg.

You're so cute, I can't stand it. We WILL meet in person someday, by this cup of tea I swear it!

I was so completely spun out -- I am so bad at game show types of things unless I'm not paying attention - then I get them all just fine. But I was highly overly conscious of the fact that I was on film, too. Hah!

We will meet. I swear by my water bottle, which is, optimistically, half full.

God, every single one of you is awesome, hilarious and adorable. Great video. (Clearly I'll have to catch up on the others sometime, too.)

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i think one of the reasons there is much fail in the SSF movie world is that, traditionally, there is a world to be saved as the central plot, and we all know that it's men who save the world. what is it hemingway said? that in order to be a man you must fight a bull, father a child, save the universe...

movies are a special problem because few people discuss POV. your movie has a main character, the film follows that character throughout, you can generally only be shown what that character sees or knows. even if they know several women it is rare (for storytelling purposes) for them to be together, with the male protagonist, talking to each other. it's just not their story.

also, when it comes to action, in order to make female characters equal to male characters they tend to be portrayed as competitive with all, men and women, which makes it hard for them to be friends or allies.

mind, i don't disagree with the bechdel test for examining weaknesses in storytelling equity, but i think the problem goes deep into the heart of narrative expectations and structures and most media aren't willing to rock that boat.

btw, i saw SALT over the weekend and throughout i kept thinking "thank you for turning down the lead, tom cruise" because angelina was such a better person for that role. now, we can look at that as an example of "blind" casting in that the lead was assigned regardless of gender (and probably a little bit of marquee recognition) but then we have a film where she's the only women in a man's world of espionage. if cruise had starred in it, the film would be void of any women. should we be seeing that as a shift toward the better?

Now that you bring it up, an awful lot of SFF movies, even if they do have a strong female lead, do the "woman in a man's world" thing. I think part of it is that we're still stuck in a nostalgic aesthetic when it comes to the structure and the story of sci-fi especially--either because we're still making movies based on older literature or because we're making movies that harken back to that earlier aesthetic. The Heinleins, the Harlan Ellisons, the Philip K. Dicks of the world wrote some fascinating stories but, as in society at the time, women don't always get a central role.

They need to start making some movies out of Connie Willis books.

I can't really address YA movies...the last one I saw was Percy Jackson, which is a double fail with respect to this particular discussion--SFF and YA, and hardly a girl in sight. The one female YA character started off intriguingly strong and then totally petered out and got lame.

LOVE that HEY MAINSTREAM MEDIA thing. I looked at all of the photos, in fact. SO GREAT!

I am thinking about going through all the sff Newbery winners, now I have them in their nice little list for my poll, and applying The Test to them...and then I am wondering if I will find the time to do so....tricky, since I don't have them all to hand.

Charlotte, that's a huge project... but it might be quite worthwhile.

I wonder if we'd find the ones back when the Newbery STARTED were better equipped to pass The Test than the books now... although the Old-Skool SFF had so few women in them that they wouldn't.

Oh Tanita, I wish you'd been there! I would have loved to hang out with you in person. :) Maybe next year! And when/if you come, bring a sketchbook...the awesome Jenni Holm passed mine around the table at the kidlit dinner, and I came home with sketches by an amazing assembly of artists. Including Bob Boyle, Dan Santat and Raina Telgemeier, so you know I am totally squee.

Any chance you'll be at ALA Midwinter? It's here in sunny San Diego...tempting! I'll be there. :)

It was so much fun reading your tweets and those of everyone else at Comic-Con--I could at least vicariously enjoy it! :)

Oh, Melissa, I WISH! And that pad of art from all those fab people sounds like something to truly cherish.

:waaah!: Wish I'd been there. Maybe next time.

Dude, this made me want to CRY with laughter. Clearly you (and this cartoonist) have been peering into my brain.

This is SO my life...

sigh

Free stuff! Oh why do you taunt me with goodies when I'm supposed to be working??