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I have a sister.  Did you know that?  Tis true.  She’s not a librarian and her interest in children’s literature pretty much begins and ends with me, which is probably why she hasn’t come up before.  One thing she is?  Crafty.  Crafty as all get out.  And the kicker is that she’s just started this new blog called The How To, How Hard, and How Much to Your Creative Products.  Here’s how she describes it:

What if there was a blog out there that took Pinterest ideas and showed people how to do it, how much time it took, how much money was spent, and had a level of expertise (1-5). Maybe even sell the final product. Is this something people would read? Has it already been done? How could I rope guys into doing it (other than if it involved mustaches and bacon)? I’ve never blogged before but I feel like it might be helpful, especially since the holiday season is quickly approaching. People could even send me recommendations and I could do those as well.

And make it she has.  Amongst other things she has a wide range of Halloween ideas including spider cookies, 5 minute ideas, and my personal favorite, the cleaver cupcakes.  In fact, if you could just repin those cupcakes onto your Pinterest boards she’d be mighty grateful (there’s a contest she’s entering them into).  But of special interest to the blog (aside from outright nepotism) was her recent posting on literary jewelry where she turned a book of mine into a bracelet.  Nicely done, l’il sis.

• I attended the Society of Illustrators event the other day (did you know the place is free on Tuesdays?!) and the New York Times Best Illustrated results are on the cusp of an announcement soon.  Both lists are chosen by artists as well as librarian types, and so one could consider them the form with which artists are allowed to voice their opinions about the best of the year (just as the National Book Awards are how authors talk about writing).  Still, there are those that have disliked the Caldecott from the outset because it is decided not by artists but librarians.  Robin Smith recently dug up a 1999 interview with Barry Moser voicing just such a concern.  A hot little discussion then emerged in the Horn Book comments.  Go!  See!

• Brian Biggs + Jon Scieszka + 6 way auction = interesting.

• I think a fair number of us have seen Business Insider’s Most Famous Book Set in Every State map by this point, but I’d just like to mention that what pleases me the most about it is the fact that they included children’s books as well as adult.  Six children’s and one YA novel by my count.

• Let’s Talk About Dav Pilkey, Captain Underpants, and Misogyny.  So says author Lynn Messina.  Interesting title, no?

• And since we’re on an interesting title kick, let’s throw out another one.  True or False? Multicultural Books Don’t Sell.  We’ve all heard that argument before.  Now an actual honest-to-god bookseller tackles the question.  You may normally know Elizabeth Bluemle from the ShelfTalker blog at PW, but here she’s guest talking at Lee & Low.  Cleverly, she specifies whether or not we are talking about how they don’t sell to kids or how they don’t sell to adults.  Without giving anything away, let me just say that her experiences mirror my own in the library.

In other press release news, I am shocked and appalled that I wasn’t aware of this until now.  I mean, I knew that Kate Beaton, the genius behind Hark, A Vagrant, was working on children’s books.  What I did not know was how close to fruition my dream of shelving her in my children’s sections truly was.  The Wired blog Underwire, of all places, was the one with the scoop when they interviewed Ms. Beaton.  She discusses the book, which contains her most famous creation (the fat pony) and a princess.  Says she about princesses in general, “. . . for little girls historically [princesses] are the only people like them who had any power at all. It’s not just oh, princes and dresses. It’s also, here’s a person with agency. Is she just someone who wants a pretty dress and prince? Or is she a warrior living in a battle kingdom? I think it just depends on how you depict what a princess is.”  I think we know the direction Ms. Beaton will go in.  And I waaaant it.  Thanks to Seth Fishman for the link.

• As slogans go, this might be one of my favorites: “Kill time. Make history”.  How do you mean?  Well, NYPL is looking for a few good bored folks. Say they, “The New York Public Library is training computers how to recognize building shapes and other information from old city maps. Help us clean up the data so that it can be used in research, teaching and civic hacking.”  Sometimes I just love my workplace.

• Me stuff time.  Or rather, stuff I’m doing around and about the world that you might like to attend.  You see, on November 6th I’ll be interviewing legendary graphic novelist Paul Pope at 4pm at the Mulberry Street library branch here in NYC.  If you are unfamiliar with Mr. Pope’s name, all you really need to know is that he’s a three time Eisner Award winning artist who wrote the recent GN Battling Boy and whose work is currently on display at the Society of Illustrators on their second floor (which just means I get to tell you again that you can get in for free on Tuesdays).  This event will also be free.  If you’ve ever wondered what the “Mick Jagger of graphic novels” would look like, you’ll find out soon enough.

• Also going on in NYC, they have transferred Allegra Kent’s Ballerina Swan to the stage for kids.  Makes perfect sense when you put it that way.

• This is utterly delightful.  Recently Picture Book Month’s Education Consultant Marcie Colleen contacted me with this awesome PDF entitled Picture Book Month Teacher’s Guide: Why Picture Books Belong in Our Classrooms.  It was so useful, in fact, that I tapped her for an upcoming Children’s Literary Salon about the Core Curriculum.  More about that later, though . . .

• My reaction to finding out that Henry Selick was going to direct Adam Gidwitz’s A Tale Dark and Grimm was simple.  The best possible person is doing the best possible thing and is making everyone happy in the process.  My sole concern?  Selick’s going live action on this.  What was the last live action film he directed?  Monkeybone, you say?  Ruh-roh.  Thanks to PW Children’s Bookshelf for the link.

The New York Public Library is hosting a multimedia exhibition honoring illustrator Al Hirschfeld.

“The Line King’s Library” art show opened on October 17, 2013 and will run until January 4, 2014.

Visitors will find this exhibit at the Donald & Mary Oenslager Gallery inside the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts building. The New York Times reports that archivist David Leopold curated the exhibit.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Whew!  Been a while, hasn’t it?  I hardly know where to start.  Might as well begin with my place of work, eh?  You see my library enjoys making little movies about itself from time to time.  When you’ve got an iconic set, how can you resist?  In my building (big stone lions, etc.) my Milstein Division conjured up this little video.  Probably the sexiest genealogy vid I’m ever likely to see on this good green earth.  More info on it here.

Now it seems to me that there’s room enough in this world for a fine bit of psychedelic middle grade.  And when you’re dealing with something like Dan Boehl’s Naomi and the Horse-Flavored T-Shirt . . . well, honestly this is preeeee-cisely the kind of video you would hope for.  To the letter.

Couldn’t stand in sharper contrast to this next video, and yet the two work as very good examples of how sophisticated book trailers are becoming these days (Flash animation has a lot to do with it, of course).

Aw, heck.  Just one more.  You’re going to have to stick around for the credits.

Clearly I’ve been sitting on a lot of videos for a while, but I doubt that it’s too late to put up this one.  Recently Matthew Kirby (Icefall & The Clockwork Three) emailed me the following:

Here in Utah, we have the Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers Workshop, run by Carol Lynch Williams. It’s an intensive week-long workshop, taught by amazing writers and illustrators. I attended back in 2007, and in combination with SCBWI, it’s where I “got my start.”

Now the people running the conference have created a little promo video of their success stories to encourage folks to attend.  Smart cookies.  Least I can do to show it, eh?

Finally, for the Off-Topic Video of the Day, I’ve many piled up but this is the one closest to my heart today.

Thanks to my cousin Peter for the link!

The signers of the letter protesting the New York Public Library's plan include Salman Rushdie, Jonathan Lethem and Art Spiegelman.

The general public has its own questions about the plan to renovate its Fifth Avenue main building. Anthony Marx, the library's president, agreed to answer a few of them, selected by The New York Times.

The library's president, Anthony W. Marx, says the plan is aimed at helping the library better serve the public.

The items include letters by Washington and a map of Walden Pond drawn by Thoreau.

It’s still way too early to decide the winner in the social network race (but it appears Google+ might be lagging as it’s already losing visitors. In our opinion, the network still has yet to show how it’s better than Facebook)... Read the rest of this post

In New York City, any library patron with $15 or more in fines can’t check out books. To ease this restriction, the New York Public Library and the Queens Public Library will allow 143,000 blocked kids a chance to “read down” their fines this summer.

Children who sign up on Summer Reading can take part in this program. Every fifteen minutes of reading reduces an overall fine by one dollar. The kids then record the titles and the time they spent reading on their Summer Reading 2011 account. The program kicked off on July 25th and will run until September 9th.

NYPL official Jack Martin told The NY Daily News: “Kids might be afraid or ashamed because they are delinquent with the library. The idea of this program is to bring them back in. We are in such hard economic times and children and teens depend on the library.” Do you think this is a fair trade-off? Would adults be open to “reading down” their fines too? (via BookTV)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Winnie-the-Pooh will turn 90 years old on August 21st.

The New York Public Library will collect birthday cards to celebrate the occasion. Three to twelve-year-old kids can make cards for Pooh Bear and his friends at a special craft event on Tuesday, August 9th.

Everybody can join the party inside the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on Saturday, August 20th. While you’re there, you can take a peek at an original Winnie-the-Pooh & friends doll set.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

A little more than a year ago I conducted a Children’s Literary Salon at NYPL with a bunch of talented female graphic novelists of children’s literature (Colleen AF Venable (Hamster and Cheese), Raina Telegemeier (Smile), and Tracy White (How I Made it to Eighteen)).  It was recorded for posterity (unlike most of my Salons) and that was the last I heard of it.  Then the other day I find out from J.L. Bell on Twitter that it’s up and running on the NYPL website.  Glory be, who knew!  So if you’ve ever been curious as to what a Literary Salon consists of, have at it.

Again, this was yet another pretty darn good week for videos.  Trailers abounded, and not just for movies.  The big news of the week was that a Bill Joyce picture book had been turned into what may be the most cinematic picture book app we’ve seen yet.  It’s called The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore and is so gorgeous, in fact, that I’m going to do something I’ve managed to avoid until now.  I’ll buy it.  Here’s why:

Thanks to Ben Rubin and Paul Schmid for the link!

On the book trailer side of things is this one for what I’m going to call the most anticipated fall children’s book of 2011, I Want My Hat Back:

And then on the actual movie world, two trailers were released this week.  One gives me hope.  The other . . . not so much.  So on the hope side of things is this new, longer Tintin trailer.  I was always convinced that Tintin could never be done well because who’s going to allow a kid like him to handle a gun onscreen?  I never counted on CGI to save the day.  I usually hate this style of animation but here . . . it kinda works because it acknowledges how cartoony it can be.  Oddly, I could only find a trailer online that had French subtitles.  Ah well.

Nice yes?  Well retain that happy feeling because the other trailer released was a bit of a disappointment.  I don’t know why Martin Scorsese got it into his head that the title “Hugo” sounds better than “The Invention of Hugo Cabret”.  Plain old &ldquo

You know what?  Skip everything I’ve ever suggested about visiting the Bologna Book Fair.  Airflights take a lot of time.  Your sleeping schedule gets off.  And then there’s all that walking.  Phew!  It’s enough to exhaust you just thinking about it.  No no, far better to just watch this little video created by Bart Moeyaert.  It’s the fair in 90 seconds.  You’re in.  You’re out.  Slap your hands together and you’re done!  Couldn’t be easier.

In other news, my library is doing this:

First off, I love that it makes my workplace, the building where I earn my daily bread, look like something out of a movie (and not just the set like in The Adjustment Bureau and Arthur, both in theaters now).  So cheers there.  Second, this is a game inspired by our upcoming Centennial celebration.  You can see the website for the game here, if you’d like to join in.  You have to fill out an application by April 21st, though.  There’s nothing specifically keeping employees like myself from participating, but I suspect that since my body these days conks out effectively at 10:30 each night, I am in no position to add my own expertise.

When you are a child of the 70s or 80s you may have a unique gift.  Thanks to television shows like Sesame Street, it’s entirely possible that your brain is filled with small animated shorts and clips that will burst into fiery remembrance when seen.  Take, as today’s example, the news that Maurice Sendak has a new picture book coming out soon.  Called Bumble Ardy, the book was originally a short on Sesame Street.  Now, if you had stopped me on the street and asked me if I had ever seen said short I would have given a sharp bark of a laugh.  Me, forget a Maurice Sendak bit of animation?  Not hardly!  Then I started watching this and the memories . . . oh the memories . . .

Those memories just keep on coming back.  Probably the only time you’ll hear Jim Henson’s voice (as Bumble at the end) voice a Sendak character too.  Thanks to Mr. Schu for the link.

More of this please.  More, I say.  MORE!!!

Big time thanks to 0 Comments on Video Sunday: Too bad his duck is so crazy as of 1/1/1900