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Good morning, campers!  Are we ironing out the last of the holiday season from our socks?  Are we eyeing our decorations with a jaded eye?  Well, wonderful news!  2016 is on the horizon and I bring you news of the peppy variety.  Packed deep in snow, no less, since I appear to be living in ice storm land at the moment.

• First up, I wrote a piece a year or two ago for a periodical and then never had it published.  All that has changed thanks to the delightful online children’s literature publication, The Read Quarterly.  My piece The Last Taboo: What Interactive Print Says About the Digital Revolution is available for your reading, whenever you’d like to give it a gander.

• Two awards to celebrate today.  First up, you may be aware that over in Britain they did away with their beloved Roald Dahl Funny Book Prize.  Apparently there will be a new Dahl prize in the near future and they didn’t want to confuse it with this other one.  Fortunately, there’s a new funny lit prize and it’s called The Laugh Out Loud Award or, for short, The Lollies.  Michael Rosen is, as ever, involved.  Attention!  Britain?  The representative from Illinois would like to request that America be allowed Lollies of our own.  We could change the name slightly to The ROFLs, but that sounds slightly perverse when you say it out loud.  In any case, funny awards here, please.

• The other award is the recent unveiling of the latest winners of the 2015 Arab American Book Award (sponsored by the  Arab American National Museum) given in the Children/Young Adult category.  The winner, I’m happy to say, is The Turtle of Oman by Naomi Shihab Nye (Greenwillow Press).  Honorable Mention was awarded to The Olive Tree by Elsa Marston and illustrated by Claire Ewart (Wisdom Tales Press).  Well done, one and all!

• Insufficiently happy by today’s news thus far?  Okay.  Try this.  They’ve turned some of the Bad Kitty books into a play and you Bay Area lucky ducks get to see it.  Playwright Min Kahng, who also did a musical adaptation of Where the Mountain Meets the Moon amongst other things, is interviewed here.  As for Bad Kitty herself, I like her looks:

• Other me stuff.  I helped contribute to Brightly’s list of The 50 Best Books for 7- and 8-year-olds.  A lot of old favorites are on that one.  Anna Hibiscus.  Rickshaw Girl.  The Penderwicks.  And new ones like Lola Levine and Grandfather Gandhi.  Worth looking at.

• Brightly also came up with 2015’s Biggest Moments in Children’s and YA Literature.  A good list, though I would rewrite the title slightly to say instead that it’s more accurately “2015’s Biggest Controversy-Free Moments in Children’s and YA Literature”.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

A Rita Williams-Garcia book has people talking, but it may not be the book you first think of.  How many of you read her new picture book Bottle Cap Boys Dancing on Royal Street?  Well a recent article about the actual boys who dance the streets of New Orleans says that Rita’s book has gotten people to talking.  The subheading “Depicting happy children” sounds familiar in light of the conversations surrounding A Fine Dessert as well, though the context is different.

• Something to warm the cold cockles of your heart.  I’ll just let the title of the piece speak for itself. Award-winning Canadian picture book a gift for every Syrian refugee family. The book in question?  The magnificent Sidewalk Flowers by JonArno Lawson, illustrated by Sydney Smith. Thanks to Minh Le for the link.

• Aw, heck.  One more.  Tis the season.  From The Washington Post: First Book mixes market forces and philanthropy to help poor children.  I love that they picked up Boats for Papa as one of their titles.  Clearly they have excellent taste.

• Daily Image:

I saw the new Star Wars movie, loved it, and was listening to a recent episode of the podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour when they mentioned the worst Star Wars merchandising in existence.  There are many items that could fit the bill (look up the Slave Leia perfume or the C3PO tape dispenser, if you doubt me) but the unqualified winner was so terrible sounding that I honestly didn’t believe that it existed.  This has nothing to do with children’s literature in any way, shape, or form.  I just wanted to give you a couple new nightmares tonight.  Ladies and gentlemen, the Jar Jar Binks lollipop.  Sharp-eyed spotters may be able to see why it may be considered far and away the worst marketing of all time.

• Some me stuff to start us off.  NYPL turned its handy dandy little 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing 2014 list into an interactive bit of gorgeousness.  So as to help it along, I wrote a blog post on the library’s website (I have two blogs, if you want to get technical about it, but only one of them has my heart) with the following clickbait title: They Put THAT Into a Book for Kids?!  Forgive me, oh blogging gods.  I couldn’t help it.  It was too much fun to write.  Oh, and while we’re on the NYPL blogs, I really enjoyed Andrea Lipinski’s post about our old (and I mean OLD) Books for the Teen Age lists.  How can you resist this cover, after all?

• Recently I was alerted to two older but really fascinating links regarding ARCs (Advanced Readers Galleys) and their procurement and use in the book world.  Over at Stacked Books one post discussed the current state of handing out galleys at large national conferences like ALA.  The other one took the time to poll people on how they use their ARCs and what they do with them.  Both make for magnificent reading.  Thanks to Charlotte Taylor for the links.

• It’s sort of nice when our reference librarians, both past and present, get a little acknowledgment for the super difficult questions they have to field.  Boing Boing recently related a piece on some of the crazier questions the adult reference librarians have to field.  Children’s librarians get some out there ones as well, but nothing quite compares to these.

• Ah. It’s the end of an era, everyone.  In case you hadn’t heard the ccbc-net listserv has closed its doors (so to speak) for the last time.  Now if you’re looking for children’s literary listservs you’ve PUB-YAC and child_lit.  Not much else to read these days, I’m afraid.  Except bloggers, I suppose.  *irony laden shudder*

• In happier news there are book finalists popping up like wildflowers.  Cybils on the left!  Nerdies on the right!  Something to tide us over until the ALA Media Awards, at any rate.

• In the meantime, if you’re looking for a compilation of all the Best Children’s Books of 2014 lists out there, Susan Thompsen has pretty much been creating them single-handedly for I don’t know how many years now.  Times changes.  Blogs come and go.  But Chicken Spaghetti?  It’s forever, man.

• One thing I learned about writing Wild Things: Acts of Mischief in Children’s Literature with Jules Danielson and Peter Sieruta?  It’s simple.  Heirs = good.  Estates = headaches.  And the recent piece Rosenbach contests Sendak value just backs me up on this one.

• I was over at Monica Edinger’s apartment the other day when she showed me this little beauty:

She’d already blogged a quickie review of it, so when the news came in that it won a UK Costa Award I had the odd sensation of being, if only momentarily, inside the British book loop.  And if you looked at that cover and thought to yourself, “Gee, that sure looks like a WWI sequel to E. Nesbit’s Five Children and It” you’re sort of right on the money.

• So I’m prepping my branches for some hardcore Día programs (El día de los niños/El día de los libros or Children’s Day/Book Day) by buying them lots of Día books.  I go on the Día website to order off of the book lists they have there, and what do I find?  Some of the coolest most up-to-date STEM/STEAM booklists I have EVER had the pleasure to see.  They’re so good, in fact, that I had to alert you to them.  If you’re looking for STEM/STEAM fare, search no further.

• Daily Image:

Pretty much off-topic but while strolling through Bryant Park behind the main library for NYPL, my boss and I came across the fountain back there.  Apparently when the temperatures plunge they figure it’s better to keep it running rather than risk bursting the pipes.  Whatever the reason, it now looks like this:

• Oh, thank the high heavens.  Good news, folks. The celebrities have arrived to show us how to write books with darker themes. Thank goodness they’re here!  Until now the field of children’s literature was just an unending vista of sunshine and daisies. But thanks to the combined efforts of Evangeline Lilly (“I look around me and I see a lot of young people who are very entitled and who are very confused when life isn’t perfect. I think that often comes from some of the messaging we receive as children from our stories, but that’s really not life and especially not on the playground”) and Bruce Springsteen (“Bruce Springsteen on Outlaw Pete and Not Sheltering Kids From the Realities of Life“) we can finally stop handing our children consistently sweet and innocent . . . hey. Psst.  You there.  Sit down.  You too.  And I don’t even want to talk about you.  All youse guys.  You’re ruining my moment.  Stop being so doggone subversive!  You don’t want to prove the singer and the elf wrong, do you?  They’re famous.  They know what they’re talking about.*

• Kudos to Sarah Seltzer and her Flavorwire piece Please, let’s not extend the literary genre wars to kids books.  Written as a response to Rebecca Mead’s recent New Yorker piece pooh-poohing Percy Jackson (and could you find a more innocuous thing to pooh-pooh if you tried?) it contains the phrase, “Burn, I guess?” which I shall now appropriate and work into at least one conversation today.

• Publishers. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, we need ‘em.  Hence the piece Save the book publisher.  Hard to argue the man’s points.

“Thousands of illustrations, books, comics, graphic novels, animations, products, paintings and more will be on view. In addition, a Children’s Reading Room within the gallery will hold hundreds of children’s books by SVA alumni.”  What’s that, you say?  It’s only the description of the upcoming We Tell Stories exhibition of work by more than 250 alumni of the School of Visual Art’s MFA Illustration as Visual Essay program.  Jules Danielson alerted me to this event and can’t go (seriously, someone just send her to New York City already – she deserves it!) but those of us in NYC can certainly try.

Lolly Robinson speaks truths bloggers may not like to hear. It’s not specifically blogger-related either.  It’s just an issue we all have to deal with these days.  Can you really and truly be critical of a children’s book if you’re buds with that particular author or illustrator?  Lolly weighs in and her thought process winds around until she ends with, “What would happen if EVERY picture book had a YouTube video revealing the details of its creation?”  Spoiler Alert: It would be fantastic.  Meantime, I’ll just say that she’s speaking in the piece as a Horn Book reviewer and not a blogger.  Bloggers, for the most part, are not held to the standards of a Kirkus or a Horn Book.  We have no editors.  We are judge, jury, and executioner (at times) all in one.  As such, you take every blogger with a grain of salt, just as you take every professional review with a similarly sized, if somewhat different, salt grain as well.  And for my part, I review so few books these days that my selection simply consists of those titles I think deserve particular attention or are deserving of criticism.  In fact, I’ve got a rip-roaring critical review on the horizon . . . but I shall say no more.

• The Best Books lists have begun with a mad sprint.  On the one hand you had PW’s Best Books of 2014.  The middle grade fiction category is particularly remarkable.  Then you have the New York Times Best Illustrated list.  Now just as that Lolly article talked about, I’m buds with two of the jurors who were on that committee.  So I can inquire with calm patience and certainty WHAT THE HECK WERE YOU GUYS THINKING WHEN YOU DIDN’T INCLUDE LINDBERGH?!?  *ahem*  That was awkward.  Good show, blokes.  Nice list.  Moving on.

• By the way, Travis Jonker’s analysis of the NY Times Best Illustrated books and how well they do Caldecott-wise upset a lot of my expectations.  I did NOT see those stats coming.  Fascinating!

• In the words of the great Jan Thomas, can you make a scary face? Cause I can.  So can Kate Milford, Jonathan Auxier, and Aaron Starmer for that matter.

• Here’s my dirty little secret.  I have never, not a single day of my life, biFirsnge watched a single show.  Maybe I indulged in a few too many Northern Exposure‘s when I was young, but that’s it.  However, upon hearing that A Series of Unfortunate Events is slated to be an all-new Netflix series, this record I hold may have to change.  This interview with Handler about the show is worth reading, particularly when the subject of casting comes up. Sez he, “As Count Olaf, James Mason. In 1949. You can see why my involvement may or may not be welcome.”  Thanks to Kate for the news.

• The old book smell.  Want to know its chemical composition?  Darn tootin’ you do!  Thanks to Mike Lewis for the link.

Daily Image:

Halloween has come and gone but one thing remains clear.  The folks at FirstBook DC?  They won it.  They won Halloween.

If this picture means nothing to you then go here and read up.

*As you might imagine, Bruce is far less to blame here than Ms. Lilly.  He didn’t seek out the picture book writing life and says nothing detrimental about the state of children’s literature today.  It’s the article writer I probably have more of a beef with.

Everyone loves a good list but finding lists that reflect the intelligence of experts in a given field can sometimes be tricky.  Consider, if you will, books about American Indians for the kiddos.  I can’t tell you how many summer reading lists I see every year that have The Indian in the Cupboard, The Matchlock Gun, or even Rifles for Watie on them.  Just once it would be nice to see a Top 100 list of books that could serve as guidelines for folks searching for good books about indigenous peoples.

You can imagine my interest, then, when Debbie Reese mentioned on the ccbc-net listserv that she had contributed to a list called “Top One Hundred Books by Indigenous Writers.”  She also said that if anyone was interested in seeing this list, they could contact her and she’d pass it on.  But with a list this good, it begs to be shared.  I asked Debbie and her fellow experts in the field if it would be all right to post the list on this site and they agreed.

Here’s is some background, from Debbie, about the books:

As we worked on the list, we limited ourselves on # of books per author so that we could be as inclusive as possible. The list is a combination of our personal favorites and recommendations from peers.

We did not delineate or mark those that are in the children/YA category. We feel strongly that those who wish to write for adults or children/YA would benefit from reading what we’re calling masters. And, we think that those who wish to strengthen their ability to select/review books about American Indians would benefit from reading the books, too. So many authors who give talks and workshops tell people that in order to write, they have to read.

I have linked some of the children’s and YA titles to reviews and records.  If I have missed any, please let me know.

Thank you Debbie, Susan, Teresa, and Tim for passing this along.  I am very pleased and moved to host it here.

A Work in Progress: Top One Hundred Books by Indigenous Writers

Compiled for ATALM [1] 2012, by

Susan Hanks, Debbie Reese, Teresa Runnels, and Tim Tingle [2]

Updated on February 24, 2014

After a year of informal surveys and queries, we offer a list of over 100 books that every museum and library should have on their shelves. Written by tribal members, these books are the foundation of our literature as Indigenous people. Just as Western culture promotes Shakespeare as a prerequisite to grasping the essence of Western word arts, we promote N. Scott Momaday, D’Arcy McNickle, and many, many others to insure that our future writers reference, in images and ideas, our Indigenous masters.

Among our list are books written for children and young adults. Though often seen as “less than” because of their intended reader, we believe books for children are as important—if not more important—than books for adults. The future of our Nations will be in the hands of our children. Books that reflect them and their nations are crucial to the well being of all our Nations.

Sherman Alexie (Spokane/Coeur d’Alene)

• The Business of Fancydancing

• The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

• Reservation Blues

Rilla Askew (Choctaw)

• Mercy Seat

Beverly Blacksheep (Navajo)

• Baby Learns about Colors

• Baby’s First Laugh

Kimberly Blaeser (White Earth Ojibwe)

• Absentee Indians and Other Poems

Joseph Boyden (Metis/Micmac)

• Three Day Road

Jim Bruchac and Joe Bruchac (Abenaki)

• Native American Games & Stories

Joseph Bruchac (Abenaki)

• Children of the Longhouse

• The Heart of a Chief

• Hidden Roots

• Skeleton Man

Ignatia Broker (Ojibwe)

• Night Flying Woman

Emily Ivanoff Brown (Native Village of Unalakleet)

• The Longest Story Ever Told: Qayak, The Magical Man

Nicola Campbell (Interior Salish)

• Shi-shi-etko

• Shin-chi’s Canoe

Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes

• Beaver Steals Fire: A Salish Coyote Story

Robert Conley (Cherokee)

• Medicine War

• The Witch of Going Snake

Ella Deloria (Yankton Sioux)

• Waterlily

Vine Deloria, Jr. (Standing Rock Lakota)

• Custer Died For Your Sins

• Red Earth, White Lies

Jennifer Denetdale (Dine)

• The Long Walk: The Forced Navajo Exile

• Reclaiming Dine History

Echo-Hawk, Roger C. and Walter C. Echo-Hawk (Pawnee)

• Battlefields and Burial Grounds: The Indian Struggle to Protect Ancestral Graves in the United States

Walter C. Echo-Hawk (Pawnee)

• In the Courts of the Conqueror: the 10 Worst Law Cases Ever Decided

Heid Erdrich (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe)

• Cell Traffic: New and Selected Poems

Louise Erdrich (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe)

• The Beet Queen

• The Birchbark House

• The Game of Silence

• The Last Report on the Miracles at No Horse

Jack D. Forbes (Powhatan Delaware)

• Only Approved Indians: Stories

• Red Blood

• Africans and Native Americans: The Language of Race and the Evolution of Red-Black Peoples

Eric Gansworth (Onondaga)

• A Half-Life of Cardio-Pulmonary Function

• Extra Indians

• If I Ever Get Out of Here

• Mending Skins

Diane Glancy (Cherokee)

• Pushing the Bear

Joy Harjo (Muscogee Creek)

• For a Girl Becoming

• The Good Luck Cat

• In Mad Love and War

• Reinventing the Enemies Language

Tomson Highway (Cree)

• Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing

• Kiss of the Fur Queen

Geary Hobson (Cherokee, Quapaw)

• The Last of the Ofos

• The Remembered Earth

Linda Hogan (Chickasaw)

• Mean Spirit

• Red Clay: Poems & Stories

• Solar Storms

• The Woman Who Watches Over the World: A Native Memoir

LeAnne Howe (Choctaw)

• Miko Kings: An Indian Baseball Story

• Shell Shaker

Hershman John (Navajo)

• I Swallow Turquoise for Courage

Thomas King (Cherokee)

• A Coyote Columbus Story

• Medicine River

• One Good Story, That One

Michael Lacapa (Apache/Hopi)

• Antelope Woman

• Less than Half, More Than Whole

Winona LaDuke (Ojibwe/Chippewa/Anishinabe)

• All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life

Adrian Louis (Paiute)

• Among the Dog Eaters

• Shedding Skins

• Skin

• Wild Indians and Other Creatures

Larry Loyie (Cree)

• As Long as the Rivers Flow: A Last Summer Before Residential School

Wilma Mankiller (Cherokee) and Michael Wallace

• A Chief and Her People

Joseph Marshall III (Lakota Sioux)

• The Journey of Crazy Horse

• The Lakota Way

John Joseph Matthews (Osage)

• Sundown

Janet McAdams (Creek)

• After Removal (with Geary Hobson and Kathryn Walkiewicz)

• The Island of Lost Luggage

• The People Who Stayed: Southeastern Indian Writing

• Red Weather

Joseph Medicine Crow (Crow)

• Counting Coup

Carla Messinger (Lenape)

• When the Shadbush Blooms

N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa)

• House Made of Dawn

• The Way to Rainey Mountain

D’Arcy McNickle (Cree)

• The Hawk is Hungry

• Runner in the Sun

• The Surrounded

• Wind from an Enemy Sky

Nora Naranjo-Morse (Santa Clara Pueblo)

• Mud Woman: Poems from the Clay

Jim Northrup (Ojibwe)

• Walking the Rez Road                                   

Simon Ortiz (Acoma)

• The Good Rainbow Road/Rawa ‘Kashtyaa’tsi  Hiyaani

• Men on the Moon: Collected Short Stories

• The People Shall Continue

• From Sand Creek

Louis Owens (Choctaw)

• The Bone Game

• Mixedblood Messages: Literature, Film, Family, Place

• The Sharpest Sight

• Other Destinies: Understanding the American Indian Novel

Leonard Peltier (Anishinabe/Lakota)

• Prison Writings

• My Life is My Sun Dance

William Penn (Nez Perce/Osage)

• All My Sins Are Relatives

Susan Power (Sioux)

• The Grass Dancer

Marcie Rendon (Anishinabe)

• Pow Wow Summer

Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna Pueblo)

• Almanac of the Dead

• Ceremony

• Laguna Women: Poems

• Storyteller

Cheryl Savageau (Abenaki)

• Muskrat Will Be Swimming

Cynthia Leitich Smith (Muscogee Creek)

• Jingle Dancer

• Indian Shoes

• Rain Is Not My Indian Name

Paul Chaat Smith (Comanche)

• Everything You Know About Indians is Wrong

Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve (Lakota Sioux)

• The Christmas Coat: Memories of My Sioux Childhood

• High Elk’s Treasure

Allen J. Sockabasin (Passamaquoddy)

• Thanks to the Animals

Shirley Sterling (Salish)

• My Name is Seepeetza

Chief Jake Swamp (Mohawk)

• Giving Thanks: A Native American Good Morning Message

Luci Tapahonso (Dine)

• A Breeze Swept Through: Poetry

• Blue Horses Rush In: Poems and Stories

• Songs of Shiprock Fair

Drew Hayden Taylor (Curve Lake Ojibwe)

• The Night Wanderer

Tim Tingle (Choctaw)

• Crossing Bok Chitto

• House of Purple Cedar

• How I Became A Ghost

• Saltypie

Laura Tohe (Navajo)

• No Parole Today

Richard Van Camp (Dogrib)

• The Lesser Blessed

• The Moon of Letting Go: and Other Stories

• Path of the Warrior

• What’s the Most Beautiful Thing You Know about Horses?

Jan Bourdeau Waboose (Ojibway)

• Morning on the Lake

• SkySisters

Velma Wallis (Athabascan)

• Two Old Women:  An Alaska Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival

Anna Lee Walters (Pawnee/Otoe)

• Ghost Singer

James Welch (Blackfoot/Gros Ventre)

• Fool’s Crow

• Heartsong of Charging Elk

• Indian Lawyer

• Winter in the Blood

Bernelda Wheeler (Cree/Assiniboine/Saulteaux)

• I Can’t Have Bannock but the Beaver Has a Dam

• Where Did You Get Your Moccasins?

Robert A. Williams (Lumbee)

• Like a Loaded Weapon: The Rehnquist Court, Indian Rights, and the History of Racism in America

Daniel H. Wilson (Cherokee)

• Robopocalypse

Craig Womack (Creek)

• Drowning in Fire

• Red On Red: Native American Literary Separatism

For further information and titles, contact Susan Hanks at [email protected], Debbie Reese at [email protected], Teresa Runnels at [email protected], or Tim Tingle at [email protected].

Happiness is a new list.

For 102 years, NYPL has consistently been producing the same list highlighting some of the best books for kids in a given year.  Now we’re pleased to announce our 2013 list and all the myriad titles it holds.  Admit it.  This is one of the most gorgeous covers on a booklist you ever did see, isn’t it?

The back cover isn’t shabby either.

Enjoy!

Happy Tuesday to you, one and all!  Hope your weather isn’t as bitingly cold as ours has been.  Time to warm up with some fresh and festive children’s literature tidbits.  Personally, I’m trying to figure out why I wrote today’s headline a couple days ago.  I’m sure there was a reason for it.  Hmmm.

• The recent NPR piece on Gertrude Stein’s children’s book reminds me that it would be great if someone wrote a fun article for The Horn Book that consisted of a systematic accounting of cases where adult authors wrote children’s books and failed miserably in the attempt (with the occasional success stories, i.e. Sylvia Plath, along the way).  The article could take into account similarities between such books, or trends in more recent examples (today we have Salman Rushdie, Michael Crichton, etc. and back then we had Gertrude Stein, Donald Barthelme, etc.).  So somebody go do that thing.  I’d love to read it.

• Best book lists are popping up hither and thither and yon.  We recently saw the release of the rather massive Kirkus Best Books List for Children as well as this one from Publishers Weekly.  Always interesting to see which non-starred books made the cut.  Now SLJ announces that they’ll reveal their 2013 Best Books on Twitter. The big reveal is Thursday, November 21, 8 pm EST.

• Allie Bruce has two fantastic blog posts up on the Lee & Low site these days discussing conversations she’s had with the kids in her school about race (amongst other issues) and book jackets.  Part one is here and part two is here.  This would be your required reading of the day.  It’s fun and makes for a great conversation.  Plus, I love how these conversations help to make kids into savvier consumers.

• Speaking of book jackets, there is nothing I do not love about the recent ShelfTalker blog post Please, Will Somebody Re-Design These Covers?  Amen, and also thank you.

• Oh!  And while we’re over at ShelfTalker, they’ve updated The Stars Thus Far.  Look at Locomotive!  Doesn’t that do your heart good?  I completely missed that it was the only children’s book this year to get six out of six.  Wow!

• Things You Might Have Missed Because I Sure As Heck Did: James Howe guest blogged over at TeachingBooks.net and his post is just the smartest thing.  From personal history to a sneak peek into his upcoming 2014 title, this is just fantastic stuff.  I tell you, man.  Guest blogging is where it’s at.

• This next one is just so cool.  I’ve been hearing from various folks the ways in which they’ve been having Giant Dance Parties as inspired by my book.  But NONE of them quite compare to this party that took place at the Cotsen Children’s Library at Princeton University.  The accompanying craft is just brilliant!  They even made little roses.  Awwww.  Still not convinced?  Then let this adorable child be the ultimate lure:

Resist if you can.  You can’t!  Thank you Dana Sheridan for the link!

• If you’re anything like me you scanned through this admittedly very cool Most Popular Books of All Time piece and looked to see how the children’s materials panned out.  Very well, it seems!  And the top of the pops?  Mr. Hans Christian Andersen himself.  Now and forever, baby.  Thanks to Aunt Judy for the link.

• My workplace is so weird.  Ask me sometime about the day Bjork came to visit Winnie-the-Pooh.

• Stockholm’s Tio Tretto Library is so cool.  If the kitchen didn’t clinch it then the sewing area would.  Stockholm tweens are clearly the luckiest in the world.

• Derek Jeter has his own publishing imprint now?  Hm.  Okay.  I’ll be fine with this, just so long as at least ONE of these books is set in Kalamazoo, our hometown.  C’mon, Jeter!  Hometown pride!  Thanks to PW Children’s Bookshelf for the link.

• Oh, so very much has gone on this week!  Where to begin?  What to do?  Well, for starters, NYPL released a handy dandy list to accompany their current exhibit The ABC of It: Why Children’s Books Matter.  I helped make said list, which is officially called 100 Great Children’s Books, 100 Years.  So, two things.  #1: We didn’t say “best” or “most popular”.  We just said great.  These are great books.  Hard to argue with that.  And #2: It’s just the stuff published in the last 100 years.  So before you get your knickers in a twist, there is a reason The Secret Garden, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland are nowhere in sight.  NYPL even lets you buy the books in little packages by age level or the whole kerschmozzle at one time.  Groovy.

• In conjunction with the exhibit and the list, the library brought over Judy Blume and Eric Carle.  So, naturally, when a photograph was to be taken I wedged myself between the two of them.  I intend to blow it up, crop it, and then in fifty years claim to my grandchildren that we were all bestest buddies and this was taken mere moments before we stepped out for some pie.

• And now, on the depressing side of things, Gary Soto explains why I haven’t seen a new children’s title come out of him since I got my library degree.  I just completely missed that entire Marisol debacle.  In 2005 I was a newly minted librarian.  Seems a bit unfair that I just missed the output of Soto.  So come on, man!  That was basically a decade ago.  Time to do with the typey type.

• In happier news, Vermont college offers a scholarship to minority children’s & YA authors.  This fact is accompanied by a killer photo of Angela Johnson.  Worth it right there.

Daylight Saving (not “Savings” I just learned) has arrived and you know what that means?  It means babies have a terrible sense of telling time.  Just awful.  And that, in turn, means I’d better crank out a lickety-split Fusenews before I hear the telltale sound of little eyelids opening.

First up, The New York Times Best Illustrated Books of 2011 were announced.  I like to keep a tally of what I managed to review in time vs. what got missed.  The winners were:

• “Along a Long Road,” written and illustrated by Frank Viva (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)

• “A Ball for Daisy,” written and illustrated by Chris Raschka (Schwartz & Wade)

• “Brother Sun, Sister Moon: Saint Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Creatures,” written by Katherine Paterson, illustrated by Pamela Dalton (Chronicle Books)

• “Grandpa Green,” written and illustrated by Lane Smith (Roaring Brook Press)

• “Ice,” written and illustrated by Arthur Geisert (Enchanted Lion Books)

• “I Want My Hat Back,” written and illustrated by Jon Klassen (Candlewick Press);

• “Me … Jane,” written and illustrated by Patrick McDonnell (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)

• “Migrant,” written by Maxine Trottier, illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault (Groundwood Books);

• “A Nation’s Hope: The Story of Boxing Legend Joe Louis,” written by Matt de la Peña, illustrated by Kadir Nelson (Dial)

• “A New Year’s Reunion,” written by Yu Li-Qiong, illustrated by Zhu Cheng-Liang (Candlewick Press)

Well, three out of ten ain’t . . uh . . . ain’t all that hot, come to think of it.  Next year I shall vow to do better!  I liked Travis at 100 Scopes Notes and his reaction too.

• Amazon has just put out their list of the Best of 2011 too.  I’ve read eight out of ten and reviewed five of those.  Much better.

• While I’m thinking of it, there was announcement of the Carnegie Medal and Kate Greenaway Medal nominees over in Jolly Old England.  The Carnegie (their version of the Newbery) nominees include a couple Americans, a couple titles we’ve seen stateside, and a lot of surprises.  I’ll be rooting for Tall Story by Candy Gourlay, The Cardturner by Louis Sachar, and The Crowfield Curse by Pat Walsh.  On the Greenaway (their Caldecott) nominee side I’ll
  10 Comments on Fusenews: In which I get to use the term “mankiest”, last added: 11/10/2011
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  Molly said, on 11/9/2011 1:51:00 AM
  

  Bad news for your 2011 Carnegie/Greenaway horses: those books were on the longlist for the 2011 awards which were announced in June, 2011. (To satisfy your curiousity, Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness and FArTHER by Grahame Baker-Smith were the winners). This year’s longlists were announced on November 4th and can be found at: http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/pressdesk/press.php?release=pres_nom_car_2012.html
  and:
  http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/pressdesk/press.php?release=pres_nom_green_2012.html

  The award covers books published from 01.September to 31. August of the year before the award. Thus the 2012 longlist is for books published in 2010 and 2011 – just a little confusing and perhaps a bit after the phenomenon has passed, I thought when I was nominating.

  And for the record, my money’s on A Monster Calls for the Carnegie, but the Greenaway is any librarian’s guess.

  janeyolen said, on 11/9/2011 4:46:00 AM
  

  As I will be at the magical Connecticut Children;s Book Fair in Storrs, Ct at the UConn campus this weekend, presenting and signing books along with a boatload of other authors including my gorgeous daughter Heidi Stemple, I will be buying loads of books. Thanks for the head’s up, though! LOL

  Jane Yolen

  Elizabeth Bird said, on 11/9/2011 4:54:00 AM
  

  Oops! I’m way behind the times, it seems re: Carnegie/Greenaway. Thanks for the heads up!

  Jennifer Schultz said, on 11/9/2011 6:18:00 AM
  

  Oh, the best lists are coming out…good times.

  (PS-we’re in standard time. Daylight Saving begins in the spring and ends in the fall. Regardless, bum times for babies and new parents!.)

  Jennifer Schultz said, on 11/9/2011 6:19:00 AM
  

  (However, folks in AZ and HI don’t deal with the back and forth fol-de-rol.)

  Sarah said, on 11/9/2011 6:20:00 AM
  

  Thanks so much for doing the interview Betsy! You are so right on about the greek myth dilema. And I think I’m going to have to start requesting Mexican Wrestler books too- I’m too curious not to!

  Kathryn Fredrickson said, on 11/9/2011 7:01:00 AM
  

  At least the time doesn’t depend on where you are…in your house!

  http://itsasmalltownlife.blogspot.com/2011/08/i-say-fast-time-you-say-slow-timelets.html

  Also, I might be in love with that Lucy bear!

  DaNae said, on 11/9/2011 9:31:00 AM
  

  Dang! For a minute I thought that filing cabnit cover was a piece of wall art I could purchase.

  I want the funny books! I also want the Scieszka Pirze up and running in this country! PDQ!

  Scope Notes said, on 11/9/2011 10:25:00 AM
  

  Oh, man – the New Covers guy is at Candlewick? They’re going to do some amazing things together.

  Lee Bennett Hopkins said, on 11/10/2011 4:47:00 PM
  

  Dear Bird:

  I thought I was missing you. How do I get on your e-listings for Fuse #8? Hope
  you and the baby are doing fine with the time change. Love-ness…Lee

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Oh everyone's just ah-flutter over the Times Online listing of Top Books for Boys. "Boys" herein meaning anyone happening to sport a Y chromosome since the list is fairly useless at sorting the selections into any kind of category. As a result you end up with Calvin and Hobbes on the one hand and How to Avoid a Wombat's Bum on the other. I'm suspicious of some of the inclusions as well. Vampirates? A "top" book? Really? And who on earth would recommend the last volume of A Series of Unfortunate Events all by its lonesome? Some judicious editing could have done wonders with this one.

Thanks to Kids Lit for the link.

Yesterday was World Book Day, which apparently we, the American book blogs, missed entirely. Whoopsie.

In celebration, The Guardian polled people asking what the 100 books they couldn't live without were. You have to hand it to the Brits. They do love their children's literature. Look how it stacked up, rank-wise:

2 The Lord of the Rings JRR Tolkien
4 Harry Potter series JK Rowling
8 His Dark Materials Philip Pullman
11 Little Women Louisa M Alcott
16 The Hobbit JRR Tolkien
29 Alice in Wonderland Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame
33 Chronicles of Narnia CS Lewis
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe CS Lewis (not really fair putting them both on, was it?)
40 Winnie the Pooh AA Milne
46 Anne of Green Gables LM Montgomery
73 The Secret Garden Frances Hodgson Burnett
77 Swallows and Amazons Arthur Ransome
81 A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens
87 Charlotte's Web EB White
92 The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupery
94 Watership Down Richard Adams
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Roald Dahl

Dahl barely snuck in there by the end, but he definitely held his place.

Thanks to Bookninja for the link.