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Mm. Double quick time Fusenews today, I should think. All the goodness. Less of the commentary. As such . . .

• What is the scariest children’s film of all time? If you mentioned a particular film that involved decapitated heads and Wheelers, this link’s for you.

• I’m not a teacher so I had no idea what the Best Websites and Apps for teaching and learning really were.  Now I do.  Thanks to Travis and Mr. Schu for the link.

• In case you missed it, the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award 2015 longlist was released and there are at least two Yanks present and accounted for.

• This one’s for any high school students you might know.  They’re looking for kids who know how to write funny stuff.  Since this is very much my wheelhouse, I’m going to ask you to think particularly of any funny girls you know.  Let’s make sure this puppy is well represented in both genders, shall we?  Due date: August 3rd so get cracking!

• The Kirkus/7-Imp piece on Private Readers is absolutely fantastic.  It isn’t just what we read but how we chose to read it (and keep it to ourselves).

• Made my day:

So did this, actually.

• Absolutely love this too:  Non-required summer reading.  Beautifully rendered. Thanks to Mike Lewis for the link.

• Question: Which hugely famous (and still alive) children’s book illustrator used to paint naked geishas for the troops during WWII?  The answer may surprise you.  Or not.  After all, have you ever checked out the bodies in A Circus is Coming?  Va-va-voom!  Extra sidenote: Is that clown with the glasses a barely disguised Kay Thompson?  Discuss.

• How sad that one of my former co-workers won’t be around to bid me goodbye as I leave NYC.  I mean, I understand why.  He’s got places to go.  People to see.  But still, bidding goodbye to the talking parrot head just isn’t going to have the same oomph.

• This note is just for my sister.  Kate, we need to do this.  Call me.

• Daily Image:

Okay. So this is pretty much just about the coolest float I’ve ever seen. As I am moving to Evanston, IL, it seems only fitting to know how they celebrate the 4th of July.  Recently, this float (in a photo taken by Junko Yokata) was on the route.  I have never, in all my livelong days, seen a Newbery float before.  Absolutely remarkable.

Thanks to Junko for the image.

I write this post with some hesitation. First off, the question in the title is not my own. It’s a search term that someone used to click-through to this blog. But my hesitation doesn’t arise from a fear that the quesioner might be reading the blog now, because I didn’t provide the type of information he or she seeks. They saw that I deal in pure ridiculousness and vowed never to return. The reason I hesitate is because it makes me sad. Every time I think about it. Writing about it is worse. It causes me to imagine two scenarios:

1. A boy has just started dating his first girlfriend. He adores her. He stays up late, writing poetry about her. He even imagines marrying her some day. But he’s not quite ready for that. Kissing comes first. He meets her somewhere quiet – a park, maybe a trail behind the school that leads to creek. They hold hands. They sit on a rock and try to kiss. Their teeth strike into each other. They give it another go. It’s soft and sweet and not what either of them imagined. But it’s nice. They haven’t told anyone about their relationship yet. They like to imagine that their love is star-crossed, that their parents wouldn’t approve of something so intense and true. It’s all very Alex Chilton. The next day, the boy goes to school. He’s beaming. He’s not one to kiss and tell but he tries to steer conversations to his new girlfriend. He expects his pals to say things like, “she’s the greatest girl that ever lived,” or “she’s what rainbows are made of.” Instead they say, “That girl? She’s ugly. Even uglier than Penny Dobson.” It would be an understatement to say this deflates the boy’s sails. He wonders if he has to end it now before anyone finds out. But he’s not going to jump the gun. He’ll do his research first. He consults Google. He starts by searching “Are Any Girls Uglier Than Penny Dobson?” Not very helpful. So he goes general. “Are Some Girls Uglier Than Others?” The Indubitable Dweeb provides little help in this department, but other sites lead him down a rabbit hole to disillusionment and heartbreak.

2. A girl comes back from a family vacation to Florida. The women on the beaches were like nothing she’d ever seen in real life. Perfectly molded into their bikinis. Tan and TV-worthy. She’s grown past reading Judy Blume and now thumbs through her older sister’s copies of Cosmo. She doesn’t get it all, but that’s the appeal. In the cafeteria, she watches from behind her bagged lunch as the eighth grade girls come and go. She gauges their levels of development, imagines them in bikinis. Back at home, in the mirror, she takes a ruler and measures her nose, her ears, etc. She logs the measurements and wonders if there’s some computer program you can enter such things into. Does the data reveal incontrovertible facts? Still, she has a strong sense of what she really wants to know. It’s simple. It’s obvious. She feels almost stupid for writing it, because it’s something a kid would write. But in the back of her mind she thinks that maybe there’s a scientific study that proves conventional wisdom wrong, that exposes middle school cliques for what they are. She goes to Google. She does her search. She finds The Indubitable Dweeb. As she sighs and checks the other search results, her Mom