How to use this Page

The lovely thing about the internet, and blogging in particular, is that it leads you down a wonderful path of discovery. This is also the dangerous part. When to stop! I found a cool ezine called Small Magazine. It's full of creative stuff, incredible photography, and some of the most beautiful children I've ever seen, except for my own kids, of course. From there I wandered off to new places. One of these was The Small Object by artist Sarah Neuburger, where I found the coolest accessory for the thumb wrestling crowd--thumb wrestling championship belts! Can you imagine?

Writing for Children:
I also wanted to mention Write4Kids. It's a great writing resource.
I'm very excited about Nancy Sanders' blog. She's doing a series called Book in a Month Club, as in actually writing the whole darn thing in one month!

International Illustrators:
I've been traveling via the internet this week and found some wonderful blogs, most of which are in Spanish. Some are in English, also. Looks like I need to learn a new language.
Claudia Degliuomini
Marta Chicote Juiz
Merce Lopez
Marlowa
Cara Carmina

And last, but not least, I discovered the lovely site of Amanda Soule. She's written a book called, The Creative Family. Her blog is so enjoyable and heartwarming and inspiring.

Spring into the meadows, find a clearing with a little running brook and read to your children.  A fresh early literacy booklist of picture books for your little one’s eyes abounds.  Books are blooming everywhere you look, each one addressing an early literacy skill.  Hopefully you’ll find it just as delightful to peruse this list as it was for me to create it: 

The Core Skills List-

Vocabulary:  Knowing the names of things.

First Picture Nature by Jo Litchfield.  (Usborne Books, 2007). A picture dictionary of nature in spring, bugs and slugs, flowers, birds, seasons and weather.  Helpful thumbnail pictures introduce the concepts of metamorphosis, germination, and the lifecycle of a frog in easy-to-understand sequences.

A Piece of Chalk by Jennifer Ericsson. Illustrated by Michelle Shapiro. (Roaring Book Press, 2007). A little girl with a box of chalk learns primary colors and the colors of the rainbow while discovering the art of drawing animals on sidewalks and appreciating the outdoors.

Drive by Nathan Clement. (Front Street, 2008). When daddy is a truck driver, he drives to work, looks both ways at the intersection, waves hello, and finds other things to do when there is a traffic jam.  At the end of the day, he fills up his gas tank and drives home.  Teaches good manners and kids will learn the meaning of the word, “drive.”

Rhinos Who Rescue by Julie Mammano. (Chronicle Books LLC, 2007). Rhinos who rescue hear the bell, are smoke jumpers and rescue even gomers! They are heroes, rain or shine.  Learn various definitions of words used at the firehouse and fireman slang in the “rescue rap” page.

Print Motivation: A child’s interest in and enjoyment of books.

Maybe a Bear Ate it! by Robie Harris.  Illustrated by Michael Emberley. (Orchard Books, 2008)  Imagine the angst and sadness if you’ve lost a favorite book.  Who are the book-knappers–maybe a bear, a stegosaurus, a rhino, a bat, a shark, or an elephant?  Hold on tight to your favorite book whatever it is and wherever it is.

My Book Box by Will Hillenbrand. (Harcourt, 2006).   There are so many things you can do with a box–make a bug box, pizza box, sock box or toy box.  But the best box to make is a book box.  Kids can construct their very own book box with adults at the end with easy instructions.

Letter Knowledge: Learning that letters are different from each other. Learning that each letter has a name and specific sounds that go along with it.

Lots of Letters from A to Z Tish Rabe.  Illustrated by Kevan Attebary.(InnovativeKids, 2006). Lift the flap letters delivered to a cast of animal characters starting with each letter of the alphabet.  Snail mail written in alliteration and are thematically centered around the alphabet letter like “Pigs in Pink Pajamas,” “Freddy Fish’s friend forever,” and “Rocky Raccoon who really rocks and lives on Red Road, Rainbow Ridge.”

Little Bitty Mousie by Jim Aylesworth. Illustrated by Michael Hague. (Walker & Company, 2007).  Itty bitty mousie snacks on food, tries on lipstick, sniffs the roses and drives toy trucks all the while, tip-tip tippy toeing around the house at night.  

Poor Puppy by Nick Bruel. (Roaring Brook Press, 2007). What happens when a mean old kitty cat doesn’t want to play with the new puppy dog?  We feel sorry for poor puppy as he tries to find other things to amuse himself.  But puppy doesn’t just sit there and sulk, he gets to play with an alphabetical list of toys from around the world.

Narrative Skills: Being able to describe things. Being able to understand and tell stories.

A Closer Look by Mary McCarthy. (Greenwillows Books, 2007).  As each page unfolds, take a closer look…and what do you see? Not your garden-variety picture book.  They all come together somehow and kids can provide the story.  Learn facts about bugs, birds and flowers.

The Butterfly Garden by Sue Harris. Illustrated by Stephanie Boey. (The Templar Company, 2006).  Lift the flap and explore with Tabby Cat and her friends as they try to catch butterflies.  Talk about the shiny surprises they find along the way.  Appreciate nature and pretty gardens everywhere. 

Two Eggs, Please by Sarah Weeks and Betsy Lewin. (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2003). How many different ways can you cook an egg? They can be different yet the same.  The waiter shouts all the orders into the kitchen at the end as a summary of all the different ways you can have an egg for breakfast.

Phonological Awareness:  The ability to hear and play with the smaller sounds in words.

Truck Driver Tom by Monica Wellington. (Dutton Children’s Books, 2007).  Truck Driver Tom vroom vrooms to rev up his engine, clank clanks through the farmer’s working fields, zoom zooms down the freeway, whooshes into the tunnel until the day is done.  Bold phrases instruct storytellers where to emphasize words while reading the story.  Sounds of city, country, construction sites, diners and grocery stores are covered.

City Lullaby by Marilyn Singer. Illustrated by Carll Cneut. (Clarion Books, 2007). Baby needs to wake up but instead falls into deeper sleep with the sounds of the city from 2 bikes growling to 10 horns beeping.  Will baby ever wake up? Count from 1 to 10 with this light-humored book and find out.

A Perfect Day by Remy Charlip. (Greenwillow Books, 2007). A story in rhyme about a parent and child spending a day together.  Nothing can be more perfect than a father being with his son.  Turn the pages and find out all the things to do from morning until night.

Print Awareness: This is really just noticing print. Noticing words everywhere, knowing how to handle a book, knowing how to follow words on a page.

Lickety-Split by Robert Heidbreder. Illustrated by Dusan Petricic. (Kids Can Press, 2007).  Each page a symphony of sounds from thumpity tump, flippity flop, ziggity zag to clippity clop to mishity mash.  Fun-filled alliteration with compound words and words with musical sounds when put together.

The Adventures of Captain Candy by Ryan Lederer. (Seven Locks Press, 2007).  Can Captain Candy, Agent Mint and Fireball apprehend Professor Metal Mouth? A graphic novel style picturebook aimed at the preschool audience.  Action words have punch and words with intonations are highlighted in bubble letters of green, blue, red and every other color of the rainbow.

The Medley List:

Pholonogical Awareness/Print Awareness:

Bunny Fun by Sarah Weeks. (Hartcourt, 2008).  Chant along with Bunny, “bunny fun” while figuring out how to play on a rainy day.  What happens when the rain stops? Maybe some puddle fun.

Dino-Hockey by Lisa Wheeler. Illustrated by Barry Gott. (Carolrhoda Books, 2007). Hockey dinosaurs go against each other in the finals.  Meat-eaters versus veggiesaurs, T. Rex and Raptors, Pterodactyl twins and Diplo shins.  A dramatic finish by Stego and Triceratops advances them into the playoffs.

Phonological Awareness/Narrative Skills/Vocabulary:

Shape Capers by Cathryn Falwell. (Greenwillow Books, 2008). Learn your shapes with rhyme.  Shake, shake, shake the shapes.  What will they be? Circle, square, triangle, or semicircle and all you can see.  Find all the shapes at the end and talk about how you can play with shapes all day. Hooray!

Playground Day! (Clarion Books, 2007). Hurray hurray it’s playground day.  Be a bunny, squirrel, monkey…springing, wiggling; scurrying, scattering; stretching, swaying;  kids can talk about all the animals they pretend to be while playing on the playground.  A summary page at the end inspires narration from kids to adults about what they did on the playground that day.

Phonological Awareness/Print Awareness/Vocabulary:

Peek in My Pocket by Sarah Weeks and David A. Carter. (Red Wagon Books, 2007). Each animal has a different pocket with a different shape.  Lift-the-flaps make it fun to find out what each pocket holds as a surprise.  Children will love to chant “peek in my pocket” and will learn the name of each object in no time.

Note: Definitions of the Six Early Literacy Skills were taken from the KCLS Foundation “Ready to Read” Webpage:

http://www.kcls.org/parents/kidsandreading/readytoread/literacyskills.cfm

When I was working toward my M.L.S. at Kent State University in Ohio, I imagined myself completing the degree and finding a job as the one librarian wearing the many hats of a librarian/library director in a small library probably in Ohio. That isn’t the course that my professional life actually has followed thus far, but if it had, Crash Course in Children’s Services by Penny Peck would be required reading for personnel working with me in that small library. Penny Peck offers an easy to read “how to” book full of helpful tips to library personnel who maybe are librarians but didn’t complete coursework in materials and services for children, or more likely, library staff who haven’t had the opportunity to take such courses. It is also a good refresher.

This title was mentioned by Tina, an ALSC Blog reader, back in October. Thanks, Tina! I hope you have had a chance to read the book and have some comments to share as well. There are two specific items in the book that I would like to share.

First is what Peck calls the Five-Finger Rule. I hate to admit it, but too often I find that I don’t have what seems to be common knowledge. I have had children read a sentence or two in a book as we try to find something they might like as an independent read, but I hadn’t heard of the Five-Finger Rule. After reading about the rule on page 24 of Peck’s book, I found many references to it online and was charmed by this description on Book Nuts Reading Club. Anyway, I wanted to share that Reader’s Advisory bit for your consideration and commentary.

The second portion is about Book Clubs. I adore the idea of Book Clubs but my one attempt with a parent/child book club didn’t work very well. Saturday afternoons had too many other commitments for my few participants, and, more than that, the majority were parents dragging in their reluctant readers. I wasn’t prepared for that and before I could regroup, they had already given up on the program. In retrospect, I can think of much better ways I could have handled it, but that’s neither here nor there. On page 79, Peck writes about her book club experience:

I have been very lucky with our Xtreme Reader group, which is the book discussion group for fourth and fifth graders. From the beginning, we had as many boys as girls. I think part of the reason is the name: Xtreme Readers, like Xtreme Sports, sounds really cool and does not make you think of tea parties. The name was thought up by a boy who was a fourth grader at the time. His mother works at the library, and he was in the initial group. We put the name prominently on all our flyers, in a cool font and with a dramatic graphic of a person reading while skateboarding.

To kick off the club, we sent flyers with a cover letter to all the GATE (gifted and talented) programs in the fourth and fifth grades (both public and private schools), because we felt our target audience would be children who already liked reading chapter books.

The local newspaper published an article about the club too. After a half-hour of discussion, she had hands-on activities to bring the books to life. She includes a few examples of books and activities. As for questions, she mentions several resources including Multnomah (OR) County Library’s Talk it Up!

As with last month’s book, I found much of interest. For March, I will post about two books that have been suggested: Early Literacy Storytimes @ Your Library: Partnering with Caregivers for Success by Saroj Ghoting and Pamela Martin-Diaz and Ready-To-Go Storytimes: Fingerplays, Scripts, Patterns, Music, and More by Gail Benton and Trisha Waichulaitis. Please join in the discussion. If you have books you would like to recommend, please comment here or send an email to [email protected].

The American Library Association’s Social Responsibility Round Table and The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered Round Table are co-sponsoring the Rainbow List, an annual bibliography for young readers from birth through age 18. According to the official Rainbow List myspace presence, the Rainbow List will create a recommended list of books dealing with positive Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Trangendered and Questioning issues and situations for children up to age 18. The 2008 list is the first list and took into consideration books published from 2005 through 2007. Future bibliographies will cover 18 months of publication, from July of the previous year through December of the current review year with selection completed at the ALA Midwinter Conference.

The committee writes in its introduction to the list:

an examination of over 200 books reveals that glbtq books are heavily
weighted toward upper grade levels and that many glbtq characters in
fiction take a peripheral position. Other concerns are public
censorship and the lack of ready accessibility to these books. The
members of the Rainbow Project encourage the publication of more books
with characters validating same-gender lifestyles and cataloging with
subject headings that describe these glbtq characters in children’s
and young adult fiction.

Here are the selected Beginning Readers:

Considine, Kaitlyn. Emma and Meesha My Boy: A Two Mom Story. Il.
Binny Hobbs. 2005. unp. Two Moms Books.

Gonzalez, Rigoberto. Antonio’s Card/La Tarjeta de Antonio. Il.
Cecilia Concepcion Alvarez. 2005. 32p. Children’s Book Press.

Jopling, Heather. Monicka’s Papa Is Tall. Il. Allyson Demoe. 2006.
unp. Nickname.

Jopling, Heather. Ryan’s Mom Is Tall. Il. Allyson Demoe. 2006.
unp. Nickname Press.

Lindenbaum, Pija. Mini Mia and Her Darling Uncle. Trans. Elisabeth
Kallick Dyssegaard. 2007. unp. R&S Books.

Richardson, Justin and Peter Parnell. And Tango Makes Three. Il.
Henry Cole. 2005. unp. Simon & Schuster.

Here are the Middle/Early Young Adult titles:

Fiction

Burch, Christian. The Manny Files. 2006. 296p. Atheneum.

Hartinger, Brent. The Order of the Poison Oak. 2005. 211p.
HarperTeen.

Howe, James. Totally Joe. 2005. 189p. Atheneum/Ginee Seo Books.

Larochelle, David. Absolutely, Positively Not. 2005. 219p. Arthur
A. Levine Books.

Limb, Sue. Girl Nearly 16, Absolute Torture. 2005. 216p.
Delacorte..

Peters, Julie Anne. Between Mom and Jo. 2006. 232p. Little,
Brown/Megan Tingley Books.

Selvadurai, Shyam. Swimming in the Monsoon Sea. 2005. 280p.
Tundra.

Non-Fiction

Marcus, Eric. What If Someone I know Is Gay: Answers to Questions
about What It Means to be Gay and Lesbian 2007. 183p. Simon Pulse.

Miller, Calvin Craig. No easy answers: Bayard Rustin and the civil
rights movement. [Portraits of Black Americans Series]. 2005. 160p.
Morgan Reynolds.

When I Knew. Ed. Robert Trachtenberg. Il. Tom Bachtell. 2005.
120p. Regan Books.

The complete 2008 Rainbow List is available here.

The Award Winner for 2008:
Birmingham, 1963 by Carole Boston Weatherford (Wordsong/Boyds Mills Press)

Two Honor Books:
Blue Lipstick: Concrete Poems by John Grandits (Clarion Books)

This Is Just To Say; Poems Of Apology And Forgiveness by Joyce Sidman (Hougton Mifflin)

Sylvia Vardell posted about it on her blog, Poetry for Children. The Lee Bennett Hopkins Award for Children’s Poetry is administered by Pennsylvania State University College of Education and the Pennsylvania State University Libraries.

The Mystery Writers of America has announced The 2008 Edgar Awards Nominees. The nominees for the Best Juvenile category are:

• The Name of This Book is Secret by Pseudonymous Bosch (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
• Shadows on Society Hill by Evelyn Coleman (American Girl Publications)
• Deep and Dark and Dangerous by Mary Downing Hahn (Clarion Books)
• The Night Tourist by Katherine Marsh (Hyperion Books for Young Readers)
• Sammy Keyes and the Wild Things by Wendelin Van Draanen (Random House Children’s Books - Alfred A. Knopf)

The Mystery Writers of America also offers an online reading list of past Edgar Award winning and nominated children’s and young adult books.

Shortly after reading on our blog Bradley Debrick’s post about tagging, I read Matt Raymond’s post on the Library of Congress blog about the Library’s pilot project with Flickr, an online photosharing site. The Library of Congress is posting photographs which no copyright is known to exist and asking people to comment, make notes, and add tags. Matt Raymond shortly afterward shared how well-received that partnership has been thus far.

I am excited about the project and believe its potential for students of all ages is incredible. The Library of Congress’ Flickr profile page states:

We’ve been acquiring photos since the mid-1800s when photography was the hot new technology. Because images represent life and the world so vividly, people have long enjoyed exploring our visual collections. Looking at pictures opens new windows to understanding both the past and the present. Favorite photos are often incorporated in books, TV shows, homework assignments, scholarly articles, family histories, and much more.

The Prints & Photographs Division takes care of 14 million of the Library’s pictures and features more than 1 million through online catalogs. Offering historical photo collections through Flickr is a welcome opportunity to share some of our most popular images more widely.

Are there ways you envision using this project with young people?

This post involves a touch of self-promotion because I’m the instructor but if you are new to working with audiobooks, Listen Up!: Basics of Audiobooks in Libraries might be just the course you need.

Is listening the same as reading? For audiobook fans it is the preferred method for obtaining information and enjoying a good book. As audiobooks become more popular with a wider range of library patrons, library staff have questions! This four-hour online course covers the basics of audiobooks—including new technologies and formats. The focus will be on selection considerations, formats, marketing, and review sources. We will also look at research related to the use of audiobooks with students and explore resources to help library staff keep up to date with audiobooks.

The course is being offered through AMIGOS but is available for Network Education Exchange, a cooperative program with many other continuing education providers. The course will be held live online on January 29 and January 31 (two 2-hour sessions for the course) and repeated March 25 and March 27. Visit www.amigos.org for more information and registration details.  

by Becki Bishop, co-chair ALSC Great Web Sites Committee

The Great Web Sites for Kids Committee is responsible for maintaining the ALSC Great Web Sites for Kids web page. The committee participates in three periods of web site evaluation for newly suggested sites and updates/reevaluates any sites already listed.

Sites suggested for inclusion are evaluated according to their author/sponsor, purpose, design and stability, and content. The committee seeks quality sites for children ages birth to 14, as well as sites relevant to parents, caregivers, teachers, and others who work with children. The Great Web Sites web page is organized by subject matter.

In 2007, the committee evaluated over 400 sites in the three rounds of voting. Each round consists of a pre-vote, final vote, and annotation writing. In the pre-vote, sites recommended since the previous vote are divided among committee members. These sites are evaluated to determine if they should be presented in the final vote for all members to consider. The final vote consists of all members reviewing the sites forwarded from the pre-vote, as well as at least three sites suggested by each member of the committee (these are automatically included in the final vote). Web sites are added if they receive support from at least 80% of the committee. Then, the new sites are divided up among members so that annotations can be written, and the sites are added to the Great Web Sites page.

It is very important for this committee that all members try to keep on schedule as much as possible. It is difficult to catch up when work gets behind due to the volume of sites that are evaluated. It is very interesting to see the diversity of sites recommended, and you never know what gems may be uncovered in the mine we call the World Wide Web.

I just spent the last month in Potty World. Let me clarify…I just re-created something known as “Potty Kits” for my library system. I say re-created, because when I worked in Oregon, my friend and fellow librarian Laura in Hillsboro came up with this wonderful idea–put materials on potty training into a bag and circulate them. The Potty Kits are so incredibly popular that they are never on the shelf. So, get yourself a canvas bag (or waterproof is even better, something that wipes off easily), and make those Potty Kits. Ours have been available for 2 weeks now and not a single one is on the shelf.

What, you may ask, is in a Potty Kit? The ones I just created have 5 picture books, a DVD, and a parent book. Of course the kits contain Everyone Poops by Gomi, and a new title that I think is not only cute, but may soon be a perennial favourite, No More Diapers for Ducky, by Bernette G. Ford. This book features a little piggy who cannot come out to play because he is sitting on the potty, reading, and a little duck in a very fuzzy diaper. I also included a Sesame Street board book, Too Big for Diapers, and another board book, Potty Time  by Bettina Paterson. The DVD is Potty Power, which features lots of songs and little vignettes on using the potty, plus a very saccharin story about a princess and her potty. For parents, there’s The Potty Training Answer Book by Karen Deerwester.

 But the book and CD combo that started it all for me here in Nova Scotia is Tinkle Tinkle Little Tot: the toilet training songbook, by  Bruce Lansky & Richard (is that your real name) Pottle. Who can resist such hits as “The Pee Pee Dance” and “The Tushy Pushy”, both sung to the tune of the Hokey Pokey, and of course, “Itsy-Bitsy Poo-Poo”, sung to the tune of that famous spider song. I saw this book in amongst the items for sale in the staff lunchroom, and bought 5 copies (later we purchased 7 more so that all our branches would have a Potty Kit).  

You have to understand about the lunchroom sales. There’s this guy who comes around peddling things. Books always, but also strange things like flying monkey toys and glowing orbs and dig-for-your-own-pearl necklaces. And we aren’t the only place he visits—you can find these items at the local pub as well, sitting out on the bar for folks to peruse. I like buying from the Peddler, it reminds me of Caps for Sale. Mind you, I never see this guy, but magically, once a month, the items appear, and you sign up for what you want, pay our tech services head, and then she gives them to you when he comes back. So we have some interesting books in our collection from the Peddler, including Tinkle Tinkle Little Tot.  But don’t worry—I just checked on Amazon, and you can get this book in the states too. Just not for $5 from our local Peddler.  

PS– if you’d like to see our Potty Kits, click here.

This morning on YALSA-BK, a member asked the collective brain for help in finding YA fiction involving math. Since I've been planning a Numb3rs post for a while anyway, I thought this would be the perfect time to write it.

When forced to balance my checkbook or calculate how much that purse is when it's marked "33% off," you can find me quoting Melissa: "I became a librarian because I was told there was no math." And day to day, most of that's true, at least as far as my job is concerned. The Dewey Decimal Classification system is about labels, not sums. Most of the math I use goes into figuring which books have the best chance at the Printz based on their number of starred reviews and the number of starred reviews past winners and honor books have received. I may not be good with numbers but I do love police procedural television dramas (much of the father-daughter bonding at my parents' home involved episodes of Law & Order) and the promise of a smart, interesting police procedural led by a talented cast hooked me. On Friday nights at 10, you can now find me watching Numb3rs on CBS.

The show's main characters are Don Eppes (Rob Morrow), an FBI agent, and his younger brother Charlie (David Krumholtz), a mathematician. They often work together to solve crimes. The best thing about the show, plot and writing wise, is the writers' ability to distill incredibly complex math into terms people like me who can barely add and subtract can understand. And to keep those of us that can't add or subtract watching the show, there's a wonderful ongoing storyline about the brothers' relationship and how their incredibly dissimilar and often estranged past affects their work in the present. Other regular cast members include Diane Farr as Megan Reeves, an FBI profiler and behavioral specialist, Alimi Ballard as David Sinclair, an FBI agent, Navi Rawat as doctoral student Amita Ramanujan, Judd Hirsch as retired architect and city planner Alan Eppes and Peter MacNicol as physics professor Larry Fleinhardt, who is Charlie's mentor. Every week the team solves crimes, often with the assistance of Charlie's math but while they usually catch the bad guy, math can't always account for human nature. Three seasons in, viewers have seen the team solve crimes using combinatorics, sabremetrics, probability, game theory, and many other higher math disciplines.

We All Use Math Every Day is a Numb3rs spinoff project of Texas Instruments and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. For every episode of Numb3rs, they devise a math lesson plan. As an example, the episode "Money for Nothing" involves the hijacking of a truck carrying $50 million dollars in medical supplies and relief. Don's team is able to apprehend two of the hijackers, but they don't know anything about the people who were transporting the supplies or the location of the truck. Don also doesn't know if the robbers will tell him the truth about what happened. Charlie advises Don to employ strategies that people use to solve logic puzzles. Teachers can download the Money for Nothing activities (available in English and Spanish) and apply the techniques Charlie talks about to different logic puzzles.

Some of the books people are recommending on YALSA-BK that fit with the math theme include:

• The Midnighters series by Scott Westerfeld
• An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
• The Magic or Madness trilogy by Justine Larbalestier
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
• All of the Above by Shelley Pearsall
• Chasing Vermeer by Blue Baillet
  

Once again, my husband calls it: Kate Nash is The Next Big Thing among fans of musicians like Lily Allen, Amy Winehouse, and The Pipettes. How does Marcus know these things? Because he is always following Michael Stephens' third trend/rule: Scan The Horizon. He listens to the BBC's digital radio station, 6 Music, and finds great stuff. In the last year alone, he's introduced me to the four artists previously mentioned, plus Peter Bjorn & John, The Fratellis, Kaiser Chiefs, Mark Ronson, and Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip. Whew! I have then gone on to order music by most of these artists for my library system, where they are -- surprise! -- quite popular. These are artists who get very, very little airplay on American radio stations, and yet their CDs are circulating like mad. How do you Scan The Horizon? I have Marcus Slade (that'd be my husband. Call for rates if you desire his consulting services.), WXPN, NME, Pitchfork, and the surprisingly forward-thinking musical guest choices on shows like Conan & Jimmy Kimmel.