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You know what’s even better than serving on an award committee?  Having someone else write about it.  As I’ve mentioned in the past, I was on the judging committee for this year’s Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards alongside Chair Joanna Rudge Long and Roxanne Feldman.  It was Roxanne who reported on our discussion, and even took photos of where we met (Joanna’s gorgeous Vermont farmhouse), what we ate, and more.  There is also a particularly goofy shot of me that is impressive because even without knowing that there was a camera pointed in my direction, I seem to have made a silly face.  I am nothing if not talented in that respect.

Speaking of listening in on committees and their discussions, ALA is next week (she said, eyeing her unfinished Newbery/Caldecott Banquet outfit nervously) and that means you have a chance to sit and listen to one particular committee talk the talkety talk.  I am referring, of course, to the ALA Notables Committee.  This year they’ve released the list of books on their discussion list online for your perusal.  A lot of goodies there, as well as room for a lot of books I hope they get to eventually.

I was very sad to hear about the passing of Lois Duncan. Like many of you, she was a staple of my youth.  When Jules Danielson, Peter Sieruta, and I were writing our book Wild Things: Acts of Mischief in Children’s Literature we initially had a section, written by Peter, on why Lois stopped writing suspense novels for teens.  It’s a sad story but one that always made me admire her deeply.  She was hugely talented and will be missed.

Speaking of Wild Things, recently I was sent a YA galley by Marcus Sedgwick called Blood Red, Snow White.  But lest you believe it to be a YA retelling of the old Snow White / Rose Red fairytale, it ain’t.  Instead, it’s about how Arthur Ransome (he of Swallows and Amazons) got mixed up with Trotsky’s secretary and a whole lotta Bolsheviks.  What does this have to do with Wild Things?  This was yet ANOTHER rejected tale from our book.  Read the full story here on our website where we even take care to mention Sedgwick’s book (it originally was published overseas in 2007).

As I’ve mentioned before, my library hosts a pair of falcons each year directly across from the window above my desk.  I’ve watched five eggs laid, three hatch, and the babies get named and banded.  This week the little not-so-fuzzyheads are learning to fly.  It’s terrifying.  Far better that I read this older Chicago Tribune article on the banding ceremony.  They were so cute when they were fuzzy.  *sigh*

In other news, Harriet the Spy’s house is for sale.  Apparently.

Sharon Levin on the child_lit listserv had a rather fascinating little announcement up recently.  As she told it, she’d always had difficulty finding a really fast way to catalog her personal library.  Cause let’s face it – scanning every single barcode takes time.  Then she found a new app and . . . well, I’ll let her tell it:

“Shelfie is a free app for iOS and Android (www.shelfie.com) where you can take a picture of your bookshelf and the app will automatically recognize your book spines and generate a catalog of your library. In addition, the team behind the app has made deals with over 1400 publishers (including HarperCollins, Macmillan, and Hachette) to let you download discounted (usually around 80% off) or free ebook or audiobook edition of your paper books (right now these publisher deals cover about 25% of the books on an “average” shelf). The app also lets you browse other readers’ shelves. Shelfie will also give you personalized book recommendations based on how readers with similar taste in books to you organize the books on their shelves. The founder of Shelfie is named Peter Hudson and he’d love to hear any suggestions about how he can make the app better. Peter’s email is [email protected].“

Thanks to Sharon Levin for the heads up.

I leave NYPL and its delightful Winnie-the-Pooh toys and what happens?  The world goes goofy for the story of A.A. Milne and Christopher Robin.  Now we just found out that Domhnall Gleeson (a.k.a. Bill Weasley in the Harry Potter films) has just been cast as Milne in an upcoming bio-pic.  Will wonders never cease?

Are you familiar with the works of Atinuke?  An extraordinary storyteller, her Anna Hibiscus books are among my favorite early chapter books of all time.  They do, however, occasionally catch flack of saying they take place in “Africa” rather than a specific country. Recently, K.T. Horning explained on Monica Edinger’s recent post Diversity Window, Mirror, or Neither that Atinuke did this on purpose so that kids in Africa could imagine the stories as taking place in their own countries.  That makes perfect sense.  The ensuing discussion in Monica’s post is respectful, interesting, and with a variety of different viewpoints, all worth reading.  In short, the kind of talk a blogger hopes for when he or she writes something.  Well done, Monica.

Big time congrats to the nominees for the Neustadt Prize.  It’s a whopping $10,000 given to a children’s author given on the basis of literary merit.  It may be the only children’s award originating in America that is also international.  Fingers crossed for all the people nominated!

Hooray!  The Children’s Book Council has released their annual Building a Home Library list.  I love these.  The choices are always very carefully done and perfect for clueless parents.

In other CBC news, I got this little press release, and it’s worth looking at:

“For the second consecutive year, the Children’s Book Council has partnered with The unPrison Project — a 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicated to empowering and mentoring women in prison — to create brand-new libraries of books for incarcerated mothers to read with their babies at prison nurseries. Fourteen of the CBC’s member publishers answered the call by donating copies of over 35 hand-picked titles for children ages 0-18 months for each library. The books will be hand-delivered and organized in the nurseries by Deborah Jiang-Stein, founder of The unPrison Project and author of Prison Baby. Jiang-Stein was born in prison to a heroin-addicted mother, and has made it her mission to empower and mentor women and girls in prison.”

You know who’s cool?  That gal I mentioned earlier.  Julie Danielson.  She’s something else.  For example, while many of us might just say we were interested in James Marshall, she’s actually in the process of researching him.  She even received the James Marshall Fellowship from The University of Connecticut’s Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center. As a result she spent a week looking through the James Marshall Papers there. Their sole stipulation?  Write a blog post about it.  So up at the University’s site you’ll find the piece Finding the Artist in His Art: A Week With the James Marshall Papers. Special Bonus: Rare images you won’t find anywhere else.

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I take no credit to this.  I only discovered it on Twitter thanks to Christine Hertz of Burlington, VT.  It may constitute the greatest summer reading idea I’ve seen in a very long time.  Public libraries, please feel free to adopt this:

I’ve done it again.  Delayed my Fusenews too long and now this post is going to overflow with too much good stuff.  Forewarned is forearmed, as they say.

Me stuff for the start. And in fact, there just so much Me Stuff today that I’m just going to cram it all into this little paragraph here and be done with it. To begin, for the very first time my book Wild Things: Acts of Mischief in Chidren’s Literature (co-written with Jules Danielson and Peter Sieruta) was cited in an article. Notably, a piece in The Atlantic entitled Frog and Toad and the Self.  Woot!  In other news I’m judging a brand new picture book award. It’s the Hallmark Great Stories Award. Did you or someone you know produce a picture book in 2016 on the topic of “togetherness and community”? Well $10,000 smackers could be yours. In terms of seeing me talk, I’m reading my picture book (and more) at the Printer’s Row Lit Fest on June 11th.  If you’re in the Chicago area and ever wanted to see me in blue furry leg warmers, now your chance has come here.  Finally, during Book Expo I managed to coerce Hyperion Books into handing me three of their most delicious authors (Shannon Hale, Dean Hale, and Eoin Colfer) so that I could feed them to WGN Radio.  You can hear our talk here, if you like.  And check out how cute we all are:

Colfer, for what it is worth, is exceedingly comfortable.  I highly recommend that should you see him you just glom onto him for long periods of time.  Like a sticky burr.  He also apparently has an Artemis Fowl movie in the works (for real this time!) and you’ll never guess who the director might be.

This is interesting. Not too long ago children’s book author C. Alex London wrote a piece for BuzzFeed called Why I Came Out As a Gay Children’s Book Author.  It got a lot of attention and praise.  Then, earlier this month, Pseudonymous Bosch wrote a kind of companion piece in the New York Times Book Review. Also Known As tackles not just his reasons for a nom de plume (skillfully avoiding any and all mentions of Lemony Snicket, I could not help but notice) but also how this relates to his life as a gay children’s book author.

Hey, full credit to The New Yorker  for this great recentish piece on weeding a collection and the glory that is Awful Library Books.  My sole regret is that I never let them know when I weeded this guy:

The copyright page said 1994, but I think we know better.  Thanks to Don Citarella for the link.

Cool. The publisher Lee & Low has just released the winner of the New Visions Writing Contest, now in its third year.  Congrats to Supriya Kelkar for her win!

New Podcast Alert: With podcasting being so popular these days, I do regret that my sole foray into the form has pretty much disappeared from the face of the globe. Fortunately there are talented folks to listen to instead, including the folks at Loud in the Library. Teacher librarians Chris Patrick and Tracy Chrenka from Grand Rapids, MI (homestate pride!) get the big names, from picture books illustrators to YA writers. Listen up!

New Blog Alert: The press release from SLJ sounded simple. “SLJ is pleased to welcome The Classroom Bookshelf to our blog network. In its sixth year, the Bookshelf features a weekly post about a recently published children’s book, including a lesson plan and related resources.” Then I made a mistake. I decided to look at the site. Jaw hit floor at a fast and furious rate leaving a dent in the linoleum. Contributors Randy Heller, Mary Ann Cappiello, Grace Enriquez, Katie Cunningham, and Erika Thulin Dawes (all professors at Lesley University’s outstanding school of ed.), I salute you. If I ever stop writing my own reviews, you’ll know why.

This:

This one’s just for the New Yorkers. I’m sure you already saw this New Yorker paean to the Mid-Manhattan library, but just in case you didn’t it’s here, “unruly pleasures” and all.

For whatever reason, PW Children’s Bookshelf always goes to my “Promotions” folder on Gmail, so I assume they already mentioned this article. Just in case they didn’t, though, I sort of love that The Atlantic (second time mentioned today!) wrote an ode to Sideways Stories from Wayside School. Thanks to Kate for the link.

Now some Bookshare info.  The idea of providing free ebooks for kids with print disabilities is a good one.  And, as it happens, not a new one.  Bookshare, an online accessible library, just added its 400,000th title to its collection and boy are they proud.  Free for all U.S. students with qualifying print disabilities and U.S. schools, they’ve a blog you might want to read, and they service kids with blindness, low vision, dyslexia, and physical disabilities.

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You probably heard that Neil Patrick Harris will be playing Count Olaf in the upcoming Netflix series of A Series of Unfortunate Events.  Now we have photographic proof.

I wonder if Brett Helquist ever marvels at how much power his art has had over these various cinematic incarnations.  The lack of socks is a particularly accurate touch.

This falls directly into the category of “Me Stuff”.  That said, some of you may be aware of the presence of Kidlit TV out there.  Just to recap, it’s the closest thing we have right now to an all-children’s literature related blog channel.  The brainchild of Julie Gribble with host Rocco Staino and a whole crew of fellow staff members, I’ve been watching the consistently interesting and intelligent fare over the last few months.  And now?  Now they’re talking to me.  I am with the gabby gab, as they say.  So much so that they couldn’t fit everything into a single video.  This week is part one.  Next week we’ll be seeing part two.

Primarily I’m discussing the book I co-wrote with Jules Danielson and Peter Sieruta, Wild Things: Acts of Mischief in Children’s Literature.  Don’t have a copy of your own?  Well, you’re in luck.  A giveaway is at hand and you could get yourself a free one.  Just go here to see me yammer and to win.

Many thanks to Julie, Rocco, and the whole crew (including the make-up artist who hid very well her horror at my inability to understand the most rudimentary aspects of eyeliner).  Enjoy!

Fascinating to see what I look like with make-up on, isn’t it?

Currently I am maxing and relaxing in Stratford, Ontario enjoying a play or two.  Just kidding.  By my calculations what I’m actually doing as you read this is driving hell-for-leather out of Canada back to New York City while seated in a rental car’s back seat next to a 3-year-old and a 13-week-old.  For hours.  And hours.  And hours.

As you digest that pleasant little mental image (fun fact: someone in this car gets carsick regularly and it’s not me) I’m going to do you a solid.  In case you missed it, we’ve been soliciting authors for special behind-the-scenes tidbits and facts about their 2014 books.  These appear one a day on our Wild Things blog (the blog that celebrates Wild Things: Acts of Mischief in Children’s Literature).  So enjoy what we’ve posted so far and stay tuned because there’s a LOT more where these came from!

First up, a video so good you’d swear we paid to have it made.  It’s N.D. Wilson talking gators, football, burning sugarcane fields, and there’s a live recitation of Beowulf in here to make the ladies swoon (the Beowulf lovin’ ladies . . . which is to say my friend Lori Ess):

Christian Robinson was up next and he brought some thoughtful consideration to the depiction of nontraditional families:

Bethany Hegedus followed and her talk touched on spelling errors and matchmaking:

When authors and illustrators asked what kind of video to do I always pointed them to this video of Steve Light.  His talk involves runaway primates, which is as awesome as it sounds:

And speaking of primates, Katherine Applegate was a true class act, appearing alongside primate keeper Jody Carrigan to discuss Ivan the gorilla’s more mischievous streak:

How great is Jack Gantos?  We asked the man to plug his book and he plugged ours instead!  Class act, that one:

Greg Neri came by to talk about the five things you might not know about Johnny Cash, Letterman style:

Jon Scieszka put on a fez.  Would that everyone did.  A fez just makes everything good:

Lisa Brown’s art may contain the only time in history this particular piece of furniture has appeared in a picture book:

Aaron Starmer told a magnificent story from his own youth that will honestly make your heart bleed a little:

And today we have Lauren Castillo, featuring an editor beloved to many:

Like I say, there are many more to come.  Perhaps your favorite will be up soon!

• As per usual there are some Wild Things links I’d love to share today.  Lemme see here . . . Well we got a real stunner of a review over at Chapter 16.  That’s some good and gorgeous stuff going down there. Phil Nel called us “Punchy, lively, and carefully researched.”   The blog The Boy Reader gave us some serious love.  And today on our blog tour we’re at There’s a Book.  And then there’s the video at the Wild Things blog.  N.D. Wilson sent us a vid of the true behind-the-scenes story of Boys of Blur.  It’s kicking off our video series “Wild Things: Sneaky Peeks” where authors reveal the stories behind their books.

Aw heck.  I’ll save you some time.  Here’s the video.  This guy is amazing:

Don’t forget to keep checking back on the site for a new author a day!

• It’s one thing to notice a trend.  It’s another entirely to pick up on it, catalog the books that represent it, and post accordingly.  I’d noticed in a vague disjointed way that there was a definite uptick in the number of picture books illustrated with photographs this year.  Trust Travis Jonker to systematically go through and find every last livin’ lovin’ one in his The State of Photography Illustration in 2014 post.  In his comment section I’ve added a couple others I’ve seen.  Be sure to do the same!

• Since I don’t have school age kids yet I’m not in the school loop at the moment.  So it was a BIG shock to me to see the child of a friend of mine having her First Day of Kindergarten picture taken this week.  Really?  In early August?  With that in mind, this may seem a bit late but I care not.  The melodic cadences of Jonathan Auxier can be heard here recommending truly fantastic summer children’s book fare.  The man has fine fabulous taste.

• In other summer news I was pleased as punch to read about the Y’s Summer Learning Loss Prevention Program.  You know summer slide?  Well it’s good to see someone doing something about it.  Check out the info.  Check out the stats.  Check out the folks trying to combat it.

• It’s interesting to read the recent PW article Middle Grade and YA: Where to Draw the Line? which takes the issue from a bookseller P.O.V.  Naturally librarians have been struggling with this issue for years.  I even conducted a panel at NYPL a couple years ago called Middle Grade Fiction: Surviving the YA Onslaught in which MG authors Rebecca Stead, N.D. Wilson (he’s everywhere!), Jeanne Birdsall, and Adam Gidwitz discussed the industry’s attempts to brand them as YA (you can hear the full incredibly painful and scratchy audio of the talk here).  It’s a hot topic.

• This.  This this this this this.  By the way, and completely off-topic, how long until someone writes a YA novel called “This”?  The sequel could be named “That”.  You’re welcome, publishing industry.

• Harry Potter fan art is near and dear to my heart but in a pinch I’m happy to consider Harry Potter official cover art as well.  They just released the new British covers (and high bloody time, sayeth the masses).  They’re rather fabulous, with the sole flaw of never aging Harry.  What poor kid wants to look the same age at 10 as he does at 17?  Maybe it’s a wizard thing.  Here’s one of the new jackets to chew on:

That might be my favorite Dumbledore to date.

• There are whole generations of children’s librarians that went through graduate school reading and learning about educator Kay E. Vandergrift.  I was one of them, so I was quite sad to read of her recent passing.  The PW obit for her is excellent, particularly the part that reads, “Vandergrift was one of the first professors to establish a significant Web presence, spearheading the use of the Internet as a teaching tool. Her website, a self-declared ‘means of sharing ideas and information with all those interested in literature for children and young adults,’ was considered an important resource for those working with children and linked to more than 500 other sites.”  If you need to know your online children’s literary history, the story isn’t complete without Kay.  I always hoped she’d get around to including a blog section, but what she had was impressive in its own right.  Go take a gander.

• I don’t consider myself a chump but there are times when even I get so blinded by a seemingly odd fact on the internet that I eschew common sense and believe it to be correct.  Case in point: The Detroit Tigers Dugout Librarian. Oh, how I wanted this to be true.  Born in Kalamazoo, a town equidistant between Detroit and Chicago, my baseball loyalties have always been torn between the Tigers and the Cubs (clearly I love lost causes).  So the idea of the Tigers having their own librarian . . . well, can you blame me for wanting to believe?  I WANNA BEE-LIEVE!

• Amazon came up with a list of 100 children’s books to read.  Amazon, I’ma gonna let you finish but the NYPL had the best 100 children’s book list of all time!  Which . . . I wrote. . . . so . . . . yeah.  No bias here or anything. *whistles to self*

• I’ve a new pet peeve.  Wanna hear it?  Of course you do!  I just get a bit peeved when popular sites create these lists of children’s books and do absolutely no research whatsoever so that every book mentioned is something they themselves read as children.  That’s why it’s notable when you see something like the remarkable Buzzfeed list 25 Contemporary Picture Books to Help Parents, Teachers, and Kids Talk About Diversity.  They don’t lie!  There are September 2014 releases here as well as a couple things that are at least 10 years old.  It’s a nice mix, really, and a great selection of books.  Thanks to Alexandria LaFaye for the link.

• So they’re called iPhone wallpapers?  I never knew that.  Neil Gaiman’s made a score of them based on his children’s books.

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Maybe it’s just me but after seeing the literary benches cropping up in England I can’t help but think they make a LOT of sense.  More so than painting a statue of a cow or a Peanuts character (can you tell I lived in Minneapolis once?).  Here are two beautiful examples:

Wind the in the Willows

Alice Through the Looking Glass

Thanks to Stephanie Whelan for the link!

And by “you’ve all” I mean “me”.

Yes, today marks the official release of my book co-written with Julie Danielson and Peter Sieruta, Wild Things: Acts of Mischief in Children’s Literature!!  To celebrate we’re engaged in a blog tour.  Head on over to 100 Scope Notes for our first post in which we are grilled by the great children’s authors, illustrators, and librarians of the past or, if listening is more your thing, check out my appearance alongside Jules on the Let’s Get Busy podcast (and then look at our full schedule of blog appearance at the bottom of the screen here).

To celebrate, Jules and I are doing something a bit out of the ordinary.  As you may know, on our Wild Things blog we systematically posted a lot of the information that never made it into the final book.  Now that we’re here at the day of the book’s release we’re done with doing that.

HOWEVER!  Does that mean the fun has to stop?  Of course it does NOT!

Starting tomorrow the blog at Wild Things is going to start up again.  Only this time, instead of posting hidden gems about past children’s books we’re posting hidden gems about current ones.  Which is to say, videos.

We solicited a great many authors and illustrators with 2014 book releases to film themselves discussing some behind-the-scenes stories about those books.  Want the skinny on Cece Bell’s El Deafo or N.D. Wilson’s Boys of Blur?  What’s the real scoop on where Jenni Holm got an idea for The Fourteenth Goldfish?  And why, for the love of all that is good and holy, is Jon Scieszka wearing a fez?!?

The answers soon.  Because trust me when I say that if you thought you loved their books before, you’re really gonna love what they have to say now.

To kick it off, please enjoy this faux PBS documentary about a children’s author who never was.  It feels appropriate to include it here.

• Howdy do.  As per usual I’m going to direct you this morning to that lovely little Wild Things website where Jules Danielson and I have been posting the stories that got cut from our upcoming book Wild Things: Acts of Mischief in Children’s Literature.  If you haven’t already seen them you might like to read some amusing stories about:

- Some Madeleine facts you may not have known, two straight lines and all.
- The downside of owning your own tropical island, even if you DID do all the art for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
- The story I was MOST sorry to cut. War of the Pooh! It’s what happened when a British MP decided that the dolls of Pooh and friends had to come back to the UK. What followed . . . got a little crazy.
- A quick look at some of the WORST school visits suffered by authors and illustrators of all time.
- Children who would one day become writers bugging cranky older authors. It’s one of the more peculiar posts but it has nothing on . . .
- Udders, cleavage, and a monster penis. Need I say more?
- A nightmare publishing story to rival publishing stories.

• The New York Public Library’s pathetic summer reading list for kids. Come again?  That would be The New York Post taking issue with a list that includes books kids would have fun reading as well as dreaded diversity.  Apparently if a book contains a non-white kid it can’t possibly be any good and must have appeared on a summer reading list to appease some kind of demographic.  Full disclosure, I’m one of the folks that made the list (which wasn’t just for NYPL but for Brooklyn and Queens library systems as well) so all I’ll do is gently point you to Rita Meade’s incredibly restrained response.

• And how did you spend your evening last night.  For my part, I saw The Snow Queen.  The composer of the show is my buddy Haddon who, years ago, did the intro music for a podcast I posted for a while (the podcast is no longer up so his good work has been lost to the wilds of time).  Now the show is here for a limited run in NYC, before the inevitable Frozen musical steals its thunder.  Of Snow Queen musicals there can apparently be only one.  Here’s a New York Times article about the show, if’n you’re interested.

Where do you even get a Where’s Waldo costume, I wonder.  Everyone’s favorite stripey hero is key to this very clever children’s bookstore promotion thingy thing.  In Kalamazoo the fabulous bookstore Bookbug is hiding Waldo in 26 of the local businesses on sort of a scavenger hunt.  Other small town bookstores take note.  It’s good for the store and good for the other businesses.  I love a clever campaign.  Thanks to Colby Sharp for the link.

If you have ever taken the Leonard Marcus walking tour of children’s literature here in NYC then you’ve probably seen Margaret Wise Brown’s house in Greenwich Village.  Good thing you did since the poor little structure is slated to be razed.  Has someone alerted Leonard?  I think we’d better start sounding the alarm on this one.

• Don’t have enough conferences in your life?  Well The Nerdy Book Club was kind enough to feature this post on the upcoming Kidlitcon.  The only conference out there for children’s and YA literature bloggers, it’s happening in October in beautiful Sacramento, CA.  Would that I could go!  If you’re able, I highly recommend a trip.

• This.  Just . . . . this.  No words.

• Not a shabby idea.  Over in Britain they recently had a Great children’s books author bake off for all those novels and picture books featuring baked goods.  I am hungry.  Therefore someone should do this over on our side of the pond.  And then invite me.  Nom nom nom nom.

• Two recent 100 Scope Notes pieces caught my eye.  The first has the rather memorable title All middle grade novels should be 192 pages. No exceptions.  The other is the hugely amusing Wildest Children’s Books of 2014.  I’ve missed a couple of these on my maternity leave.  Glad to have Travis keeping me up to speed!

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Finally, could somebody do this for a couple works of children’s and YA literature?

If I had my choice I’d like some Westing Game tights.  And imagine how much money you could make off of The Fault In Our Stars tights.  The mind boggles.  Thanks to Aunt Judy for the link.

First and foremost, hello.  How are you?  Are you having a nice day?  So nice to see you here, but before we go any further I must tell you that you very much need to leave me.  Just for a little while.  As you may have heard, my book with Jules Danielson and Peter Sieruta, Wild Things: Acts of Mischief in Children’s Literature, is coming out August 5th.  To prepare, Jules and I have created a blog that posts a story a day that got cut from our final book.  Here’s what you may have missed so far:

- A story about the greatest ALA Conference photo of all time.
- A tale of all the various authors and illustrators who have gotten advice from Maurice Sendak over the years.
- Advice on why you should never invite Hans Christian Andersen to stay the night.
- A tribute to everybody’s favorite Wicked Angel.
- Two rough broads / Newbery and Caldecott winners.
- A tribute to the fantastic Nancy Garden.

That said, here’s all the other news what wuz.

• All the world is ah-buzz with the information that J.K. Rowling just released on Pottermore.  Rita Skeeter is still reporting (so no, there is no justice in the universe) and she has the scoop on 34-year-old Harry today, as well as his buddies.  For my part, I’m just socked that I’m only two years older than Harry.  Makes my crush on Snape that much more creepy, I guess.

• One of my favorite blogs, Pop Goes the Page by the Cotsen Children’s Library, is turning one!  Best of all, if you send them your artistic birthday well-wishes, the selected winner will receive a $150 online shopping spree at Discount School Supply.  Not half bad!  Go do that thing.

• Credit Martha Parravano for creating a quite incisive interpretation of the Caldecott winners and near misses of 2013.  Lots to chew on, even if you don’t always agree.

• Now here is what we call guts.  Allan Ahlberg has declined the inaugural Booktrust Best Book Awards’ Lifetime Achievement Award because it is sponsored by Amazon.  You, sir, are my hero of the day.  Thanks to Alison Morris for the link.

• There were many reasons to attend this last ALA Conference in Vegas.  But three in particular are standing out for me today.  Reason #1: I could have seen Mo Willems and Daniel Handler sharing a stage at the same time.  THAT would be an event well worth witnessing.  Can I get a witness who was there?.  Reason #2: Starr LaTronica’s Shoes.

Need I say more?

Reason #3: This blog got a little shout out in Brian Floca’s Caldecott speech.  See if you can spot where it is (hint: it’s not by name).

• Anywho, I wasn’t able to attend that conference because of my pregnancy.  I also wasn’t able to attend this conference: The Second Annual 21st Century Nonfiction Conference.  Doggone it.  Held in lovely New Paltz, NY, I was pleased at least to see that my co-worker Amie Wright kicked butt and took names.  You can read a great write-up of the event here.

• I know you have a lot going on today, but if you enjoyed watching Faerie Tale Theater with Shelley Duvall back in the day then maybe you’ll appreciate this catchy little ditty made out of all the times the charming host said, “Hello, I’m Shelley Duvall.”  I don’t do ringtones but if I had to choose one . . .

• I can still remember it like it was yesterday.  Way back in 1992 I listened to a librarian read Sukey and the Mermaid by Robert D. San Souci (illustrated by Brian Pinkney) to a group of kids.  It was remarkable at the time, not just because it featured a black mermaid, but because it featured a mermaid at all.  I don’t know if you read my recent review of The Mermaid and the Shoe, but mermaid picture books aren’t exactly prevalent.  Well over at Latin@s in Kid Lit, Cindy L. Rodriguez has written the post Diversity Needed Under the Sea: Not All Mermaids Have Blond Hair and Blue Eyes.  Their focus is mostly YA, but it’s interesting to note that aside from Sukey, picture book mermaids of color are few and far between.  Fairies of color have it even worse.

• Sadness.

• More sadness (those folks were good to me too).

• Alternate title for this Guardian article: Has the Carnegie medal lost its way?  Some folks will get the reference.

• Get out your fightin’ gloves.  SLJ has just launched the Up for Debate series.  Them’s fighting words (literally).

• Daily Image:

Trying to figure out how we could pull this off in the States.  Over in Britain the Story Museum hired a photographer for its 26 Characters exhibition.  His mission?  To photograph famous authors as their favorite literary characters.  The image of Neil Gaiman as Badger from Wind in the Willows circulated a couple months ago.  Now more pics have been revealed and they are lovely.  Here are two . .

Philip Pullman as Long John Silver

Michael Morpurgo as Magwitch from Great Expectations

Naturally I’m trying to figure out how we could do this here.  The Eric Carle Museum could host the images (we’d have a brief debate over whether or not photography is technically “illustration” and then decide ultimately that it was).  Or maybe the Rich Michelson Gallery could do it.  Then it’s a question of finding a photographer and picking the authors.  As for the costumes and make-up, Britain utilized The Royal Shakespeare Company.  Can’t really top that but it would be nice to get professionals involved. Pondering, pondering, pondering . . .

So as I may have mentioned there’s a l’il ole book of mine coming out on August 5th by the name of Wild Things: Acts of Mischief in Children’s Literature.  Co-written with Jules Danielson (of Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast) and the late great Peter Sieruta (Collecting Children’s Books) it’s a peek into the stories behind the stories we all love.

How does one properly celebrate such a book?  By showing you the cutting room floor, of course.

Consider this a Director’s Cut look at the book.  Together Jules and I have concocted a nifty little website where you can read our reviews and blurbs, check out our tour dates, and other nifty things.  The real lure, however, is our blog on the site.

Together, for every day until our release date, Jules and I will reveal a story that didn’t make it into our book.  Ever wondered how Charles Dickens really felt about Hans Christian Andersen?  What are some of the worst school visits authors and illustrators in the children’s literary business have ever experienced?  And what are some of the Newbery and Caldecott Award dinner stories you haven’t heard?

Today we lift off with a preliminary post, but stay tuned ladies and gents!  It’s just gonna get better and better as we go.

Enjoy!

• So what’s the talk of the town these days?  Well the relative brouhaha came about at the end of last week when ReedPOP announced a panel of “the world’s biggest children’s authors” in the field.  That the luminaries in question were all white and male struck a raw nerve with a whole slew of folks.  Since that moment there’s been some fancy footwork and a promise to add some additional folks.   The solution is ludicrously simple, of course.  If the gist of the grouping is to have the top selling authors of books for kids then just grab Rachel Renee Russell and ask her to join.  The fact that she isn’t tapped for more panels has always struck me as odd.

• Okay!  So I swear to you, it’s going to happen.  Wild Things: Acts of Mischief in Children’s Literature is on the roster and slated for release in August.  Don’t believe me?  Then believe the world’s most beautiful press release, replete with a Q&A between myself and my co-writer Julie Danielson.  Candlewick, man.  Even their press releases are gorgeous.

• I am not immune to professional jealousy.  Wish that I was.  Fortunately, most of the time I am able to convert the green eyed monster into genuine fascination and interest (much, I’m sure, to the discomfort of the people I’m suddenly obsessed with).  Take this week’s example: One Margaret H. Willison.  I was listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour, a podcast I like quite a lot in spite of the fact that they can’t tell YA fiction from MG.  Anywho, they have a children’s librarian that they love very very much.  Ms. Willison has been a longstanding fan of theirs and Stephen Thompson mentioned that she was on track to be the next Nancy Pearl of children’s books.  Oh aye!  So I checked her out and she did a NPR piece called 3 Bedtime Picture Books That Won’t Put Parents to Sleep.  Excellent choices one and all.  She’s one to watch then.

• This news made me inordinately happy recently.  The Multnomah County Library System and the Seattle Public Library went head to head in an all out reference battle.  The question?  Who could answer the most book recommendation queries via Twitter?  And I am happy to report that Portland (where the Multnomah system lives) won all the way!!  Way to go, you literary denizens you.  Thanks to AL Direct for the link.

• Recently a new library opened up at NYU.  Called the Georgiou Library and Resource Center for Children and Literature the site will do a lot of outreach to the community as well as operate as a research facility.  Its librarian is the multi-talented Kendra Tyson and the collection, “contains several categories of children’s literature, including counting books, fairy tales, poetry, biography, and holiday books. It also houses Mother Goose books geared for African, Chinese and Russian audiences, bi-lingual counting books, and the Metropolitan Museum’s of Art’s Museum ABC (Little Brown, 2002), which portrays a range of world cultures through its collections.”  I was lucky enough to attend a small event for the library recently and in the course realized that there are other similar collections out there that I just don’t know well enough.  Like the Cotsen Children’s Library, for example.  Some of you will nod sagely and murmur “of course” when I mention it but to me I was ashamed to discover that not only are they the Princeton children’s library but they maintain these FABULOUS blogs!  The Cotsen Children’s Library blog is updated quite regularly and the Pop Goes the Page is maybe the best arts & crafts for library programs blog I’ve witnessed in a very long time.  They’ve also archived a variety of different interviews with children’s authors called The Bibliofiles that are well worth finding too.  Man.  That would be the life working at either of these libraries, am I right?

• Good old, ShelfTalker.  I love it when they list a whole slew of their favorite first lines of 2014.  And in the process I discovered at least one book that I hadn’t even heard of until I read its line.  Bonus!

• You know what?  Fair play to Mackenzie Kruvant.  There she is at Buzzfeed, slaving away with such pieces as “Which Sex And The City Guy Is Your Soulmate?” but often she’ll come up with a really good children’s literature piece.  Example: 15 Adorable Children’s Books For Your Little Architect .  Perhaps she got some help from a librarian somewhere to write it, but if she didn’t then it’s a pretty darn good encapsulation of what’s out there.  Well played, madam.

NYPL likes it when I blog on their site from time to time, so I’ll tend to do pieces I wouldn’t normally do here.  Case in point, recently I did the post Make ‘Em Laugh: Gut-Busting Picture Books That’ll Have ‘Em Rolling in the Aisles.  I really try to give attention to funny picture books when they come out.  And though I didn’t mention them in the piece (I only included stuff you could currently check out of the collection) if I were to put that post here I’d be sure to include the 2014 titles Big Bad Bubble by Adam Rubin, illustrated by Daniel Salmieri (without a doubt their best work to date) and Monkey Goes Bananas by C. P. Bloom and Peter Raymundo.  Both books are danged funny.  If I make a funny picture book prize this year, they will both be up for serious contention.

A friend on mine on Facebook mentioned that he had a 12-year-old in his branch who was interested in Socialism and did we have any books to recommend?  Naturally my thoughts turned to Little Rebels, but that’s a lot of picture books (many of which are out of print).  Fortunately marxists.org (!) has a booklist of its own.  Say they, “This is the start of an ongoing broad bibliography of children’s literature for MIA with title first, divided by age range and fiction/non-fiction. Some of these books were written to be expressly radical, and others need a stretch to find political implications. Compiled by Sally Ryan.”  Cool.

• Hey, remember when I mentioned that I’d interviewed Deborah Underwood about her amazing Bad Bye, Good Bye?  I got a little confused about when it was going to post but now, happily, it is up up up!  If you ever wanted to know the ins and outs of writing a rhyming picture book, you are indeed lucky.

• Got a little confused with the headline on this one, but as it happens it has absolutely nothing to do with the bookstore Books of Wonder here in NYC.  No, this little article is instead about a cool new collection within the Toronto Public Library.  Its full name is “The IBBY Collection of Books for Young People with Disabilities”.  Say they: “As its official name indicates, this collection comes from IBBY, the International Board on Books for Young People. The IBBY collection features more than 3000 multilingual books in sign language, Braille, Blissymbolics, as well as cloth and tactile books and other formats — all for and about children and teens with disabilities.”  I’m downright envious again.  Thanks to Deb Pearson for the link.

• In the world of book awards we’ve two to consider today.  The Eisner Award nominations came out and I see a lot of familiar faces in the youth category.  Meanwhile the Minnesota Book Awards were announced and you might be surprised to discover some of the winners.

• Whenever someone asks adult authors to name the children’s books that inspired them there is a danger of the books being the same old, same old.  That’s part of the reason I like this post from World Literature Today.  Yes, there are some rote choices, but there are also some really obscure titles. The Summerfolk by Doris Burn? The Three Fat Men by Yuri Olesha? Tim and the Hidden People by Sheila K. McKullagh?!?  Wowza.  Thanks to Mom for the link.

• Daily Image:

Good news, poppins.  Today you have a chance to buy cool things and be a good person in the process.  And just in time for my incipient birthday too!  The site Out of Print has been killing it in the library-chic neighborhood.  Observe the cool things that there are to buy:

Mom, Kate, I will happily take that iPhone case.  Wouldn’t say no to any of those baby onesies, for that matter.

Now, how does buying this stuff make you a good person?  Well, it seems the site is THIS WEEK (it is National Library Week after all – my workplace got me a mug and everything) giving money to the following school if you buy stuff.  Voila:

P.S. 244 (The Active Learning Elementary School “TALES”) is an early childhood public school (Pre-K to 3rd grade) located in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens, New York. The majority of students do not speak English at home and qualify for subsidized meal plans, yet at TALES they thrive. A model for public schools at both the national and state level, P.S. 244 has been recognized for its focus on health and nutrition and ranks among the healthiest schools in the country. In 2013, P.S. 244 also ranked 11th in the state for test scores and has been heralded for its innovative curriculum and extremely hard working staff.

With all of these strengths, they also have challenges. The school’s current library has no formal checkout system and relies on volunteer staff. The result? The space serves more like a reading room than a true library. Students aren’t able to check out and read these books at home, families miss out on sharing the joy of reading with their kids and the school is unable to implement a summer reading program to enhance student reading skills during off-school periods.

Help us to give this school and its students the library they deserve. During National Library Week (April 13-20), we are donating a portion of our sales to purchase and implement a scanning system for P.S. 244 and to train staff to manage it. We will post updates after the donation and share stories from students and teachers about the impact of this new system.

Many thanks to Ms. Marci for the links!

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.