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On my last birthday I got a present from Kelly Herold that was as follows:

Kelly Herold is a goddess amongst mortal women.

With such supremely wonderful objects available in the world, it's always a little shocking to me when someone doesn't hold with the whole Triumvirate of Mediocrity (copyright Jane Yolen). Take, as your example, this particularly painful episode in the life of one of our own. Oh, Alkelda. My heart goes out to you, honey.

All right. I've no time to go about talking at length on a bunch of separate posts. It's Smush Everything Into a Single Posting Day here at The Fusion, so buckle up tight, hang on by the seat of your pants, and create some unfortunate mixed metaphors in your spare time.

I don't know why I'm leading with this but let's just dedicate it to you fans of modernism in children's books, shall we? The blog Print & Pattern recently had a Kids Week, and you're all invited to coo over the sheer variety and general beauty of the selections. Kidlit Connection: I saw a Lola and Charlie selection nestled in there somewhere. Go wild.

They say you never forget your twelfth. Midwestern Lodestar, remembered for sweeping the MotherReader 48-Hour Book Challenge, has hosted the 12th Carnival of Children's Literature. By all accounts, this is without a doubt the largest Carnival to be hosted yet. If it were a pig it would win first prize in the Hog Contest. Well done.

For those of us who prefer to wear their words alongside reading and eating them, WATAT (which is to say, Adrienne) has compiled a list of useful literary tee sites on which you may buy various forms of apparel.

Posits J.L. Bell at Oz and Ends, would it be a good idea to postdate awards like the Newbery? Think about it. The Secret of the Andes tromped Charlotte's Web, but history has had the last laugh. Why not reward such a morbid chuckle? And while we DO have the Phoenix Awards, they don't really give a view to the best book of a single given year. They jump around a bit. By the end of Bell's piece, he suggests a particularly interesting solution that I'm all for. Go give it a peek.

From Oz to Alice then. Monica Edinger recently linked to this fascinating little article entitled, Alice's New Adventures: The story of how Lewis Carroll's masterpiece came to the Soviet Union is almost as strange as the book itself. I was particularly taken with this quote: " 'There's one important point about Carroll's books . . . Traditional fairy tales of that era -- be they British, German or Russian -- were rather fearsome, and the children in them were often afraid. 'Alice' is different; there's no fear in it. I think that's very important.' " That's one reason so many people like Alice. As a long forgotten commentator once pointed out, in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy is forever moaning about going home. The same cannot be said for plucky Alice.

From Oz to Alice and now to Pooh bear. I'm surprised no one has actually gone and created a kidlit blog with Pooh influences quite yet. I suppose that falls to me, eh? Ah well. The Brookeshelf has come up with an amazing link to Pathology in the Hundred Acre Wood: a neurodevelopmental perspective on A.A. Milne. This is the kind of link only the wife of a medical student would have access to. The piece itself really defies any kind of description.

Not only that, Ms. Brooke also had a piece on The Charlotte M. Smith Collection of Miniature Books that I was very taken with. As this posted last Thursday I'm sure you all already saw it (as, I am sure, you read this blog as regularly as possible, yes?), but I thought I'd link you to it just in case.

That's all I have on my plate. So much faster this way! Maybe I should make this a regular thing.

FYI, sweetcheeks. The official image of the Lucky Scrotum Kerfuffle is now available for purchase through a Cafepress website originated by The Disco Mermaids. I was a little sad to see that spaghetti strap shirts aren't offered (those of us without breasts are very partial to that form of clothing) but at least there's something called the Newbery Jewels Classic Thong. That, in and of itself, is amusing enough for a gander. All money is going to the Friends of the San Luis Obispo Public Library which will allow you to look snazzy AND gain some sweet sweet karma on the side. Slick.

So, y'know, I finished the latest Percy Jackson novel the other day, and it was fine n' all. So then I see this tie-in tee on author Rick Riordan's site and I'm mightily amused.


It's not immediately apparent, but if you read The Titan's Curse then you know that the Hunters of Artemis eschew the company of men. The fact that this will be worn by countless eight-year-old boys is especially interesting to me.

Riordan's tour dates will be posted soon but aren't up yet. And check out the Camp Half-Blood in Austin that's going on. You still have a chance to lob your tykes Texas-ward if you want. Sessions One and Two are closed, but Three still has some space. Why has no one ever done this with Harry Potter? Talk about living the dream.

I am a bit of a fan of Carol Lay. Her work would appear in books of women cartoonists, and I thought her very fine and witty. She has, however, decided to weigh in on the Lucky debate with a scrotum-related comic strip and . . . well, check it out for yourself.

Yeah, I'm with Kelly on this one. Aside from the basic assumption made that "librarians everywhere erupted with righteous indignation" (does no one remember that librarians wrote and picked the book for the Newbery too?) it just gets its stereotypes all mixed up. We like bags now? Maybe totes, but even that's pushing it. I do, however, appreciate the image of the dog. Someone turn THAT into a t-shirt.

Thanks to Kelly at Big A little a for the link.

Ordering starts here.

I've always adored the Proud to Be a Radical Militant Librarian t-shirts out there. And I've been similarly amused when looking over Leila Roy's collection of crazy tees. Along the same lines then is the T-List. The inclination then is to take something that looks like this:


And (since you can customize them) fill in the names of children's authors instead. I'd love to do all the great authors I discovered in 2006 (Frances Hardinge, Laura Amy Schlitz, Jennifer Roy, Mike Lupica, and Jenny Han maybe) and then walk around with their names on my chest. Be kinda weird if I ran into them, though. Hm.

Via BB-Blog.