Fusenews: The Most Modern Library in the World, the History of Oz, and Something to Crash Your Server

• This just in (ratta tat, ratta tat, ratta tatta tatta tat) from Michell Bayuk (Marketing Director of The Children’s Book Council), "The Children’s Book Week website and Children’s Choice Book Awards voting went live this morning. We want to maximize the number of kids participating."  By criminey, so they did!  Check out those nominees for the Children’s Choice Award too.  Continuing my bafflement from yesterday, Jan Brett strikes again.  Don’t get me wrong, I love me my Brett, but is her P.R. department working overtime these days?  First she gets her own category on the Educators’ Top 100 Children’s Book list and now she’s going head-to-head with Mo Willems for best illustrator?  Jan, what is your secret?  By the way, why are there two picture books in the Grades 5-6 category and zero novels?  Most interesting.  Go on and check it out for yourself.

• Walter Minkel at The Monkey Speaks directed me to the mighty interesting piece Visiting the Most Modern Library in the World over at The Shifted Librarian.  Apparently the award goes to DOK in Delft, Holland.  It calls itself a "library concept center" which I prefer heads and tails over the American shift towards "information center".  By my definition a car dealership is technically an "information center".  DOK, on the other hand, looks positively awesome.  Check out the room containing all the romance novels.  Woah.  You’d expect a beaded curtain on that puppy.  Basically, you have to read this recap.  I, meanwhile, will be learning Dutch as fast as possible so that I can put in my transfer and start working there.  Here’s a Flickr page of images from the site.

• Weirdo vindication moment: I read Feathers by Jacqueline Woodson last year and liked it fine. Unfortunately, I put it on my To Be Reviewed shelf, left it there for a month, and when I went back to review it I couldn’t remember anything except that there was a boy in it who looked like Jesus. Well, I am happy to report, that I am not the only person suffering this memory lapse. Ha! In other news, why must I be logged in to comment on the ALSC Blog?

• This one’s going out to J.L. Bell at Oz and Ends.  My husband and I overlap quite a bit in our respective occupations.  He’s a screenwriter with connections to the comic world and I’m a librarian with connections to the book world.  Often this resident husband will find useful stuff in the comic blogosphere and alert me to it.  Trolling the comic blogs is a full time occupation after all and I just don’t have the inclination to troll it myself.  And faith and begorrah, look what the boy brought home!  It’s the natural cycle of popular fiction seen entirely through the lens of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. 

  Actually, husband o’ mine also alerted me to this interesting feature on Imdb.com. Let us say that you want to find out every single person who has ever played Alice in some filmed version of Alice in Wonderland. Well, it may not be the most perfect method, but Imdb has a "Character" option. Just type in the person you want and voila! Instant Alices. The list for Dorothy was a little more sporatic (no Wiz?) and Harry Potter was downright bizarre. The Children’s Party at the Palace? Where on earth was I for that? I think I’d remember if I saw Anthony Head (Giles, to you Buffy buffs) playing Captain Hook. Hubba hubba.

  
  In other movie news, Monica Endiger at Educating Alice has been considering classic films and sometimes their use in the classroom. Yay, Court Jester! Winner of the World’s Weirdest Use of Dwarfs in a Film. Not really insulting. Just really really weird.

• Theater news updates. Two of them and they’re both from Cynopsis Kids. Here is number one:

"Brian d’Arcy James has been cast as Shrek , in Broadway’s Shrek the Musical , based on DreamWorks Animation’s Shrek movies, which in turn is based on William Steig’s book Shrek . Directed by Jason Moore, best known for his director of Avenue Q, Shrek the Musical features music by Jeanine Tesori and book by David Lindsay-Abaire. Also joining the cast of the show are Chester Gregory II, he’ll play Donkey, and John Tartaglia as Pinocchio. The cast also includes the previously announced Sutton Foster as Princess Fiona, Christopher Sieber as Lord Farquaad and Kecia Lewis-Evans as the Dragon. Shrek the Musical opens December 14, 2008." Because, after all, why should there be only one children’s Broadway musical out during Christmastime about a nasty green guy?

• And here is item #2:

A revival of Theatreworks /USA ‘s family-targeted musical, Junie B. Jones , has opened off-Broadway at NYC’s Lucille Lortel Theatre, according to Playbill.com . Staring Jennifer Cody, the musical is based on Barbara Park’s book series of the same name. The musical features book and lyrics by Marcy Heisler and music by Zina Goldrich.

• A recent article in The Independent ran about how Charles Dickens’ descendants are fighting the Dickens Fellowship regarding the man’s legacy. Dickens’ dying wish was to have zero memorials in his name. Now all that might change. It was enough information to give Bookninja the excuse to write of the controversy "Dickens family fighting Dickens like the dickens". Well played, sir.

• And finally, I found this site RockYou.com via Becky’s Book Reviews.  Becky thought to put books into it, and I thought that sounded pretty neat.  Here then are the next ten or so novels I may or may not read.  If you have a vote one way or another one what I should look at next, comment away. 

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