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April 22, 2008 by Betsy Bird

Fusenews: Here Fishy Fishy Fishy Fishy (20 Points If You Get the Reference)

April 22, 2008 by Betsy Bird   9 comments

  • I’m thrilled that Gawker picked up on the Ziggy link I posted the other day.  Maybe I had nothing to do with it, but I’m going to take personal pride in the posting because I can’t imagine that it’s a mere coincidence that they used the exact same photo that I did.  Maybe it is just the luck of the draw, but I’m going to pretend that it’s all me, baby.

  • Adrienne over at What Adrienne Thinks About That (or just WATAT for short) knows my deep and abiding love (love, in this particular case, equating the same kind of emotion one tends to feel for a tick embedded in a posterior) for Rainbow Fish.  So she sent me this picture from the Toledo Public Library.



Apparently aside from the big ole advertisement for the book (how many displays know to include publisher information?) the library itself is very awesome.  I was trying to think of another famous fishy to include with one’s tank.  Swimmy might be cool, but it would be mighty difficult to simulate the cover of the book in a sufficiently satisfying manner.  Color me stumped then.  Iconic fish are not as common as you might hope.


  • Want a great list of 2008 children’s books?  Well, I just stumbled on the Wake County Public Libraries Eva Perry Mock Newbery Book Club and the selections I’ve found there have been pretty impressive.  There are plenty of titles mentioned that I’d not even heard of until now.  Things like Dragon’s Child by Laurence Yep and March Toward the Thunder by Joseph Bruchac.  If you’re trying to figure out what to read next, consider giving it a glance.


Comic Con released a veritable floodgate of news.  In brief here are some of the highlights.

  • Ender’s Game as a comic?  Seems fairly logical to me.  Wonder if they’ll include the penis scenes.  Survey says: probably not.  Speaking of Ender, check out this song about Ender going to battle school.  Just click on the song called The Space Out . Thanks to bookshelves of doom for the link.

  • From Cynopsis Kids : "News out of the New York Comic-Con is that the third Narnia movie, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader , will begin filming this October 2008, per ComingSoon.net .  Filming on the movie has had several different start dates and thus release dates, and is currently scheduled for release May 7, 2010.  No official news from Disney if there will be any further movie adaptations of The Chronicles of Narnia books, though the rumors abound."

  • I was intrigued by a recent Oz and Ends piece on Virginia Lee Burton .  Bell notes that he much prefers Burton’s The Little House to her better known Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel .  Gotta say, I’m with Bell on this one.  Nothing against good old Mike, but there’s a weird depression at the heart of The Little House that always appealed to me.  Plus it sort of gives you a sense of how cities are born.

  • Kelly Herold over at Big A little a zeroed in on the Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book Award given out to books written and illustrated by Canadians.  You may recognize a couple familiar faces here and there.  I find it interesting that they’re claiming Curtis as a Canadian.  As I recall he lives there but maintains his American citizenship. 

Picture Book:

  • Scaredy Squirrel Makes a Friend , by Melanie Watt

  • Grumpy Bird , by Jeremy Tankard

  • The Aunts Come Marching , by Bill Richardson and illustrated by Cynthia Nugent

  • The Boy from the Sun , by Duncan Weller

  • The Painted Circus: P.T. Vermin Presents a Mesmerizing Menagerie of Trickery and Illusion Guaranteed to Beguile and Bamboozle the Beholder , by Wallace Edwards

MG/YA

  • Dancing Through the Snow , by Jean Little

  • Darkwing , by Kenneth Oppel

  • Elijah of Buxton, by Christopher Paul Curtis

  • A Perfect Gentle Knight , by Kit Pearson

  • Rex Zero, King of Nothing , by Tim Wynne-Jones


  • The other day I was invited to a lunch with David Macaulay to celebrate the upcoming Fall release of his cool new book.  Ron Hogan at Galleycat was also there and I admit that I was waiting to say anything until Ron did.  But now there’s a lovely post up called Creating a Book Jacket Out of Spare Body Parts (couldn’t have put it better myself) and so I shall refer you to Ron’s summary.  I shall also steal Ron’s clever before and after pictures of what the David Macaulay book The Way We Work looked like in various stages.  The one on the left is before.  The one on the right is after.

Filed under: Fusenews

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About Betsy Bird

Betsy Bird is currently the Collection Development Manager of the Evanston Public Library system and a former Materials Specialist for New York Public Library. She has served on Newbery, written for Kirkus, and has done other lovely little things that she'd love to tell you about but that she's sure you'd find more interesting to hear of in person. Her opinions are her own and do not reflect those of EPL, SLJ, or any of the other acronyms you might be able to name. Follow her on BlueSky at: @fuse8.bsky.social

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About Betsy Bird

Betsy Bird is currently the Collection Development Manager of the Evanston Public Library system and a former Materials Specialist for New York Public Library. She has served on Newbery, written for Kirkus, and has done other lovely little things that she'd love to tell you about but that she's sure you'd find more interesting to hear of in person. Her opinions are her own and do not reflect those of EPL, SLJ, or any of the other acronyms you might be able to name. Follow her on BlueSky at: @fuse8.bsky.social

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. anony-mouse says

    April 22, 2008 at 6:01 am

    Here’s some fish for the tank…Moby Dick, Jaws, Flipper, Free Willy.

  2. SamR says

    April 22, 2008 at 6:23 am

    On a Swimmy theme, could we have a lot of guppies and one big predator fish in the tank so kids can see the gruesome deaths of Swimmy’s brothers and sisters just like in the book?

  3. rams says

    April 22, 2008 at 7:36 am

    You’re not calling loud enough, Bert. (3 points!)

  4. CynthiaC says

    April 22, 2008 at 7:49 am

    There’s always Arlene Sardine…

  5. Fuse #8 says

    April 22, 2008 at 8:33 am

    Mom wins the points with the Sesame Street answer. I have this theory that the contemporary human adoration for horror films starts young, and probably with fish tanks. I have distinct memories of discovering beloved fish eaten in their prime by their larger fellows. You walk over to a tank hoping to be soothed and instead you get an eyeful of first-hand cannibalism.

  6. Ms. Martha says

    April 22, 2008 at 2:00 pm

    The Eva Perry Mock Newbery Book Club thanks you!! These middle school kids read hard all year to come up with their mock Newbery Award in Jan. We invite you to comment on titles you have read as well.

  7. Brooke says

    April 22, 2008 at 5:24 pm

    Perhaps the Schwartz award is nominating Elijah of Buxton because it is set in Canada, if not by a Canadian author? Hmmm.

  8. adrienne says

    April 22, 2008 at 8:15 pm

    I have this very librarianish distrust of fish tanks in libraries. I get that they’re pretty, but everyone who has watched movies knows that big aquariums only exist to get smashed and make a big mess. I’d rather invest in a nice piece of art or something.

  9. WendieO says

    April 22, 2008 at 8:51 pm

    Brooke, Actually Christopher Paul Curtis and his family now live in Canada – so he qualifies as a Canadian author. —- WendieO, another librarian who doesn’t have a fishtank in her children’s room, mainly because I would be the one who would have to clean it out every week.

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