Fusenews: Whence the Dried Dribble o’ News?

If you were to take a trip to the Donnell Library today in the hopes of seeing the Central Children’s Room of New York Public Library, you would find yourself disappointed.  For you see, the room is closed . . .  (dramatic music builds) . . . . FOR-EV-AH . . . . until its new location opens up.

• I begin with the most important news.  Every year the children’s literary and YA literary bloggers gather together for the Kidlit Bloggers Conference.  And by "every year" I mean "last year and this year".  And by "this year" I mean that Laini Taylor and Jone MacCulloch have begun to organize the event.  The 2008 Kidlit Bloggers Conference will be held in Portland, Oregon on Saturday, September 27th with events on the Friday before and the Sunday after.  If you blog about children’s or YA literature in any way, shape, or form you should come on down and check it out.  Last year’s was a bit of a blast.  I walked in not knowing what to expect and found myself in a very professional group learning about topics that had probably never been covered in this manner in a conference before.  For more info, check out the handy dandy blog Laini and Jone have put together and leave a comment saying whether or not you’ll attend.  You can bet that I’ll be coming by.

• Now I guess you guys all knew about this already, but Scholastic will be rereleasing the first Harry Potter book in time for the 10th anniversary of its publication.  They’re doing a new cover too (which you can examine closely on the Scholastic site).  My husband’s response to the new jacket?  "It looks kinda girly. Not like an action book."  I like it myself.  My favorite covers tend to highlight scenes that other people wouldn’t think to illustrate (though I remain firmly baffled by Britain’s scene selection for the Deathly Hallows jacket).

• Retouched children’s literary covers are nothing new.  And when I saw this picture book turned into My First Rave (love that shirtless kid), I wasn’t particularly surprised. What is a little unusual, however, is that somebody somewhere took the time to also stick a faux Newbery Medal on the book’s cover.  Granted, it should have been a Caldecott, but I find it fascinating that somebody somewhere took the time to remember that there is a book award out there for children’s literature, found it, Photoshopped it, and stuck it front and center.  And no, rest assured that whatever this book originally was, it did not actually win this award.  Passing strange.  Thanks to Ellen Greene for the link.

There was a nice article on Brenda Bowen and the comics in her Bowen Press in Publishers Weekly recently.  What I loved though was the accompanying picture.  Aw. How cute is this picture of a cartoonified Brenda Bowen by J.P. Coovert?

• Cynopsis Kids has been collecting its usual movie and television news.  Check out these two news items, via their site:

• Though its website is always late with news of this sort, I just learned on the child_lit listserv that the newest Phoenix Award has just been given out.  The Phoenix Award (one of my favorites) is given out yearly by the Children’s Literature Association.  As they describe it on their site, "The award, given to a book originally published in the English language, is intended to recognize books of high literary merit. The Phoenix Award is named after the fabled bird who rose from its ashes with renewed life and beauty. Phoenix books also rise from the ashes of neglect and obscurity and once again touch the imaginations and enrich the lives of those who read them."  So basically its for great children’s books that didn’t win a lot of big awards and might otherwise lapse into obscurity.  For a while there I was reading all the Phoenix Awards I could find.  I enjoyed Mollie Hunter’s A Sound of Chariots, Jane Gardam’s A Long Way from Verona, and Peter Dickinson’s The Seventh Raven.  This year Dickinson has won himself another Phoenix with the far better known Eva.  Such a great book.  I’m every which way pleased.

• Daily Image:

This Memorial Day Week-end my husband and I took a trip to IKEA to get another bookcase (bringing our total to an ungodly, un-New York seven).  Had I seen this little item waiting for me, however, I might have been inclined to take it home instead:

Thanks to Boing Boing for the link.

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