Fusenews: News and in Search of News

• Are you a midwestern library housed underwater in need of some new materials?  Know of one?  Heard of one?  Well a simply lovely author/illustrator emailed me the other day and wondered if I could keep an ear out regarding any libraries that need book donations/money.  So that is what I am doing.  My ears are open.  If you would care to fill them, I’d be mighty obliged.

• While Keira prefers not to use her blog Library Voice to let vent on peculiar interactions, I happen to love it when I hear stories of nutso patrons (that I personally don’t have to deal with).  Case in point, her most recent post on What’s the deal with all these mice?  Apparently one patron was under the distinct impression that the insidious spell cast by the likes of Babymouse and MouseGard is going to be the downfall of children everywhere.  You have to read it. 

I’ll be hornswaggled. Who knew that art director Chad Beckerman could draw this well?  Neil Gaiman can too, for that matter, but not like Chad.

• I enjoy Entertainment Weekly .  There.  I said it.  No beating about the bush for me. Well Alice at the CWIM blog looked at their recent 100 Best Books of the last 25 years, and found the ones that apply to our particular field.  And if I could find a link to the Alison Bechdel comic that was in that issue about reading for fun, I would in a heartbeat.

• Hey published author/illustrators!  Want to spend every waking hour of your life watching your Amazon rankings?  In the worst possible combination of technologies there’s something out there called Booklert that, "lets you keep track of the Amazon rank of your (or anyone else’s) books. You get an email or a tweet of the latest ranks at regular intervals. And you choose how often – anything from every hour, to once a week." I will repeat that: "every hour."  Oh, my poor darlings. Enter here a beautiful poem of man’s fleeting hours upon this globe.  Thanks to literaticat’s finger trap for the link.

• This is fun. Illustrator P.J. Lynch shows you the step-by-step process he took to create a new book cover.

• Daily Image:

When I have children, I may or may not buy them Barbies.  But if I do, I sure hope they look a little something like this:

Yup. That’s Tippi Hedren from The Birds. And yes.  She’s for sale. Thanks to Shaken & Stirred for the link.

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