Fusenews: Ask Not For Whom the Librarian Shushes (hint: She shushes for thee)
Happy Independence Day you fellow members of a profession that gets National Holidays off. It always takes me a couple days to decompress after jaunting about the country. But finally I’m able to do a little Fusenews. It’s probably a couple days behind schedule, but you get what you pay for.
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You may have heard me jibber jabber in the past about this lady by the name of Anne Carroll Moore. Just about the great grandmommy of all children’s librarianship in America, she was. Very influential New York lady too. Her opinions carried enormous weight (though, as Leonard Marcus’s The Minders of Make-Believe will show, there were some titles she disliked that are still with us today). Recently I reviewed that same Marcus title and thought it a shame that I had missed the golden opportunity to name my blog The Third Owl. Moore had a review column called The Three Owls wherein one owl represented the author, one the illustrator, and the third the critic. I was unaware of the connection between Ms. Moore and the five owls that inspired the quarterly children’s literature publication of the same name. Ms. sdn, however, was kind enough to send me this link. Scroll down and read the About Us section. It all ties together.
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Free books anyone? I only ask because INK (a.k.a Interesting Nonfiction for Kids) is doing a super dooper whammy primo book blast giveaway. Say they: "To support the children’s nonfiction community, our fifteen published authors have each agreed to DONATE A SIGNED COPY OF ONE OF THEIR BOOKS. That’s FIFTEEN books all to ONE LUCKY WINNER." Sounds like a good deal to me. The authors aren’t rinky dink either. Those teachers amongst you might want to take a gander at the rules and then submit like mad.
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I’ve been interviewed in two different places recently. Lord knows why anyone would want to hear me blather about myself, but in case you’re feeling mildly masochistic, there are two lovely sites you should check out in some way. The first talk appeared on the Class of 2K8 blog, wherein the site’s creators found an impressive array of signs featuring the word "Fuse". It’s a useful interview for anyone who has ever wondered why I named the site A Fuse #8 Production and not, say, The Third Owl (per my previous paragraphs). The second interview is at Imaginary Blog alongside the luminaries Cynthia Leitich Smith of Cynsations and the 7-Imp
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And speaking of Ms. Hardinge (author of one of my favorite novels, Fly By Night), there’s just the loveliest interview with her at the Publishers’ Weekly site. Ostensibly the interview is to promote her newest title Well Witched (I have not been hearing enough BUZZ about this book, people!), but it’s a fun series of questions and answers in any case.
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A while ago I was doing some freelance work for Scholastic’s textbook division (I’m sure there’s a better name for it). While there I worked with one Sandhya Nankani, a clever woman who happens to run the blog Literary Safari. I prefer not to cover YA news, but Sandhya has an interview up with author Shenaaz Nanji, author of the YA novel Child of Dandelions. Should you be so inclined, it is certainly worth your time.
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The Kane/Miller blog recently posted the Long Beach Public Library’s 1907 Guide for Female Librarians. I could probably keep from dying my hair or dressing in bright colors (this is New York, after all), but when I got to the rule that says, "Do not loiter around ice cream shops," I knew I was sunk. Thank God I was born around 70 years later. There’s a bullet missed!
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From Cynopsis Kids, and I quote:
"Well, tickets went on sale for the musical version of Little House on the Prairie last Friday at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, setting a new one-day record for the noted legit theater selling 5,461 tickets. And internet ticket sales didn’t begin until the next day. The previous record holder was the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2007 production King Lear starring Sir Ian McKellen with 3,639 tickets in a single day. . . Melissa Gilbert, who starred as Laura (aka Half Pint) in the Little House on the Prairie TV series, will play Ma in the production."
And even more exciting:
"The Thurber House Residency in Children’s Literature has named Alan Silberberg, the kid’s TV writer and author of the book Pond Scum, as its 2008 Children’s Writer-in-Residency."
That’s our boy! Give ’em hell, Alan!
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These kids with their ebooks and their fancy schmancy virtual texts. Why when I was a girl, we had to carry forty books that were 100 pounds each uphill in the snow BOTH WAYS to school. Kids today. They don’t know how good they have it. The recent Galleycat piece on Ingram Digital’s announcement that there has been an e-textbook surge did my heart good. I admit to being enough of a luddite to think that if kids associate e-texts with homework, they’ll then equate actual paper books with reading for fun. That’s my crazy plan anyway. Thanks to YPulse for the link.
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A compilation of plays for middle-schoolers written by big name authors and called Acting Out? I think that we’re finally beginning to see what Good Masters, Sweet Ladies hath wrought. And it’s about bloody time too. I’ve had kids and parents coming into my library for years looking for plays and monologues, finding very little aside from the periodical Plays. If Ms. Schlitz’s win can convince publishers to put their weight behind some more of the same, I’m a happy camper.
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Daily Image:
Librarian jewelry. It’s a thing. GraceAnne DeCandido recently directed my attention to these little beauties.
If you check out the entire page you’ll find one necklace that reads "LEER". I don’t speak Spanish myself and I’m enough of a nerd that I assumed it was a reference to the Monster Blood Tattoo books. Heh heh …. heh…. *sigh*
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Filed under: Fusenews
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 Horn Book, 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 Twitter: @fuseeight.
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R.J. Anderson says
I would totally buy that LEER necklace thinking the same thing.
And am I the only MBT reader with a mad crush on Sebastipole? I hope not, because it’s always so lonely to have fictional boyfriends nobody else understands. 🙂
Fuse #8 says
Oh, you’re not alone. Sebastipole’s hot. Only, I have this weird thing for nasty Licurius too. At least he’s dead, though, so I don’t have to take in the implications of what that means.
R.J. Anderson says
*holds a solemn moment of silence for Old Boxface*