Fusenews: Blog Strategery (misspelling intentional)

• Very sad news.  It seems that not long after my post praising the animated version of The Brave Little Toaster the author of the original book, Tom Disch, committed suicide this past July 4th.  Making Light has more information.

• Roger calls this a picture book for adults.  All I could think was, "This is from the guy who gave us The Police Cloud?"  Seriously, this is great.  Wrap it up in a paper format and I’ll be first in line to buy. Thanks to Read Roger for the link.

• Philip Reeve says that all Englishmen represent one of the four characters in The Wind in the Willows and that he is Mole.  If what he says is true, what American book contains four characters that represent all Yankee women?  I suppose an American equivalent which would be… um… hm. This will stand some thought.  Suggestions are welcome.  Thanks to bookshelves of doom for the link.

• Clearly I’m catching up on all my Leila Roy reading.  Whoocheemama, it’s been a long time.  Look what else she found!  It’s an entire livejournal community dedicated to writing in the margins of books.

• I’ve stayed mum, to some extent, over the Newbery/Caldecott acceptance speeches.  Pretty much this is because they were the best speeches ever concocted by man, woman, or small toothy beastie.  I do not kid.  I haven’t the talent for it.  And my silence on the topic (I had such lovely seats!) is also due to the fact that I have some pictures from the event that I’d like to share with you in one fell swoop.  Maybe tomorrow.  In any case, I’m reading Marc Aronson’s recap (Judy Freeman, I kiss your tiny feet) and my eye alights on a comment by Scholastic p.r. guru John Mason.  He says, "Mark, you are right that ‘seeing is believing’ and the Weston Woods CD set of recordings of the speeches contains a bonus DVD with Brian Selznick’s visual presentation. So Weston Woods, like Horn Book, will give people the full experience of the speech."  For half a second there I thought that Mr. Mason meant a video recording of the evening.  But no, he was just referring to the cool CD/DVDs we received with our dinner that had the speeches pre-recorded.  So I guess I have to ask: Does anyone know if there was an official recording of the evening made?  And, if not, did anyone create a bootleg?  Inquiring minds want to know.

• No one can call me particularly observant. I shudder to recall how long it took me to notice the piano my family once placed in the living room. So it took me a while to notice that the nice Omnivoracious blog that kept linking to me was, of all critters, an Amazon blog.  Huh!  Now, thanks to Children’s Illustration, I can read about their quote unquote blog strategy.  Fun term!  I wonder what my blog strategy is.  Must run something along the lines of "do not misspell the word ‘separate’ two times in two days."  That’s a strategy I can deal with.

• Not only am I not observant, but I’m also behind the times.  I like to take note of cool publishing blogs, particularly those of small publishers that are worth keeping an eye on.  Somehow in my travels I missed the Stone Arch Books Blog of Capstone Publishing.  A small publishing house based out of Minneapolis (woot!) they’re fairly regular at posting and have been doing so since January.  Nice to see.

• Daily Image:

Aw. Little Boo and Baa dolls from Sweden.  Are you guys familiar with the Boo and Baa books?  Simply adorable.  The site that sells these also appears to sell Pippi Longstocking dolls and Linnea from Linnea in Monet’s Garden. 

Thanks to Children’s Illustration for the link.

Filed under: Fusenews