Fusenews: A Snowball’s Chance

• It’s difficult to resist a post about the 25 Most Modern Libraries in the World like the one seen to the right here.  Many thanks to YPulse for the link.

• Neat!  I made it onto the Kidlit Conference Jeopardy list!  Remember to register for the upcoming children’s literary blogger conference if you haven’t already.

• Becky Laney over at Becky’s Book Reviews recently reviewed that most interesting of Narnia titles The Last Battle.  Ms. Laney, I am pleased to see, shares my "hubba wha?" reaction to the fate of Susan in that book.  Man, it was all I could do not to yell at the screen during the film of Prince Caspian as Susan prepared to leave Narnia, "Don’t do it, girl!  You’ll never get back!  Save yourself!"  Literally.  Ha ha.

• Well now that’s a good idea.  Librarians take note.  Adrienne over at What Adrienne Thinks About That has done a kind of play-by-play of a storytime called What We Did for Storytime in the Park Yesterday and How It Worked Out.  In it she kind of discusses the layout of a recent storytime.  She doesn’t go into too much detail regarding what works and what doesn’t, but she’s given me an idea.  A lot of times I’ll want to shake things up in my storytime, but I’ll be fresh out of ideas.  How useful it would be if librarians posted little recaps like this one discussing the things that work and, even more importantly, what doesn’t and why.  If I knew beforehand that Little Bunny Foo Foo plays particularly well with preschoolers but not toddlers, that might save me a lot of time.  Just a thought.

Alison over at ShelfTalker has discovered a fairly odd idea on the part of British publisher TankBooks.  Books as cigarette packs.  According to the site: " Cigarette packs are iconic objects, familiar, tried and tested, and over time TankBooks will become iconic objects in their own right. The launch titles are by authors of great stature – classic stories presented in classic packaging; objects desirable for both their literary merit and their unique design. TankBooks are for people on the move, lovers of literature and connoisseurs of design. Try one and you’ll be hooked. "  Huh.  I imagine you probably couldn’t get away with this very easily in America.  Then again, I’ve suddenly had an image of an odd cigarette vending machine filled with these books.  Some teen surreptitiously sidles up to it, not noticing that the packs are indeed little books and not ciggies.  This goes beyond viral marketing.  It’s practically bacterial marketing.

• The 2008 Africana Book Award Winners have officially been announced. Ifeoma Onyefulu is the winner of the Best Book for Young Children award for Ikenna goes to Nigeria (London, Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, 2007) with an honor going to Kathleen Mariarty and Amin Amir for Wiil Waal (St. Paul, Minnesota Humanities Center/Somali Bilingual Book Project, 2007).  Marguerite Abouet and Clement Oubrerie are the winners of the Best Book for Older Readers award for Aya (Montreal, Drawn & Quarterly, 2007) and that award’s honor went to Henry Aubin for Rise of the Golden Cobra (Toronto, Annick Press, 2007) and Ishmael Beah for A Long Way Gone (New York, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007).  You can find reviews of the nominated titles online at Africa Access Review, http://www.AfricaAccessReview.org which is good since unfortunately I didn’t read or review any of these books this year.  Consarn it.  Thanks to the ALSC Blog for the link.

• I don’t report on YA.  I don’t report on YA.  I don’t report on . . . hey!  Lookie at that!  YA author Jennifer Banash got all creative with her viral marketing.  She created microblogs on Twitter for three of her book’s characters.  Now kids can be Twittered by their favorite fictional personages.  I’m impressed.  Other authors take note.  Of course, this technique would only make sense with certain kinds of books, though.  Because while I am sure there are millions of kids out there who would love to be twittered by Harry Potter or Edward Cullen, it doesn’t quite make sense within the context of the worlds in which they "live, right?  I figure that this applies to children’s and well as YA authors, so bear it in mind.  Then again, what if Edward Cullen Twittered fans as if they were Bella.  Little, Brown and Co. you may feel free to pay me haystacks of money for that idea.  Thanks to Galleycat for the link.

• Aw, man. If I had half a second in my day I would totally enter this.  Editorial Anonymous is having a Best/Worst Pitch Contest.  You can read the instructions on her site.  She’s even split the potential winners into different categories including "The Robert Munsch Citation for most dysfunctional relationship in a pitch," and "The Metaphor Prize for the kind of comparison that haunts you long after the pitch session."  Enter while you can.  Oh, and if you didn’t see EA’s recent submission on dead puppies and H-E-double hockey stick then take a gander.  It’s worth your time.  And tears.

• Daily Image:

Nothing to do with children’s literature.  I’ve just been singing it all day.  The correct Danza version, that is.

Thanks to BB-Blog for the link.  The site that created this is GraphJam.

Filed under: Fusenews