Fusenews: In which I get to say “Eat it, Hans Christian Andersen” with impunity

A big thank you to the oodles of people who attended my Kidlit Drink night last evening. And an apology to those I didn’t speak to (particularly everyone at Table #2). Still, I think we can give Bookmarks a high rating for their patient let’s-deal-with-a-sudden-influx-of-20+-people staff and for naming a drink Gin and the Giant Peach.

• Ew.  Thanks to bookshelves of doom for the link.

• Also thanks to bookshelves of doom, Jules Feiffer done got himself interviewed at the AV Club.  FYI, if you ever get a chance to see his wife perform stand-up here in New York, it’s well worth the ticket price.  Nick Bruel, you know what I mean.

• Kelly at Big A little a turned me onto the fact that the Wikipedia page on the old Mr. Men series has a complete listing of all the Misters and all the Little Misses.  Said Kelly, "My inner feminist recoils from the Mr. versus Miss Characters chosen," and I cannot help but agree.  Check out some of these lady’s names: Little Miss Scatterbrain, Little Miss Dotty (also published as Little Miss Ditzy which is oh so much better), Little Miss Fickle (wha?), Little Miss Chatterbox, and the coup de grace, Little Miss Sunshine.  Sans the dead guy in the back of the van, one assumes.

• Oh, how nice.  The Millions blog has offered information the NYRB Classics list of republished children’s titles.  When our children’s books were located at the Donnell we used to get the occasional NYRB person over to look at our old titles for possible reprinting purposes.  Thanks to Shaken and Stirred for the link.

• Like Tanita Davis and her blog Finding Wonderland? Wanna see the mighty fine cover concept of her upcoming book?  Walk over here then. Purdy.  Note to Knopf: Please do not change.

• Two sites offer readers to the chance to create custom made visual entities from their blogs.  The first is Wordle, seen here with a small cloud drawn from my RSS feed:

I like that the word "whoop" is the only one easy to read. Thanks to the ALSC blog for the link.  The other one is a site that allows you to create words out of Flickr images.  This one looked the most New York to me:

Thanks to Under the Covers for the link.

• Do you remember the first time you saw a copy of A Series of Unfortunate Events?  It was one of the first books of its kind to utilize the old-timey cover technique (a style utilized by The Grimm Sisters,Spiderwick, and other series in time to come).  Man, I thought that was such a clever marketing technique.  Then I started working in a library where those books were checked out on a regular basis.  Who could have guessed that this beautiful books would end up being so friggin’ LOUSY when it came to multiple reads?  The spine cracks if you sneeze.  The words wear off after two reads.  They die fast ignoble deaths for all their initial surface beauty.  This has been a bone of mine for years.  Eventually someone is going to redesign those danged books and when they do libraries will purchase them in droves.  *cough cough* Harper Collins *cough cough*  On a related note Lisa at Under the Covers

  talks about spines that she admires/abhors, which makes for pretty fine reading. She’s the one who reminded me of the sorry Snicket state to begin with.

• Daily Image:

Eat it, Hans Christian Andersen.  You ain’t got nuthin’ on Beatrice Coron’s papercuts.

Thanks to Crooked House for the link.

Filed under: Fusenews