Fusenews: Sticky Fishies and Worthy Candidates

• You know, at heart I’m a company woman.  And my company of choice is New York Public Library.  A good place to work and it contains some fabulousness in other quarters as well.  For example, you have perhaps heard of a fellow by the name of Jeff Kinney, yes?  Wrote a little something called Diary of a Wimpy Kid, doncha know.  Well it just so happens that there will be a virtual author chat with the fellow on August 19 at 3 p.m. at our summer reading website www.summerreading.org.  I’ll remind you closer to the date, but it would be splendid if you could "attend".  Postively ducky!

• Oh, most glorious of glories.  Roger Sutton has discovered the motherload.  Tuck Everlasting fan fiction.  He found it while trolling FanFiction.net and what a treasure trove of fan fiction titles you can find there!  21 Johnny Tremain titles.  164 Holes.  And my personal favorite, 22 for Goodnight, Mr. Tom.  Wow.

• Wowie zowie!  Looks like the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement is going this year to none other than Leo & Diane Dillon and Patricia McKillip! Thanks to so much to bookshelves of doom for the news.

• It takes a particularly keen mind to create a new sport out of nothing.  The Vulture Blog recently had the piece up called Calvinball, Quidditch, and Other Fictional Sports We Wish the Olympics Would Adopt.  Not a bad idea for an article, really.  In addition to Calvinball and Quidditch they also mention croquet as played in Alice in Wonderland.  I would also like to suggest the game of Stickyfish from The True Meaning of Smekday, as explained by Adam Rex and his fans here.  Someone needs to write a Wikipedia entry on it, methinks.  Thanks to Educating Alice for the link.

• Former co-worker Warren Truitt is attempting a short review of a hip kids’ album a day for the month of August over at his site Kids’ Music That Rocks.  You can’t beat that.

• In the midst of his piece Colorblind Writing, Peter at Collecting Children’s Books ponders the fate of the author reference book. He says, "What’s the point of going to the library and looking up an entry in SOMETHING ABOUT THE AUTHOR, THE JUNIOR BOOK OF AUTHORS, or CONTEMPORARY AUTHORS when you can just sit down at your computer and immediately access a writer’s personal website or blog and find out more than you ever wanted to know?"  Which could possibly be true, if it weren’t for the fact that huge swaths of authors and illustrators out there eschew having their own websites like they were the plague.  In the midst of my reviewing I often like to get more information about an author and I will search for their site.  Do you know how many bloody authors don’t have one though?  TONS!  Popular authors, authors you think would have a site (like, oh say, our delightful Ambassador of Children’s Literature, perhaps?) and there is nothing.  Oh sure, sometimes their publishers will provide them with one, but it’s usually without useful details, dates, and placenames.  At this moment in time, I think Something About the Author has nothing to worry about.

• Good news for distant librarians. According to the ALSC blog :

ALSC is offering their first ever online continuing education classes starting this fall. All the course offerings look tempting: “The Technology-Enhanced Library Professional,” “The Tech Savvy Booktalker,” “Reading Instruction and Children’s Books,” and “Sharing Poetry with Children.” Registration begins August 11th.

Thanks so much to Library Voice for the heads up.

• Daily Image:

Sometimes I think that if it weren’t for Alison Morris I would never have any visuals to present at all.  This week she made an amazing collection of fictional characters running for office (this was, oddly enough, my favorite).  I worry that some people might see this t-shirt here as a LOST reference, but there are worse things in this world.

For a whole heaping helpful of more shirts, high thee henceward to ShelfTalker.

Filed under: Fusenews