Fusenews: Parrotts and Chickens

Flickr, will you marry me?  Oz and Ends discovered via the I’m Learning to Share! blog that the old Random House early reader title Do You Know What I’m Going to Do Next Saturday? is up for viewing on Flickr.  Whoever posted it asks at one point, "I wonder what ever happened to this kid? I wonder what he’s got planned for Next Saturday these days?"  That’s the kind of thing I tend to wonder when I watch old commercials from the 80s.  And ancient Sesame Street segments.  So far I’ve only met one person who was in a Sesame Street segment as a kid.  Surely there have to be thousands of others out there . . . .

• Since I’m afraid of RSS feeds (don’t ask) I tend to tackle my blog reading by moving systematically down my blogroll.  This is not particularly fair to the folks at the bottom though so I tend to hop around a bit, just to shake things up.  So it was that I saw Roger Sutton’s post on Liz B’s post on the Publishers Weekly piece My Say: When YA Might Not Be Okay in that particular order.  All three bits are worth reading (probably in the opposite order that I have listed them here) because it’s something we librarians deal with all the time.  Have I ever encountered an 11-year-old who wanted Twilight ?  Sure.  Had one in just the other day.  I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t give it to them if they wanted it.  There’s nothing in Twilight that’s any worse than the last Harry Potter book, after all.  Of course we didn’t have any copies in so she wanted The Host instead.  At that I balked internally but simply said as I looked it up. "Ah. That would be in the adult section."  And her mother, who was standing nearby, didn’t like that one bit so all I did was provide the information, not the decision.  And then there was the ten-year-old who once wanted something by Zane . . .

• Here’s the problem with Peter over at Collecting Children’s Books. Honest-to-god I love him to death, but he’s too good a writer.  With every cell, atom, and pore of my being I want this story to be true.  No.  You don’t understand.  I wannnnnnt it to be true.

• Author Katie Davis has proven to be creative in terms of book promotion in the past (actual children at a book release party of a children’s book?  Who knew?).  Now she has come up with a novel way of getting some school visits and it involves librarians. "Any public librarian who gets me a paid school visit in his/her town gets a free presentation at his/her library on the same day. Anyone who is interested can view or download my school visit packet at this link: http://www.katiedavis.com/pdf/SchoolPacketBest.pdf or on my site on my visits page (the school bus icon). The first ten schools that book me will get a 15% discount on my honorarium."  Slick and not a bad idea.

• Yesterday I talked about the Boston Children’s Hospital and its cool new science website for kids.  Now I see that on the same day Kiera over at Library Voice has compiled a list of Great Websites for Toddlers and Preschoolers.  By the way, can I just say how interesting it is that the two New York Public librarians with children’s blogs in this city have the last names of Bird and Parrott?

• Cool.  Two great blogs that taste great together.  Susan Thompsen from the children’s literary blog Chicken Spaghetti sent some pics of her pets over to Galleycat for their recent dog-related thingy thing (I get a bit unclear on the details of these things).  Only her pets aren’t dogs.  They are far more exotic.  Go and seek them out.

• Shoot.  Mr. Gaiman’s gotta start writing more top notch children’s literature for me to review.  Mom sent me an email saying that he linked to me and then YPulse followed suit.  Awfully kind of them, I say, whot whot.

• Daily Image:

I have days where I believe this.

Thanks to BB-Blog for the link.

Filed under: Fusenews