Fusenews: It Isn’t Just One of Your Holiday Games

I am such a child.  When I find a bunch of great links do I carefully dole them out so that I’ll have plenty to use for the rest of the week?  Do I prepare like the safe and steady little ant that I am?  No, I lop them all together in a great big post without considering the future like that confounded grasshopper.  *sigh* 

• It’s so rarely that the knitting blogs and the library blogs find a common bond.  Yet recently my mother sent me a very very interesting link on the vastly popular Yarn Harlot blog where a subject some of us have already heard of came up.  Do you remember earlier this week when Roger Sutton mentioned that a children’s knitting group had been "banned" from a library in his post (so well named) Listen to the Children When They Are Holding Sharp Sticks!?  Considering how active me mama is on the knitting blogs, I should have paid more attention.  Well Yarn Harlot threw her hat into the ring and the ensuing debate was enough to singe your eyebrows off.  I’ve been reading through the comments and have found that someone has had the gall to INSULT MY MOTHER in them!!! *growl*  Kill, my pretties!  Kill the nasty woman who attacks my flesh and blood!  I have just GOT to get me some flying monkeys or something.

• I had been vaguely aware that The Times was doing this whole Children’s Book of the Week thing.  What I didn’t know was that the books could be a little long in the tooth.  This past Sunday The Times chose Angelo by David Macaulay.  An excellent choice considering it came out in 2002.  Angelo is a title that a patron once recommended to me as their number one death book.  Which is to say, number one book about death for small children.  I don’t have a favorite death book of my own, but I’ve always remembered this recommendation and I will bring it up with patrons if they’re interested in titles along the same lines.  Thanks to Big A little a for the link.

• I think every author should do this.  It’s such a great idea.  When you see what the British edition of your newest book looks like, blog that information.  Cover addicts like myself just eat up that stuff like a cat with a bowl of cream.  For example, Laurie Halse Anderson recently showed off the British cover of her new book Chains.  Well worth a peek, it is.  Thanks to Finding Wonderland for the link.

• I haven’t quite figured out what I feel on the subject of video games in the libraries.  It’s mostly a YA issue anyway, but much of the questions raised face children’s librarians as well.  Walter Minkel recently wrote a piece called Do games promote "media literacy"?  It makes for good reading and Walter questions many of the things I’ve been pondering myself.  So rather than write something up myself, I direct you to him. 

I love it!  It’s what I’ve been saying all along!  It’s the Top 10 Reasons No One Cares About Wonder Woman.  Oh, you don’t.  Admit it.  You liked the television show in all its campy glory back in the day, but Wonder Woman?  No bloody personality! Yet as the comment feature clearly shows, she has her defenders.  Thanks to Bookninja for the link.


100 Scope Notes indulges in an act that I can only describe as librarian porn.  Essentially, it’s the process of getting boxes of books, opening them, and getting them shelf ready.  Good stuff, that.

• Forget Al Roker.  I want to see Shannon, Dean, and Nathan Hale get interviewed about their new graphic novel Rapunzel’s Revenge at a blog I know and trust.  Ah ha!  I ask.  Miss Erin provides.

• Aw man. Why’d I ever go and get that MLIS degree?  Shoulda just gone straight out hiring myself as a blurber. Wouldn’t that be cool?  You go to a cocktail party. Someone asks you what you do. You say, "I’m a blurber."  They look at you funny.  Awesome.  Thanks to Gail Gauthier for the link.

• The new form of sadomasochism: reading your Amazon reviews.  Thanks to Big A little a for the link.

• The naming of characters (and people) is a difficult matter.  Anne Enright has much to say on the matter . "Naming is nice. It took me days before I was able to speak a name for my first child (what if people did not like it?), and I suspect we gave her a secret, second name as well, to keep her safe. Of course, we did no such thing. We just put a word on this new human creature and used it freely and easily, the way you do. We told it to the government. We bandied it about. By the time the second child was named, we had steeled ourselves into a state of insouciance."  Thanks to Bookninja for the link.

• What are the 12 3/4th ways to promote your novel?  Author Donna Gephart spills the beans over at Shrinking Violets, a blog solely dedicated to helping introverts market themselves.  The notes about contacting specialty groups and writing articles seem particularly choice to me.  Thanks to Finding Wonderland (again) for the link.

• And for further advice this is someone who works on the adult side of Penguin, but this interview with Ms. Courtney (no last name?) on Presenting Lenore proffers an interesting take on how blog reviews are viewed by the publishing industry at large.  Thanks to Jen Robinson’s Book Page for the link.

• Editor Alvina Ling offers up some thoughts on the subject of book designers over at Blue Rose Girls.  She also makes the logical conclusion that Little, Brown’s book designers rock particularly well.  She’s biased, but she’s also not wrong.

• May I change this blog into a children’s literature/Quakerism blog?  No?  Can I just post random links about Quakerism anyway?  Yes?  Fabulous.  Here then is a fun post called Richard Nixon and 12 Other Celebrity Quakers.  Finding out that Piers Anthony is a Quaker is like discovering that Beck is a Scientologist.  You spend long minutes of your life going, "No… really?  Really?  No… no… really?"  Thanks to Katherine Lord for the link.

• It’s what I’ve always said.  Produce a book where a kid walks around with a gun and nobody bats an eye. Put in some sex and oh la la what a furor!  In Spain, no less.  Looks like Tintin went and got a bit risqué. Thanks to Bookninja for the link.

• Daily Image:

They are not just cloud lamps . . .

They are FRENCH cloud lights!  C’est manifique!  Thanks to Wagging Tales for the link.

Filed under: Fusenews