Fusenews: In Brief
I owe eternal gratitude to Shelf Elf for bringing to my attention the blog Bookshelf. All it consists of are pictures of hip and out-of-the-ordinary bookshelves. Sheer heaven. To the left here is one they call The Incubator. Awesome.
Recently I found myself in charge of the periodicals at the Central Children’s Room. This is a job I actually used to have while I was getting my master’s back in the day. I was a Serials Manager. In general conversation that made me sound like someone who would hang our regularly with Tony the Tiger (and how awesome would that be?). Now I’m back where I started, and Kiera Parrott has a piece up on children’s magazines.
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The 21 Picture Book Topics You Should Avoid . It didn’t mention animals that want to dance ballet! In my mind that is the number one most overused plot seen anytime, anywhere. I’ve seen teddy bears, and swans, and dinosaurs, and wolves, and pigs, and cows, and kangaroos, and YOU NAME IT! Add it to the list alongside animals that want to sing opera. And I have to say I disagree about the personal hygiene one, though. You can’t never have enough of those (or manners books), in my opinion. Potty training either, come to think of it. Thanks to Cynsations for the link.
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Peter from Collecting Children’s Books sent a question regarding this old children’s literature classic (look at the title): "Do you think Amazon was sending secret messages to the Republican party?" I think my answer to him was something along the lines of "You. Are. Awesome." Good catch, buddy.
Daily Image:
Says the Flickr page by artist Chris Goodwin these are "Ornamental and not for snuggling." They’re bugs made out of found objects. Here’s a taste.
Thanks to Drawn for the link.
Filed under: Fusenews
About Betsy Bird
Betsy Bird is currently the Collection Development Manager of the Evanston Public Library system and a former Materials Specialist for New York Public Library. She has served on Newbery, written for Kirkus, and has done other lovely little things that she'd love to tell you about but that she's sure you'd find more interesting to hear of in person. Her opinions are her own and do not reflect those of EPL, SLJ, or any of the other acronyms you might be able to name. Follow her on BlueSky at: @fuse8.bsky.social
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Betsy, Betsy, say it ain’t so (re the 21 topics never to write about). My own BALLET OF THE ELEPHANTS features dancing elephants. But is it okay because it’s a true story and because the elephants themselves probably had no interest in dancing? Give me a break, I beg you.
leda schubert
I’m with Leda. I’m a Close Personal Friend of an author trying to sell a ballet picture book. It’s a good book!
Also … Liz W., the compiler of the 12 list, rocks!
Oh, I loved “Ballet of the Elephants”! I do believe we made that one of NYPL’s 100 Books for Reading and Sharing two years ago. Yeah, apparently the caveat here is that if it’s an actual animal that performed ballet (and how many critters can you actually say that about?) then it gets a pass. I dunno though, Sam. Is it super good? Ballet’s fine in general. Just not the animal that dreams of making it in pointe shoes storyline. Clearly I’m getting old and crochety.
You say it’s a list of books on an over-used topic, I say it’s next week’s storytime! Thanks for the goofy inspiration.