Fusenews: “Poop poop!” and zizis

• Of the fifty or so new and cool facts available on Peter’s most recent Brunch for Labor Day Weekend, the item I found most interesting was that the musical George M! from 1968 was written in part by none other of Fran Pascal.  As in Francine Pascal.  Well bless my stars and buttons!  Guess that whole Broadway stage thing didn’t work out for her, eh?  Pity she had to fall back on writing some of the most popular series books out there.  Thanks to Collecting Children’s Books for the news. (Note: The image here doesn’t really have much to do with George M!  I just thought the man’s moustache as a selling point was fabulous)

• Terabithia get a Fine Lines treatment.  All well and good but I was particularly intrigued by this glimpse of things to come: "The answers to all of your burning questions and the opportunity to answer still more burning questions will return, retrospectively, next Friday, when we tackle Beverly Cleary’s Sister of the Bride. Also: Christopher Pike. Remember Me." Christopher Pike. At long last.

• Will the real Mr. Toad please stand up?  The Independent has a great piece on the man who may have been the inspiration for Kenneth Grahame’s famous vehicular obsessionist.  Poop poop!  Thanks to Big A little a for the link.

• Around and around it goes.  Fantasy’s obsession with the circle gets a long hard look over at Jacket Whys.  I’m particularly fond of the pairing of four red covers, all with spheres smack dab in the center.

About a four months ago the librarians of the Central Children’s Room started passing around a picture book that, in our eyes, won the Weirdest Picture Book Subject Matter Award of 2008, hands down.  No contest.  Now I see that Crooked House has written a post about Little Zizi, the story of one boy’s fears that his penis is too petite.  If you do manage to get a copy of your own, be sure to check out the various suggestive motifs visible on many of the pages.  For example, a glimpse at the cover and suddenly the dog carrying the hose becomes a bit…. well, you know.

• Philip Pullman’s essential reading list includes Wodehouse (naturally), Kipling (naturally), Lovecraft (. . .), and a couple other surprises.  Thanks to Educating Alice for the link.

• Ukulele advocate and librarian Walter Minkel has claimed another covert.  This time in the form of a creator of the librarian webcomic Unshelved.

• Don’t ever assume that I’m hip to the cultural mainstream.  Apparently there’s a celebrity out there named Jamie Oliver.  Okey doke.  Said Oliver has a wife who spells her name Jools.  *snigger*  Okey doke.  Wife Jools is writing a children’s book called The Adventures of Dotty and Bluebell.  Um.  Okey . . . . . okey doke.  And her reason for writing?  "All the books that I was buying for my girls were so hard to read – and grammatically incorrect – that they drove me mad."  Ah.  She’s one of those.  Liz B has a lovely take on this lady over at her blog.  Personally I find it hard to get too worked up about an article where the sidebars include topics like "The 100 fashion essentials that every stylish woman must have" next to other ones that say "My agony when they gave me a caesarean without pain relief."  Real classy stuff.

• Daily Image:

I think I may have had something else planned for today, but when I saw this puppy over at Oz and Ends I just had to have it.  According to J.L. Bell, "Francesco Marciuliano of Sally Forth and Medium Large got to do a guest comic in Bizarro this month, and this is what he came up with."  Read Bell’s encapsulation of extraordinarily variegated reader responses.  Suddenly I have a newfound respect for Sally Forth.

I spotted Interplanet Janet on my own!  Do I get a cookie?

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