Fusenews: Poppleton – Dead or Alive

• Former co-worker Rebecca writes to me and she says that, "the poppleton books are out of print, and i am mad, mad, mad!!!  . . . so… do you think you could do one or several blog postings, begging scholastic to bring them back?"  I need confirmation on this, STAT!  If Poppleton and Friends are out-of-print then the world’s gone mad.  Prove that the world still has all its marbles, people.  Find out if Poppleton lives.

• I suffer from a terrible case of burying-the-leaditis.  What I should have led off with today is this magnificent conversation between author/illustrators Brian Selznick and Paul O. Zelinsky as a part of the PEN American Center’s regular PENPals feature.  Amongst the details I enjoyed is Mr. Zelinsky mentioning that "If I were a Zelinscky and you were a Selznyick we would be perfect anagrams of each other."  He also hints at working on a sequel to Swamp Angel (woo-hoo!!!) and then there’s the whole discussion of "permission".  Edifying, funny… just the kind of thing you’d enjoy on a Friday.  Just lovely.

• Clearly I missed this little tidbit of news on the first pass.  According to Publishers Weekly, "Don Laventhall of Harold Ober is about to start shopping film rights to Lois Lowry’s latest YA novel, The Birthday Ball. Laventhall has been busy with the two-time Newbery winner; last year he sold her 1993-published Newbery winning novel The Giver to Warner Brothers for seven figures and he just recently wrapped up a deal for film rights on her February-published book, The Willoughbys. Lowry’s other Newbery winner, Number the Stars, is also under option."  YA doesn’t interest me but… The Willoughbys?  As a movie?  I’m just going to sit down on this step here and think long and hard about how a person would go about making that work.  Long and hard.  Thanks to YPulse for the link.

• Two blogs caught my attention recently.  In case any of you have ever wondered if 50% of these Fusenews postings just come from me finding people because they linked to me… it’s true.  One such case is the blog Bubble Stampede which advertises itself as "Two Authors, Two Books, and a 9-month Conversation about…aack!…PROMOTION".  Authors Laura and Fiona are both in the children’s industry and they’ve a couple interesting posts worth looking at.  Go peek.

• Shoot. This other blog I found happens to be really fun.  I am rather enamored of this Scholastic blog that has seemingly popped out of nowhere.  Which is to say, it’s been around since March.  On Our Minds @ Scholastic is just your typical industry blog, but I like the sheer number of videos and links they’ve included.  You can’t help but respect a site that celebrates International Literacy Day with a video of Run DMC on Reading Rainbow.  But I don’t need more blogs to read, people!!!  Stop being creative!

• A hearty kudos to Puffin (of Penguin) for the new covers of Barthe DeClements’ Fourth Grade Wizards, Nothing’s Fair in Fifth Grade, and Sixth Grade Can Really Kill You.  As you may have read in my Fall 2008 Penguin Preview, I was thrilled to hear that Puffin was republishing this old series.  My library has these icky paperbacks with late 80s/early 90s covers and still the kids check them out in droves.  The idea to republish them was brilliant but if you’ll page through your Fall 2008 Penguin catalog you will see in the Puffin section that the covers for these books are oddly age-inappropriate.  I think my exact words in the recap were, "I have never seen a fourth grader who looked more like homecoming queen a day of my life."  Now the books are out and with different covers that are clearly marketed to look like something other than proto-Gossip Girl.  Me likey.  Me approve.

• And I almost got away with not mentioning this until Nancy Mercado reminded me.  There are odd rumors out there of this "other borough" that lies across that big bridge by Chinatown.  I hear that they call it something like brook-lynn.  Most curious.  In any case this "brook-lynn" seems to be having some sort of teeny tiny book fair this weekend.  Perhaps you could be a dear and pop on over to make them feel loved.  I’m sure it’ll just be a handful of folks that even think to show up.  There’s a darling.

• Daily Image:

I’d heard about that Hari Puttar film that Warner Brothers was all gung-ho about suing.  But the only one with the cojones to track down the poster was Leila from bookshelves of doom.

Home Alone never goes out of style, it seems.

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