Fusenews: For That Matter Where’s the YA Les Miserables Novel?

• Arg!!!  Insanity abounds.  How could I have forgotten to let you know that Cybils nominating is now open and for business?  For those of you unfamiliar with the term, the Cybils constitute the first time children’s literary bloggers have come together to give away awards for literature.  The idea is to meld high-quality writing with kid-friendly texts.  At this moment in time each and every one of you is allowed to nominate one book per category.  Then our faithful bloggy readers will judge them and pick the best of the best.  I had these brilliant dreams of somehow managing to nominate all the potential winners early on.  Ah well.  At least I got to work in Lamplighter.

• Many of you were unable to attend this year’s children’s literary blogger conference in Portland. I am sympathetic (and, on an unrelated note, out of cash). To some degree, however, you needn’t have come. Take as one example Mark of Just One More Book and his talk on podcasting. Didn’t get a chance to hear it? Well, the talk itself is now available for your listening pleasure.

• I am so depressed.  These last few days I’ve felt like an over-medicated chicken with its head cut off.  Now I find that I missed celebrating St. Jerome’s Day (September 30th).  If you can’t give proper credit to the Patron Saint of Librarians who can you give props to?  Combined with my forgetting Talk Like a Pirate Day (September 19th) I’m feeling awfully low.  Thanks to Tim Canny for the info.

• Recently I’ve been doing a lot of work with the biographies in my collection.  Yesterday I happened to stumble upon a picture book bio of L.M. Montgomery.  Unsurprisingly the end of the book failed to mention this fact about her death. Not that it was officially known until recently.  Thanks to bookshelves of doom for the link.

• A small controversy surrounds the credits for the new Tale of Despereaux film.  I didn’t know that the original director was the same fellow who created The Triplets of Belleville.  Shoot, I need to see that film again.  Thanks to Educating Alice for the link.

• How to spot a future English major: If in the heights of your adolescence you decided that the one way to prove your love of the musical Les Miserables was to read the book by Victor Hugo then you, my friend, are an English major in the making.  I sure did and it was a slog.  I admit to having skimmed the sections that involved the sewers.  You’d think sewers would make for fascinating reading, would you?  Not so much.  On the other hand, it could have been worse.  I didn’t know how much worse until I read the Guardian article The Mountains of Les Miserables with its subtitle: "Why the new English translation of Victor Hugo’s masterpiece is 100,000 words longer than its best-known predecessor."  Sweet god.  Thanks to mom for the link.

• Now that’s it’s officially Banned Books Week, it’s time to give credit to those book challenges that don’t make the big news.  Those little challenges that make us all remember why banning’s a bad thing in the first place.  Over at A Medley of Musings is a post that discusses a PTA mom’s objections to . . .  wait for it . . . A Long Way From Chicago by Richard Peck.  Interestingly I’ve not heard this particular challenge much.  Anyone come across it before?

• Scholastic’s doing a Kids’ Election Poll where kids can vote for the candidates.  Neat.  The press release is fairly standard stuff until you get to this fascinating little paragraph here: "Since 1940, the outcome of the Scholastic Election Poll has mirrored the outcome of the general election in every election but two (in 1948 when students chose Thomas E. Dewey over Harry S. Truman and in 1960 when more students voted for Richard M. Nixon than for John F. Kennedy)."  Woah, woah, woah.  Scholastic has been doing this vote since 1940?  Really?  Really really?  And the kids wanted Nixon and not Kennedy?  My husband points out that in both of those cases the votes were actually disputed and Scholastic’s outcomes were probably correct in terms of vote counts. 

• Daily Image: 

Oh, Giving Tree.  Dislike of thee just is the gift that keeps on giving.  Today’s t-shirt:  The Taking Tree

Thanks to bookshelves of doom for the link.

Filed under: Fusenews