Fusenews: Spell Check Wants Me to Say That My Facebook Page “Am” Useful. My Spell Check “Am” a Bit of a Doofus.

If the new Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland is good, I do hope it is very very good.  And if it bad, I hope it is mind-blowingly, breath-takingly terrible.  I’m not talking a train wreck.  I’m talking a veritable crater in the ground where two trains used to be.  One Dayle McClintock does a lovely encapsulation of what may or may not be in store for this film over at Tor.com.  I was particularly fond of the line, "Crispin Glover is playing the Knave of Hearts. Unless the Knave of Hearts stole the tarts and then used to smother a bunch of kittens, Crispin Glover is being wasted on the role."  Thanks to Chasing Ray for the link.

• Every time I write a review I worry that something I say might appear in a snide piece like this.  Every. Single. Time.  Thanks to Library Voice for the link.

• Heavens!  BookMoot has a lotta information about the filmed version of The Little White Horse (one of Joanne Rowling’s favorite children’s novels).  It has now been renamed The Secret of Moonacre, so all you librarians out there need to practice how exactly you’re going to convince your child patrons that no! Really!  It’s the same as the movie!  Good luck with that.

• I was finally convinced to join Facebook about 2-3 weeks ago, and I like to think I was one of the last of the holdouts.  It wasn’t that I’m anti-social networking sites or anything.  I just know myself too well.  There’s a site out there where I can sit in front of a computer for hours and find out every last sordid detail about my best friend from 2nd grade and her recent boob job?  Great!  So in my effort to prevent myself from getting too into Facebook I created two accounts.  One for regular me and one for librarian me, thereby completely taking care of that old spending-too-much-time-online problem (will someone PLEASE invent a sarcasm font already?).  The librarian me Facebook page is useful, but I’ve never really thought about using it with library patrons.  Yet back in July children’s author Fran Cannon Slayton interviewed a YA librarian by the name of Emily Platz about how she uses Facebook with her patrons.  Very interesting stuff.  Thanks to Cynsations for the link.

Don’t mind me.  This is just your regular reminder to read the blog Golden Age Comic Book Stories.  Not for the comics (though those are pretty neat too) but for the magnificent scans of classic illustrations put up regularly.  Recently we’ve gotten a gander at Frederic Richardson‘s illustrations in St. Nicholas Magazine for L. Frank Baum’s Queen Zixi of Ix, some beautiful Dorothy Lathrop pieces from 1931’s The Fairy Circus, and a book I’ve never heard of that pops the old eyeballs called Funnybone Alley as illustrated by Boris Artzybasheff.  That’s where this picture’s from.

There are some interesting facts and even more interesting thoughts on the National Book Awards over at Tea Cozy these days.  I was at a nice book release party two nights ago and the conversation turned to what we felt would actually WIN win the Newbery, which I hadn’t really considered seriously yet.  And we mentioned all kinds of titles until the National Book Award nominees came up and I thought, "Of course!  Chains!"  But we shall see.  Too soon to set my cap on anyone quite yet.

• Daily Image:

So I think to myself, "Sure.  This color-in wallpaper is pretty keen.  But you know what I’d really like?  Color-in wallpaper by some of my favorite artists."  And then I get to thinking about which artists would do a really good job of creating something you could color in . . .

Mark Alan Stamaty, definitely.  Remember his Who Needs Donuts?  Heck, just xerox the pages in that book and paper a room with them.  Instant color-in fun.  Who else . . . who else . . . oo!  What about Barbara McClintock?  She’d be cool too.

Thanks to BB-Blog (of course) for the link.

Filed under: Fusenews