Fusenews: Dance, Pretty Lion Baby, Dance!

Bad news, chicky babies. I’ve a book due on the 15th of this month, and I need to devote some extra time, love, and attention to it.  That means no book reviews for the next week and a half.  I can’t justify it (though it may explain why wrote a bunch of them last week).  Instead, you’ll be getting a lot of Fusenews instead.  Mea culpa and all that jazz.

• I had that nice One-on-One Librarian Preview with Kane/Miller the other day and then I look at the news to find that the Educational Development Corp. has gone and purchased them.  "EDC president Randall White said he plans to retain the Kane/Miller name as an imprint and will keep its editorial offices in California under the direction of Kira Lynn, the daughter of the company’s founder. All other operations will be moved to EDC’s Tulsa offices, and EDC will assume distribution of Kane/Miller starting at the beginning of the year."  Interesting.  Thanks to PW’s Children’s Bookshelf for the link.

• Yes, Virginia.  There is a God.  I dunno, though.  Making fun of Bratz dolls is like shooting fish in a barrel.  A skanky skanky barrel.

• Jacket Whys is soliciting suggestions from readers as to the best children’s book covers of the year.  One reader, a Ms. Lisa Chellman, has put some suggestions up on her site and they constitute a host of excellent choices.  Thanks to Teacherninja for the heads up.

• Well that was surprisingly, shockingly, amazingly fast.  Just the other day I was wondering if Kadir Nelson would ever get around to doing a Barack Obama book.  Well apparently Mr. Nelson had a couple spare napkins on him onto which he could scribble such a title.  Change Has Come: An Artist Celebrates Our American Spirit is coming out January 13th in lickety split double time.  Let’s hope that this isn’t the only one he does in his lifetime.

• Wow!  The Horn Book Best Books of 2008 list is out.  Horn Book’s list is a little different from other similar publications due to how short it is.  Your average number of head scratches can be directly attributed to the small number of books found on any such "best" list.  I am fascinated by this year’s picture book choices in particular.  The number one surprise for me?  Who Made This Cake? written by Chihiro Nakagawa and illustrated by Junji Koyose (Front Street).  Missed it.  Missed it and then some.

• Recently I joined Facebook and that was all kinds of fun.  But of course I’ve always wondered what possible advantages it could offer to author or publishers.  Seems to me that there’s no good way to promote a book on Facebook aside from making its release "an event".  So I was intrigued when Galleycat put up a piece called How Facebook Could Help Publishers and Booksellers.  The piece includes a link to a slideshow "brainstorming how retailers can use Facebook’s newest feature to work more closely with customers."  It’s all a part of this new Facebook Connect feature they just started.  I still don’t quite understand the advantages myself, though.  Is this something other than Greek to anyone else?  Thanks to Galleycat for the links.

• There was quite the article on the changes currently taking place at NYPL in the weekly Chelsea newspaper Chelsea Now.  It’s one of the rare newspaper articles to actually take into consideration the negative consequences going on in the system right now.  There are things mentioned in this article that you will not find elsewhere.  Plus you gotta love the picture that accompanies it by photographer Jefferson Siegel:

• Cory Doctorow over at BoingBoing has come up with a Holiday Gift Guide for kids books and the like.  Of course, becoming a new YA author Mr. Doctorow is more familiar with that particular genre since he’s been recently immersed in it.  His children’s selections tend towards the old and well-known (Hugo Cabret) or the hip novelty items like Alice in Wonderland tats. 

• Blogging challenges can be fun.  Recently MotherReader set up the Comment Challenge wherein bloggers were encouraged to comment on their fellow’s sites.  Now Lisa Nowak has a new challenge for those interested: "Visit five new blogs each week. You don’t have to read every single post, just sample a few, cruise through the backlog a bit, and if you like what you see, add it to your blog reader."  Not sure how to go about finding new blogs?  Check out her site for tips.

• Got this bit o’ news from FSG.  The links are, of course, my own:

We are so pleased to announce that Helen Frost, author of DIAMOND WILLOW (2008) and the award-winning THE BRAID (2006), has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship for her work on THE BRAID.

This literature fellowship recognizes writers of poetry, encouraging the production of new work by affording these writers the time and means to write.

You can see the entire list of 2009 Literary Fellowships (Poetry) here: http://www.nea.gov/Grants/recent/09grants/litFellows.html

And if you haven’t read The Braid, me sweet dulcet darlings, you are missing a truly wonderful little book.  I like clever books that tell good stories.  This one fit the bill.  Kudos to you, Ms. Frost!

• Daily Image – Holiday Gift Edition:

Know a librarian who loves The Graveyard Book but seems difficult to buy for?  Two products currently could fill that empty place under their tree.  From Neil Gaiman’s blog we find a site called Neverwear that offers you either the Graveyard Book t-shirt:

Or the mousepad featuring a tiny signing Neil:

Filed under: Fusenews