Fusenews: Rule Number One, there are no rules. Rule Number Two, no outside food.

"My mother’s womb is a Trojan Horse, I tell you."  This is delightful.  We’ve returned to the days of serialized comics, and best of all they’re coming via Gene Yang, the fellow responsible for American Born Chinese.  You can read the different issues of his my-baby-sister-must-be-an-alien strip Prime Baby over at The New York Times.  Thus far there are only four chapters up with more in the mix.  Thanks to Educating Alice for the link.

• Little known fact: they apparently moved April Fool’s Day to December 16th.  How else would one go about explaining this?  Happy… uh… December Fool’s Day, everybody.  You had me going there for a second.  Thanks to bookshelves of doom for the link.

• A blog called Literary Escapism had a recent poll where they determined the Book Bloggers’ Top 10 of 2008.  They say that over 1300 individuals cast their votes, though I guess I missed it on my end.  In any case, they’ve come up with that vast all-encompassing term "Children" and determined the Top 10 through it.  It is perhaps the only time you will see The Underneath and Little Hoot in the same category, I suspect.  Thanks to Shaken and Stirred for the link.

• Oh good!  100 Scope Notes has come up with a round up that rounds up the too little lauded categories in children’s literature.  Called 2008 Children’s Lit: The Year in Miscellanea it covers everything from Most Unexpected Find Underneath a Book Jacket to Best Film Adaptation of a Children’s Book.  Go with the checking it out do.

• Like many librarians I’m a sucker for a well-rounded booklist.  I make them myself for my branch, but sometimes it’s nice when someone else has done the work.  Now the CCBC has come up with the list Eco-Reading: Selected Books for Children and Teens about our Earth and the Environment.  I am so stealing that.  Thanks to Kids Lit for the link.

• Sometimes the AP News gets bored.  Like when they start reporting that rather than starving, Oliver Twist would have had lots and lots of delicious healthy gruel.  Food glorious food indeed.  Thanks to Bookninja for the link.

• "2008 will be remembered as the year the future caught up with the publishing industry."  Agent Nathan Bransford considers how the publishing industry has fared in the past year, but in spite of ticking off the various troubles the final conclusion is a cheery "people are still buying books."  Darn tooting.  Thanks to the possibly soon to be renamed Wagging Tales for the link.

• In spacey news, illustrator Brian Floca is currently performing a countdown of the anniversaries of the various Apollo missions, leading up to the 60th anniversary of the landing of Apollo 11.  Those of you with your eyes on the stars might be interested in his post on Apollo 8.  He even has cool Time covers and video.  Sweet.

• Daily Image:

Teacher Ninja recently was clever enough to link to a site called The Big Picture which has collected the best pictures of the year.  This is just one of them, but it’s awfully pretty.

Apparently this consists of images of books projected onto the Tower of David in Jerusalem’s Old City.  Thanks so much to Teacher Ninja for the image!

Filed under: Fusenews