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February 6, 2009 by Betsy Bird

Fusenews: Good Hattitude

February 6, 2009 by Betsy Bird   7 comments

Sad news was announced on child_lit via Lee Bennett Hopkins recently: "On 1/27/09, just after his 80th birthday, Blair Lent, a Caldecott Award winner died. Blair’s work with cardboard cuts were unique in every way.  It seems hard to believe that in the l960’s artists were still doing color overlays, some of which are much better than what is being produced today with all our technology."  SLJ has a longer story.  You probably know Lent best for his mildly controversial Tikki Tikki Tembo. Boy oh boy he did some beautiful stuff.  The most recent title of his in my library’s collection was The Beastly Feast as penned by Bruce Goldstone.  And following hot on the tails of my last Fusenews, in which I discovered the Mazza Museum for the first time, I learned this fact about Lent’s work: "Most of his art was donated to the Kerlan Collection at the University of Minnesota and the Mazza Museum at the University of Findlay in Ohio."  There you go.

  • Names of blogs I wish I had thought up myself: Persnickety Snark. Lord, that’s good. Thanks to bookshelves of doom for the link.


  • At the SCBWI Cocktail Party held in Manhattan last Friday I happened to run into Richard Michelson.  You would know him most recently for his magnificent win of the Sydney Taylor Book Award for his title As Good As Anybody: Martin Luther King Jr & Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Amazing March Toward Freedom.  I knew him for his fabulous R. Michelson Gallery in Northampton, MA.  I guess you could say I primarily knew him for the gallery because when he casually mentioned his book I said (I can’t believe I’m confessing this, but it’s true) "Oh. Do you write books?"  He was very nice about it, but let’s be honest.  He JUST won the Sydney Taylor Book Award.  That’s the kind of thing I’m really supposed to know. Never even mind the tons of other books he has penned. So if you want to be a better person than me why don’t you listen to Mr. Michelson talk about his book on the Book of Life podcast?  It’s fun.  It’s timely.  It’s informative.  Thanks to Heidi Estrin for the link.


  • Addicted to a good bestseller list?  A bare bones site has come up with an interesting idea.  According to Galleycat, Reading Radar compiles " The New York Times Best Seller list, Amazon Web Services, and a number of other webby tools" to bring you the ultimate top selling books.  It’s interesting.  Sort of an all-in-one site.  I don’t get The Times and I don’t always think to check them online, so for those patrons who want a printout of the top selling picture books, this would be a good place to get one. Thanks to Galleycat for the link. 


  • If you live in New York then you know that periodically, and usually on Thursdays, the city will smell like maple syrup.  It’s mildly disconcerting.  Well, at long last our national nightmare is over.  The culprit?  Jersey.  So we weren’t even smelling real maple syrup.  It was just maple syrup smell.  How disappointing.


  • Seems odd that for all that the French give the Harry Potter books so-so covers, they then turn around and knight the woman.  Not that she doesn’t deserve it.  For my part, I didn’t know you could become a female knight in France.  Must be the Joan of Arc thing (anyone with actually accurate information, as opposed to speculation, is free to tell me here).  That moves us ever so slightly closer to my goal of creating knighthoods in America.  I have unconventional goals.  Thanks to Bookninja for the link.


  • Books I Want: Posy by Linda Newbery and Catherine Rayner.  Purdy.  Thanks to Kids Lit for making me want it so.


  • "Contemporary poets have recently swamped the London Word festival site following a challenge to write the Golden Fib. The Fib is a poetic form (six lines, 20 syllables) cooked up by Gregory K Pincus and based on the Fibonacci sequence." So sayeth Shirley Dent at The Guardian blog, giving a shout out to the Gotta Book man.  Way to go, Greg.  Shows that Ms. Dent does her research well. Thanks to Charlotte for the link.


  • I totally wasn’t even worried.  Disney drops Narnia after releasing film #2 during a terrible time of year?  Well Fox just picked that puppy up again.  Now let’s see how they do . . .  Thanks to bookshelves of doom for the link.


  • Nicely done, Dial.  It’s not every imprint that can brag that our president read their book to kids in a school library. Diane Hutts Aston and Jerry Pinkney were probably a teensy bit psyched when they discovered that Moon Over Star, their book about the moon landing, was the presidential pick.  That’s living the authorial/illustra.. uh.. torial dream, it is.  Thanks to SLJ Extra Helping for the link.


  • Daily Image:


I come in to work and I find that someone has turned the wallpaper on the Reference computer into this image, repeated over and over again.


I couldn’t figure out where it came from.  Because I vaguely remembered someone talking about that old Beverly Cleary TV-novelization recently.  Who was it?  The brain was wracked for a while until the perpetrator of the wallpaper switcheroo confessed that it came from none other than this post over at Collecting Children’s Books.  That’s what I get for missing a day or too.  Peter went a bit wild with the hatification.  My favorite was probably the Wally & the Beav shot too (Wally just looks so pissed) but I think Peter should get a standing ovation for this one as well:

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About Betsy Bird

Betsy Bird is currently the Collection Development Manager of the Evanston Public Library system and a former Materials Specialist for New York Public Library. She has served on Newbery, written for Horn Book, and has done other lovely little things that she'd love to tell you about but that she's sure you'd find more interesting to hear of in person. Her opinions are her own and do not reflect those of EPL, SLJ, or any of the other acronyms you might be able to name. Follow her on Twitter: @fuseeight.

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About Betsy Bird

Betsy Bird is currently the Collection Development Manager of the Evanston Public Library system and a former Materials Specialist for New York Public Library. She has served on Newbery, written for Horn Book, and has done other lovely little things that she'd love to tell you about but that she's sure you'd find more interesting to hear of in person. Her opinions are her own and do not reflect those of EPL, SLJ, or any of the other acronyms you might be able to name. Follow her on Twitter: @fuseeight.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Tanita says

    February 6, 2009 at 3:11 am

    Hah! I LOVE the hats! Wally and the Beav look so disgusted, while Bartholomew looks a mite surprised.

    Don’t feel bad about not recognizing Mr. Michelson — there were so many great winners this year that actually running into one would be a momentary scramble through the brain cells to match names and awards. And you *had* heard of the award, which is a step beyond many people!

  2. emay says

    February 6, 2009 at 6:29 am

    They should have called in Steve Martin’s character from the movie ROXANNE. He would have tracked that syrup smell down in no time flat.

  3. LSCHL70573@aol.com says

    February 6, 2009 at 7:37 am

    Apropos of Blair Lent, I’ve been thinking of him since your column about the new Ed Young Book–because Blair Lent illustrated Margaret Hodges’ book THE WAVE, the only children’s book our library had about tsunamis. THE WAVE, like the Ed Young book, is based on a Lafcadio Hearn story about an old man who saves his village by setting his rice fields on fire. It’s not as spectacular-looking as the Ed Young, but it’s a very handsome book and a well-told story.

  4. Fuse #8 says

    February 6, 2009 at 10:00 am

    Roxanne references. Awesome. And I am ashamed to say that I didn’t know about the Hodges book until you brought it up, Laura. I see that its 1964 publication date means that my library only has reference copies around. When I get a chance I’m going to try to grab one. These two books would be wonderful to compare.

  5. Heidi Estrin says

    February 6, 2009 at 10:20 am

    Rich Michelson wears many hats, so it’s not surprising you weren’t familiar with all of them! Anyway, thanks for mentioning my podcast interview with him, as well as the Sydney Taylor Book Award. Richard got both a gold AND a silver medal this year (highly unusual). You can find his Sydney Taylor Book Award Blog Tour interview at sydneytaylorbookaward.blogspot.com.

  6. Rich Michelson says

    February 6, 2009 at 3:29 pm

    When I “casually mentioned” my book? Hmm. Betsy, you must have missed the 4-foot high 14K solid Gold Sydney Taylor Award emblem with the reflecting thread silkscreened on the back of my suit jacket. (Oh never mind, now I remember…my wife insisted I change before we went out).

  7. The Children's Book Review says

    February 6, 2009 at 9:22 pm

    Thanks for sharing the news about Blair Lent, so Sad 🙁 Tikki Tikki Tembo is my favorite childhood book.

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