Fusenews: Not to be Confused With the Eleanor Estes Dressy Title

• A big, huge, gigantic, monstrous thank you to speakers Barry Denenberg and Candace Fleming for taking time out of their busy schedules to come and speak in my library the other day.  Much appreciated, guys.  Seriously.  And to all the fabulous people who came out and saw them too.  Couldn’t do it without you.

• Over at Practically Paradise, Diane Chen has printed out the 2008-2009 Rainbow List.  This is the list of best LGBT titles for kids and young adults in a given year.  This one includes couple of obvious inclusions and a couple of surprises.  For example, no inclusion of Hit the Road, Manny by Christian Burch, which was the sequel to The Manny Files?  I would have thought that with its 2008 publication date this would have been a shoo-in.  Apparently not.  On the upside, I was very pleased to see 10,000 Dresses by Marcus Ewart made the cut.  My boss handed me this book the other day and I was so happy to see a picture book about transgenderism that it broke my little heart to spot its 2008 publication date staring me in the face.  Consarn it.  No review from me, but if you get a chance to read it you should.  I can pretty much guarantee that there’s nothing equivalent to it on your shelves.

• I found out the other day that the third book in the Monster Blood Tattoo trilogy has been handed in for editing, spell checking, light gnawing, etc.  I am very excited.  With the book out of his hands, D.M. Cornish has to find something to do to fill the empty hours.  So it is that Cornish wrote this on his blog for his fans: "I was reckoning that when Book 3 1st draft and maybe edit passes are finally done we could embark on a project together where I write an entry upon a certain Half-Continent character, list a poll of options for their next action, give you a week or two or three to choose which way next, write that, give you more options to choose for the next bit and so on (am I making sense?) and maybe build story together."  Good thing he’s the one choosing the options.  If it were up to me I’d probably just want to have Europe and Sebastipole make out or something.  Oh yeah.  I’m that mature.

• What with the illustrator being dead and all I didn’t want to go too much into the logistics of what exactly is so odd about Tikki Tikki Tembo.  Now I don’t have to!  J.L. Bell has done the research and unearthed the transcripts from child_lit discussing how the tale, rather than being a Chinese folktale, is a Japanese folktale instead.  Illustrator Blair Lent probably had some clue.  After all, everyone in the book is wearing kimonos, yes?

• I don’t suppose that there’s any particular reason to point out an Editorial Anonymous post I particularly liked.  I know y’all read her every day anyway.  But I was fond of I Don’t Know Why I Love You Like I Do.  It’s a strong post.  Good stuff.  And in my newly agented state, useful.  Then you can read the comments on the post that asked why anyone would self-publish.  Consider it your reading assignment for the day.

• A couple weeks ago Derek Kirk Kim pointed out on his blog that the fact that The Last Airbender is being cast with all white actors was a bit . . . oh, what’s the word again?  The one that rhymes with bassist?  He was not alone in his objections: "I was speaking with Gene Yang (author of American Born Chinese and National Book Award nominee) about the casting and he said it best: ‘It’s like a white Asian fetishist’s wet dream. All the Asian culture they want, without any of the Asian people’."  Of course a lot of people got angry so what did Hollywood do?  They cast Slumdog Millionaire lead Dev Patel instead.  Um… huh?  Thanks to First Second for the link.

• Daily Images:

Let’s talk Caldecott winners of the past.  Particularly Mei Li, winner of the 1939 (and second) Caldecott Award and penned by one Thomas Handforth.  Reader Peggy Hartzell was kind enough to pass along these images from the Mei Li show that was (is?) up at the Henrietta Hankin Library in Chester County, PA.  Writes Ms. Hartzell, she "had a lot of fun making it festive and putting much of the work down low for the little people.  Still have a few things to add, but it felt good to get  it up for the 70th anniversary of his Caldecott Medal . . .  It’s mostly his drawings, etchings and his photographs of subjects related to the illustrations in the book along with his comments about some of the subjects in the photos . . . The photographs that I discovered in the archives at the Nelson-Atkins Museum last Spring are wonderful.  So many of them relate to Mei Li.  I may be sending this little show out to the Tacoma Library in Washington.

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