Fusenews: Anyone Want to Point Out that None of the Featured Series Are Actually BY Penguin?

The problem with working with someone who serves on the Ezra Jack Keats Award committee is that you find out the winners way too far in advance.  For example, I knew about this year’s winners last week but had to zippadalip until the official annnouncement.  Every year the Keats Award is given to a new author and a new illustrator of children’s books.  This year the winner of the illustrator award was handed to Shadra Strickland for Bird (written by Dr. Zetta Elliot) and the winner of the author award was Stian Hole for Garmann’s Summer.  So, basically, yet another win for Eerdmans Books.  Impressive, no?  But the best part of the Ezra Jack Keats Awards, in my opinion, is that the winners have to agree to appear in New York to accept the award.  So, for me, it all boils down to the fact that I’m going to get to meet Stian Hole!  Yip yip yip! 

• SCBWI (the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) extends above and beyond the borders of our shores, you know.  There are even chapters in other countries, like Japan.  Recently editor Cheryl Klein was interviewed about the translation of the book Moribito in the SCBWI Japan Chapter newsletter.  For more information you can read a pdf of the interview here. Thanks to Sako Ikegami for the link.

• Over at Mugglenet (like The Leaky Cauldron, but more muggley) an essay writing contest has been announced.  Write 500 to 1,000 words on the topic, " "How can magical stories help young people grow spiritually or build character?" and author N.D. Wilson will judge the submissions.  You remember Mr. Wilson, yes?  Wrote that nice Leepike Ridge book (to say nothing of his 100 Cupboards and Dandelion Fire ).  Win the contest, win his books.  Easy peasy. Thanks to Heather Wilson for the link.

• Monica Edinger has finally lived my lifelong dream (but not the one where I get to sing Gilbert and Sullivan karaoke with Jonah Winter).  She has written a review for The New York Times.  And of The Graveyard Book at that.  Spoiler Alert: She likes it.

• Daily Image:

The truth?  It’s hard finding daily images.  Sometimes I’ll get a glut of them all at once and feel obliged to parcel them out over the course of several days.  But normally?  They’re hard to find.  Fortunately friends and family members are forever sending me the things they’ve run across.  Take my friend Don.  Sure, he runs one of the most successful web thingies in New York (I may sound vague but look at this site and tell me it is not web thingie based).  But he also finds time to send me links to something like this:

That’s right.  Someone up and made all the Unfortunate Events, Harry Potter, and Spiderwick books into pseudo-70s Penguin covers.  Go look at them.  They are all remarkably beautiful.  I tell you, Penguin needs to jump onto the make-current-books-look-like-old-Penguin-covers bus.  They’re the ones with the copyright, after all!   Go wild!

Filed under: Fusenews