Fusenews: Then They Came for Rainbow Brite, and I Still Said Nothing

A very funny first post starts of the Battle of the (Kids’) Books and gets the ball rolling.  Plus the fancy dancy brackets are up and there’s more than one doozy in the mix.  Who will win?  Will Jon Scieszka prefer The Graveyard Book or The Trouble Begins at 8 (I honestly have no idea)?  Will Tamora Pierce prefer Graceling (which she blurbed, I might point out) or will the sheer eloquence of The Underneath win her over?  It’s rough!  It’s tough!  And you can bet I’m going to get an office pool going on my end.  I’ll print my predictions soon enough, though I’m sure to be wrong.  It all begins the week of April 13th so make your picks now.  Thanks to Educating Alice for the info.

• I don’t usually report on library challenges.  I leave that to bookshelves of doom, AS IF (needs an update), etc.  But when I heard that a Spiderman comic was getting banned in Nebraska for sexy sexy content, I had to check it out.  Basically Mary Jane wears a bathing suit at one point while bending over, and a bunch of short skirts.  Compared to what the girls in the Archie comics were wearing when I was growing up, that tain’t nuthin’.  Thanks to Kate for the link.

• Did you know that the Brits have an award for the worse book title of the year?  Yup. It’s called the Diagram Prize.  See, look here: "A heavyweight study of the future of soft cheese won Britain’s annual competition to find the year’s oddest book title on Friday. The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais, by Philip M. Parker won the Diagram Prize, awarded by trade magazine The Bookseller.  The runner-up was primate study Baboon Metaphysics, by Dorothy L. Cheney and Robert M. Seyfarth."  I disagree with awarding a previous prize to People Who Don’t Know They’re Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It, though.  That’s just brilliant.  Can we start this in the children’s literary sphere?  I know that Leila already found a contender.

• Due to the fact that I’m a big fan of her blog Children’s Illustration I was pleased as punch to see Julie Fortenberry featured over at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast.  So there’s that.

• All submissions to the Top 100 Picture Books Poll end tonight at midnight, duckies.  If you haven’t sent me your Top 10 picture books of all time, now’s the time to do so.  After all Abby (the) Librarian made her list.  Shouldn’t you?  I’ll be releasing the results tomorrow (#91-100), so get ready for some surprises. 

• And you thought the designers of children’s books had it rough?  Tim Bush just sent me a fascinating link to Henry Sene Yee’s blog.  In this post , Mr. Yee shows us the process he went through to produce a cover for the book Columbine , including all his rejected first drafts.  The fine line between the artistic and the exploitative is taken into account.  Thanks to Tim Bush for the link, who in turn found it via the Slog, the blog of the Seattle paper The Stranger.  Which, come to think of it, may be the best blog name I’ve heard all month.

• Events I Will Be Attempting to Sneak Into:  In this regular series, I attempt to covertly make it into benefits featuring children’s authors or illustrators that are taking place somewhere in my gigantic workplace.  The April event?  NYPL’s Spring Luncheon, which will be moderated by New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik, and will feature a great panel of speakers including Children’s Poet Laureate Mary Ann Hoberman, renowned novelist Salman Rushdie, and award-winning author and illustrator Chris Van Allsburg.  My plan?  Well, if I don’t eat then it’s fine to sneak in the back during the speeches, right?  You’d see how funny this is when you realize that the Celeste Bartos Forum is literally down the hall from my children’s room.  However, it also happens to fall on one of my free days.  Hrmpf.

• There’s a website out there that my husband and I adore called Photoshop Disasters. Well there’s a potential bit of Photoshopping pointed out on Collecting Children’s Books, and it involves a Newbery winner and a mysteriously furry pelt.  Peter also asks at one point, "Is there any one topic that will prevent you from reading a novel? Or are you open to anything?"  I can answer that one: torture.  I can’t take torture.  I got through Graceling, but that was more because of the threat of torture rather than anything that happened on the page.  Don’t like it.  Don’t like to read about it.  Which explains why I will never watch Slumdog Millionaire.

• Aack!  Zut!  Shoot!  How close did I come to missing this?  Like every other librarian in the world (notice I did not say every librarian but, rather, every other) I listen to Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me.  Which is based out of Chicago.  Which is where ALA is going to be.  Are you following me on this?  Because there are tickets TICKETS reserved JUST for librarians going on right now!  Tickets!  For me!  That I can buy!  And so can you, because I don’t want to go by myself.  It’s on Thursday, July 9th, but I think I can swing that.  And I believe that the show plays at 7:30 p.m. (though there’s nothing on the information sheet to indicate as such).  Tickets!  Oh, 100 Scope Notes, I cannot thank you enough.

• Daily Image: 

First they came for Strawberry Shortcake, and I said nothing.  Then they came for My Little Pony . . . . . . . . and I said "Dude, is that Cthulhu in My Little Pony form?  That’s friggin’ awesome."  Sorry I can’t actually display any of the images here, but follow the link and you’ll see a veritable plethora of twisted, corrupt ponies.  Thanks to Mom for the link.

Filed under: Fusenews