Fusenews: Emily the Litigious

I was just thinking the other day of how rare it is for anyone to be able to say, "In my workplace the screams of human beings in abject misery is quite normal."  Granted, those human beings are usually quite small, but it’s still bizarre, right?

Dark thoughts for a light day.  On to the news.

Boy.  It’s not enough that Emily the Strange ripped off a Nate the Great book.  Heck, I thought the original creators were being awfully nice about the whole thing.  They didn’t sue or anything.  No good deed goes unpunished, though, since in a bizarre twist of fate the people who stole from Marc Simont and Marjorie Sharmat are now suing THEM.  Oh, this is rich:

Cosmic Debris Etc. has sued two children’s book authors, claiming its “Emily the Strange” character does not infringe on Marjorie Sharmat’s and Marc Simont’s “Nate the Great” copyrights. Cosmic Debris acknowledges that both characters are “Goth Girls,” but says such characters abound in popular fiction.

Cosmic Debris cities Morticia and Wednesday from “The Addams Family,” Lydia from “Beetlejuice” and Vampira of “The Vampira Show.”

Absolutely.  Why I can’t even BEGIN to count all the Goth Girls out there in children’s literary fiction prior to 1990.  Oh wait.  Yes I can.  Two.  There are two.  If you count Rossamund as Goth.  Which, considering that the book came out in 1978, I don’t.

It’s nice when I don’t have to promote my own children’s space myself.  A cute little blog called Stickers and Donuts recently took a turn about the room.  Not only is it a great piece but they managed to find information about how the woman who did my mural, Susy Pilgrim Waters, posted the full thing on her website like so:

Awesome.  Thanks to John for the link.

Elizabeth Bluemle has created a mighty fine and useful encapsulation of many of the children’s book related events that will be happening with Book Expo this weekend.  I would add my upcoming Kidlit Drink Night   to her list, but otherwise it’s fairly complete.  And hey, if you’re feeling depressed because you’re not going to be in New York to attend, take heart.  I’m working that entire weekend and physically cannot attend either.  And worst of all, I’m in the same town!

Solved! The mystery of why you will find the heads of babies impaled on spikes on trucks in Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs has, at long last, been answered.  And it’s far less gruesome than you might have thought.

A comely Brit has determined that teachers make for particularly good children’s authors.  In this top ten list  you may, if you are a Yank like myself, find yourself familiar with more names than not.  And I’m amused that the author of the piece was barraged with emails for not initially including Philip Pullman.  Thanks to Achockablog for the link.

Daily Image:

What?  You want an explanation?  Really?  Aw, fine.  Richard Michelson wrote the original children’s picture book Too Young for Yiddish.  Of course, being a gallery owner who has displayed Leonard Nimoy’s photography, the temptation to make it a little more pointy eared proved irresistible.  Mr. Nimoy has also read this book aloud on its accompanying CD.  You can compare this cover to the original here, if you like.  Good stuff.

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