Fusenews: “Spoilers Will Occur Without Warning”

I’d heard a week or two ago that they were ending the television run of Reading Rainbow.  Then I got word that someone has started an online petition to save it at  http://www.thepetitionsite.com/petition/338798378.  The petition’s creator’s son wrote me and said of his mother, "She developed a program based around the show Reading Rainbow. For every episode of the show, she created a backpack containing a videotape of the show with the books it featured. The students in the school would check out a backpack to bring home with them, watch the show and read the books. It was a big success."  Aw.  I can attest to the fact that we have many Reading Rainbow episodes on DVD and they are checked out on a very regular basis.  As for this petition, many folks have put their names to it.  Though, as Angie Mills pointed out, "I will gladly sign a petition, but if we want to save Rainbow, we’ve got to come up with a way to pay for it…plain and simple."  And looking at the state of PBS today, I cannot help but agree. Additionally, check out the Twitter hashtag  (#savereadingrainbow) for more thoughts and ideas.

• Let me tell you a little something about a day in the life of the average children’s librarian.  Many of us are endowed with a godlike skill of creating craft projects out of thin air.  Then there are folks like myself.  I am not crafty.  I see toilet paper tubes as merely toilet paper tubes.  They bring me no joy.  However, I have a deep and abiding appreciation for those librarians who know their way around a bag of googly eyes.  For craft-challenged folks like myself there is no greater gift in the world than free online coloring pages.  And a woman who has saved my butt again and again in this area is author/illustrator Elizabeth Dulemba.  How many times have I thought to myself, "Let’s print out coloring pages on [insert theme]" only to find that the pages I locate are from her site?  Many.  Now her bilingual picture book Soap Soap Soap – Jabon Jabon Jabon is out and not only has she come up with the standard book trailer, she has a whole activity page full of puzzles, wallpaper, coloring pages, recipes, and who knows what all.  Plus she blogs.  Busy lady.

• 100 Scope Notes recently found a Flickr set of children’s books from 1860-1920 that’ll get you sitting up and taking notice.  I like the Amy Krouse Rosenthalishness of this one in particular:

• The dreaded h-word . . . or is it?  Monica Edinger offers a stirring defense of offering fun-reading as homework. Her original Teaching Reading post is well worth your time as well.

• Speaking of folks who work at The Dalton School, librarian Roxanne Feldmann is someone I enjoy reading since she always has an opinion and it sometimes stands in direct opposition to my own.  There is joy to be had in varied takes on books.  Now she’s finally turned her reading list into a blog called The Way We Read.  It’s going on my regular reading, you bet.

• Everything’s better if you just work the word "mundo" in there somewhere.   For example, here’s a little something called Ask a Pro located on the site IllustrationMundo.com.  Say they, "Ask a Pro is a collection of illustration related questions answered by top art directors, designers, editors, artist representatives and other professionals in the commercial illustration industry."  Questions range from the basic, "How do you decide on using illustration vs. photography?" (amongst the answers: "I’ve worked with some good illustrators, and a lot of them that have been difficult to work with") to "What would you tell young illustrators trying to break into the business?".  Thanks to Children’s Illustration for the link.

• Daily Image:

While in Canada I saw this comic in the local paper (click on the link to see it bigger).

Since Matthew Henson seems to be the only new fella to appear on required biography lists in the last 25 years (which is to say, since I was a child) I was very fond of this.  I also just happen to love how K. Beaton draws frowning men with moustaches.  Gets me every time.  Then I come home from Stratford and find that bookshelves of doom loves this series Hark a Vagrant just as much as I do.  Good timing.

Filed under: Fusenews