Fusenews: The Spy Who Loved Memes

I am both thrilled and honored to note that I have been shortlisted for Book Blogger Appreciation Week in the Best Kidlit Blog category.  Woot woot! And there are lots and lots of great children’s literature blogs nominated, making quite a bit of headway over last year, I think.  Everyone from 100 Scope Notes to Collecting Children’s Books to the mighty prolific Maw Books Blog to (in brief): Semicolon, Mother Reader, Jen Robinson’s Book Blog, Shelf Elf, Becky’s Book Reviews, 5 Minutes for Books, Collecting Children’s Books, A Work in Progress, and probably more. A big thank you to the folks who nominated me and go and vote for your favorites in all the categories!

• The Wall Street Journal informs us that you’ll be seeing a lot more book to film adaptations because of the built in audiences surrounding the titles.  That may be true, but I suspect Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and Fantastic Mr. Fox are more labors of love (or created because adults remember reading them years ago) than responses to their crazed fans.  Thanks to @mitaliperkins for the link.

• Actually, this fits very well with that previous post.  Because if ever Hollywood was to go about adapting a children’s book without, y’know, reading it… well, it might look a little like this.  Thanks to Eric Berlin for the link!

• Hey, other library systems!  Did you know that Boston Public Library has a Children’s Writer-in-Residence program going on?  Do you have one?  No?  Neither do we.  Looks like some little library system is overachieving.  I wouldn’t mind instituting something like that here at NYPL.  Kudos to Boston, though fingers are crossed that in the future they get someone other than a white lady for the next one.  Thanks to @mitaliperkins for the link.

• Speaking of gender, Kirby Larson recently had a really well put together piece up on her blog called Boys Will Be Boys, But Will They Be Readers?  In it she interviews about ten folks, authors and librarians and the like, and asks them about their old reading habits, the reading habits of boys today, and what we can do.  Expertly done all around.  Thanks to Benjamin Watson for the link.

• Esme Codell says that she still loves Cake Wrecks more than this new site Awkward Family Photos.  I respectfully disagree.  Awkward Family Photos has rapidly become my favorite blog to read regularly.  It’s all the in the captions.  Some sites will have a funny premise and terrible captions.  Not this one.  They’re succinct and almost always funny.  Thanks to Esme for the link.

• He already killed off God in The Amber Spyglass.  Now Philip Pullman is coming after Jesus.  Holy Ghost?  You’re on notice.  Thanks to Monica Edinger for the link.

• To my mind, there are few things less tolerable in the world than poorly done Seussian wordplay.  That said, this piece Dr. Seuss on the State of the Blogosphere is remarkably well done.  I’m particularly fond of the line, "When bloggers battle bloggers / in a muddled augur battle, / and the tweeting blogger battle / is about Barack Obama", amongst many others.  Thanks to @jlbellwriter for the link.

• "The stereotypical library is dying — and it’s taking its shushing ladies, dank smell and endless shelves of books with it."  Sure.  Sing it again, CNN.  Why not.  It’s an old standard news folks love to play again and again and again.

• Daily Image:

I’m sure you all are trying to figure out what the best possible Halloween costumes would be this year.  Might I suggest, for you mother/daughter teams out there, something along these lines:

Thanks to @neilhimself for the link.

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