SUBSCRIBE
SUBSCRIBE
SLJ Blog Network +
  • 100 Scope Notes
  • A Fuse #8 Production
  • Good Comics for Kids
  • Heavy Medal: A Mock Newbery Blog
  • Teen Librarian Toolbox
  • The Classroom Bookshelf
  • The Yarn
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • About/Contact
  • Fusenews
  • Reviews
  • Librarian Previews
  • Best Books
    • Top 100
    • Best Books of 2022
    • Best Books of 2021
    • Best Books of 2020
    • Best Books of 2019
    • Best Books of 2018
    • Best Books of 2017
    • Best Books of 2016
    • Best Books of 2015
    • Best Books of 2014
    • Best Books of 2013
  • Fuse 8 n’ Kate
  • Videos
  • Press Release Fun

September 30, 2009 by Betsy Bird

Fusenews: Oh, Like You’re Going to Ignore a Post That Contains the Words “Dead Puppets Society”

September 30, 2009 by Betsy Bird   1 comments

Ignore the news and eventually the news will announce itself by biting you on the bum. I had heard about this Exquisite Corpse experiment going on . . . somewhere. All right. Truth to tell? I wasn’t paying very close attention. But recent events have given me the impetus to sit up and take notice. Apparently (if you, like myself, are a little foggy on what exactly this business consists of) the explanation is that EC is a game where someone starts a story and other pick up the thread. Says the site, " In order to try and retain the spontaneity of the original game, The Exquisite Corpse Adventure contributing authors have only a couple of days to brainstorm and then write their individual episodes. Each episode is then lightly edited and sent back to the author for a quick rewrite." The people involved? M.T. Anderson, Natalie Babbitt, Calef Brown, Susan Cooper, Kate Di Camillo, Timothy Basil Ering, Nikki Grimes, Shannon Hale, Daniel Handler aka Lemony Snicket, Steven Kellogg, Gregory Maguire, Megan McDonald, Patricia and Fredrick McKissack, Linda Sue Park, Katherine Paterson, James Ransome, Jon Scieszka, and Chris Van Dusen. Someone get me Chris Van Dusen’s agent! Kidding, Stephen, kidding!  You can read Scieszka’s first part here. Part two comes on October 9th and is penned by Katherine Paterson.  And what was it about this site that finally woke me from my waking sleep enough to blog about it?  Well… um.  I’m listed with a bunch of really excellent sites in the Blogs That Inspire section.  Blush!  Mind you, I told this to my boss and he misheard it as "Blogs That Expire" which, considering the name of the project, wouldn’t be a ridiculous thing to say.  Now I need to figure out what nefarious things to "inspire" you to do.  Thanks to Jen Robinson for pointing this out!

  • Cynopsis Kids gives me such interesting news on a regular basis.  Today I present two of the best.  First up:

Director Chris Wedge (Ice Age, Robots) is set to direct the animated feature film Leaf Men that will be financed by Fox Animation and produced by Wedge’s Blue Sky Studios, per Variety.  Leaf Men is based on the kid’s book by author/illustrator/filmmaker William Joyce, The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs.  Jim Hart is writing the screenplay.  Though Wedge’s had developed Leaf Men for Fox, the movie almost made its way to Disney and Pixar with Fox in the end deciding to go ahead with the film.

Also from Cynopsis Kids, the best name of a project I’ve heard all day:

CBBC is teaming with comedian Johnny Vegas to develop the comedy series Dead Puppets Society (13×28) for 2011.  The series will follow Johnny as he juggles his showbiz career with his secret life as a puppet hunter as he fights to protect the world.  The series will feature his sidekicks Rory and puppet Fleabag.  Dead Puppets Society is being produced by Woolyback and Double Z in Dublin.

Ideally they’d make it like Buffy… only with puppets.  This strikes me as an idea so intuitive, it can’t help but work, right?  Great title too.  Wish I’d thought of it.

SCROLL TO KEEP READING THIS POST

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

  • It is possible that you have missed that Banned Books Week is September 26 – October 3rd.  Possible but not likely.  In a particularly inspired piece called Bomb the Ban, Marjorie Ingall both pays homage to banned Jewish children’s authors over the years AND writes a pretty remarkable and heavily footnoted poem that provides wonderful insights into why various titles get banned.  Here’s the beginning:



  • So I was admiring this little list of post-apocalyptic fiction that SLJ recently provided (not extensive, but it certainly has some titles you may not have seen before) and it gets me to thinking.  Why has there never been a short story collection of post-apocalyptic fiction?  A David Levithan edited collection of some sort comes immediately to mind.  Why every possible kind of end-of-the-world scenario could be listed!  You could even throw in some comedic bits for fun.  And even better?  Zombies!  At long long last there would be an excuse to have some zombie lit out there!  Some, I said.  A little zombie goes a long way.


  • A show of hands.  How many of you out there knew that there was a blog out there called We Love You So which follows the movie Where the Wild Things Are and, "has been established to help shed some light on many of the small influences that have converged to make this massive project a reality"?  Well it highlights Maurice Sendak-related fare on a regular basis, like this cool augmented billboard , for example:



Worth keeping your peepers on.  Thanks to Boing Boing   for the link.

  • Happy Punctuation Day!  What’s that?  Oh.  Yeah, you’re right.  Punctuation Day was actually on the 24th.  I totally missed it this year.  My apologies.  You know who didn’t miss it, though?  The good people at the Lee & Low blog The Open Book.  In Our Favorite Punctuation they offer odes to semicolons, ellipses, and other "expressive little dots".  I’m certainly a fan.  Though, you know . . .


  • If I might be briefly braggly for a moment, I’d just like to point out that my mother (who, for the record, is included in the Best American Poetry of 2009) recently spoke at The New School alongside big names like Billy Connolly and Mark Doty and is quoted with them in this nice NBC Network piece on What the Poets Said.  Woot!  Go, Mom, go!


  • Jenny Schwartzberg recently sniffed out two different articles about a recently established and brand new rare book collection of children’s literature at Anderson University in Indiana.  One article does an in-depth look at both the new collection and the Elizabeth York Children’s Literature Festival.  The other illustrates the fact that children’s books are complicated affairs.  Thanks again to Jenny Schwartzberg for the links. 


  • Daily Image:


For the woman who has everything, why not weigh her neck down with a tome or two?


As someone who schlepped approximately 20 books on my back yesterday (and then caused poor Tim Bush to do the same), I am strangely unmoved by this concept.  Thanks to AL Direct for the link.

Filed under: Fusenews

SHARE:

Read or Leave Comments

About Betsy Bird

Betsy Bird is currently the Collection Development Manager of the Evanston Public Library system and a former Materials Specialist for New York Public Library. She has served on Newbery, written for Horn Book, and has done other lovely little things that she'd love to tell you about but that she's sure you'd find more interesting to hear of in person. Her opinions are her own and do not reflect those of EPL, SLJ, or any of the other acronyms you might be able to name. Follow her on Twitter: @fuseeight.

ADVERTISEMENT

Related Posts

January 2019

Fusenews: All the news that's fit to fuse

by Betsy Bird

December 2018

Fuse 8 n' Kate: Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems

by Betsy Bird

November 2018

Fusenews: She Has a Name

by Betsy Bird

October 2018

Fusenews: We Would Have Also Accepted "Fast Food Fairies"

by Betsy Bird

September 2018

Fusenews: STEM Girl Fashions, the Death of "Hypothesis", and More

by Betsy Bird

ADVERTISEMENT

SLJ Blog Network

100 Scope Notes

BLUE FLOATS AWAY Turns Two!

by Travis Jonker

A Fuse #8 Production

Review of the Day – Bear and Bird: The Picnic and Other Stories by Jarvis

by Betsy Bird

Good Comics for Kids

Review: Swim Team

by Esther Keller

Heavy Medal

March suggestions: early Mock Newbery possibilities

by Emily Mroczek-Bayci

Teen Librarian Toolbox

Peachtree and Peachtree Teen Showcase: New titles from February through July 2023

by Amanda MacGregor

The Classroom Bookshelf

The Classroom Bookshelf is Moving

by Erika Thulin Dawes

The Yarn

Jarrett and Jerome Pumphrey Try Something New

by Travis Jonker

ADVERTISEMENT

Related Articles on SLJ

From Trike to Bike: 16 Picture Books About Learning to Ride Bicycles | Milestones

10 Nonfiction and Fiction Titles to Give Young Readers Context on The Great Migration

4 Middle Grade & YA Nonfiction Titles to Help Heal the World

Zines: Cut-and-Paste Publishing by and for the People

13 Hi-Lo Titles, Including Speculative Fiction, Horror, Sports, and Graphic Novels

About Betsy Bird

Betsy Bird is currently the Collection Development Manager of the Evanston Public Library system and a former Materials Specialist for New York Public Library. She has served on Newbery, written for Horn Book, and has done other lovely little things that she'd love to tell you about but that she's sure you'd find more interesting to hear of in person. Her opinions are her own and do not reflect those of EPL, SLJ, or any of the other acronyms you might be able to name. Follow her on Twitter: @fuseeight.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Abby says

    October 1, 2009 at 9:14 pm

    I would totally read a short story collection of post-apocalyptic stories. For serious.

ADVERTISEMENT

Archives

  • External Links

    • A Fuse #8 Production Reviews
  • Follow This Blog

    Enter your email address below to receive notifications of new blog posts by email.

    This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

    This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

    Primary Sidebar

    • News & Features
    • Reviews+
    • Technology
    • School Libraries
    • Public Libraries
    • Age Level
    • Ideas
    • Blogs
    • Classroom
    • Diversity
    • People
    • Job Zone

    Reviews+

    • Book Lists
    • Best Books
    • Media
    • Reference
    • Series Made Simple
    • Tech
    • Review for SLJ
    • Review Submissions

    SLJ Blog Network

    • 100 Scope Notes
    • A Fuse #8 Production
    • Good Comics for Kids
    • Heavy Medal
    • Neverending Search
    • Teen Librarian Toolbox
    • The Classroom Bookshelf
    • The Yarn

    Resources

    • 2022 Youth Media Awards
    • The Newbery at 100: SLJ Celebrates the 100th Anniversary of the Award
    • Special Report | School Libraries 2021
    • Summer Reading 2021
    • Series Made Simple Spring 2021
    • SLJ Diverse Books Survey
    • Summer Programming Survey
    • Research
    • White Papers / Case Studies
    • School Librarian of the Year
    • Mathical Book Prize Collection Development Awards
    • Librarian/Teacher Collaboration Award

    Events & PD

    • In-Person Events
    • Online Courses
    • Virtual Events
    • Webcasts
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • Advertise
    • Subscribe
    • Media Inquiries
    • Newsletter Sign Up
    • Content Submissions
    • Data Privacy
    • Terms of Use
    • Terms of Sale
    • FAQs
    • Diversity Policy
    • Careers at MSI


    COPYRIGHT © 2023


    COPYRIGHT © 2023