Video Sunday: Neil Gaiman on a Trampoline (there…. that’ll get my stats up)
Happy Valentine’s Day everybody! I know I did this video once before, but now it’s pertinent! That and the fact that I couldn’t find anything else. Did you know that The Marzipan Pig by Russell Hoban (one of the finest l’il ole video adaptations of a picture book you ever did see) isn’t anywhere online for the embedding? Boggles the mind it does.
May I make a confession to you? Fabulous. You see, if there is ever a week where I feel that I don’t have enough videos, I usually go to one of two places. I will go to either Drawn (which is where I get some of my best off-topic stuff) or I will go to BookMoot. Seriously, BookMoot is the number one place to go for great videos. Today, I’ve swiped two from her that are just fabulous. Phil Bildner filmed these at a recent school visit made alongside (according to BookMoot) what looks to be Susan Stevens Crummel, Matthew Holm, and H.J. Ralles.
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Video #1: How every school should welcome their authors.
Video #2: Also not too shabby.
Moral of the story: In Texas, everything is bigger. Even the author visits.
This next is along the same lines. It’s also an author visit, but it’s a book trailer too. Sergio Ruzzier (of the fantastic Amandina, amongst other stories) visited P.S. 9 in Brooklyn recently to show off his new book Hey, Rabbit! and this is the result of his visit. You know . . . picture book trailers only really make sense if they do what Sergio is doing here. Which is to say, they show librarians and parents how to present books to kids. This may be the future, my friends. This may finally makes the whole book trailer genre make sense.
Thanks to Sergio for the link!
Now I apologize for the ad that starts this one off, but it’s worth sitting through. This is a BBC look at a couple brand new libraries in Europe. The children’s spaces are particularly fascinating.
Of course, I do wonder what the problems are with the spaces. Librarians are forever at the mercy of architects and designers who come up with cool ideas and ignore practical concerns. Someday I hope to write an article for SLJ or someone about new libraries and children’s rooms and why it is that the folks who hire these designers never seem to care about how the buildings will work in the long term (or why they sometimes eschew the advice of the folks who work there). One of my pet peeves, you see. Thanks to AL Direct for the link.
Okay. This is on-topic but the set-up is pretty intense. There are multiple steps involved and I actually had to have my mother explain it to me. I didn’t get it the first time, just leapt straight to the video. So! Don’t do that. First there was a Discovery Channel ad that folks really liked quite a lot (and, truth be told, it’s very catchy). You can see that here. Then my second favorite web comic xkcd did a strip based on the song. Still with me? Good. Because next someone turned that strip into an animated web video. And finally this video was created by Olga Nunes and Elaine Doyle. It’s full of web phenomenon folks. You may recognize Hank Green, Neil Gaiman (on a trampoline at one point, I believe), and Cory Doctorow amongst many others.
Geez. Big time thanks to Making Light for stringing all the connections together and to mom for explaining it to me.
And finally, here’s the off-topic video. Full disclosure, my buddy Dan does this little web series called 9 A.M. Meeting. Good stuff. I find them witty little vids. A good string of strange mental meanderings. Bonus: This one contains an oblique reference to Twilight. So maybe it’s not as off-topic as all that.
Filed under: Videos

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.
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Thanks for the link Ms Fuse!