Video Sunday: Failure and trailers
It’s interesting, but unless I’m editing a video of myself, I have a difficult time watching me speak. I remember that this interview I conducted with the good people at On Our Minds at Scholastic is good, though. It concerns the Top 100 Children’s Novels List, which is flattering. A nice way to close out the series. Big time thanks to Tyler Reed for stopping by to talk with me.
One of the loveliest picture books I’ve seen this year is Margaret Wise Brown’s The Fathers Are Coming Home as illustrated by Stephen Savage. In this interview, Savage discusses the mysterious discovery of this lost text (hint: it involves an old mysterious trunk) as well as a glimpse into his own artistic process.
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In terms of book trailers, I think it’s healthy to see what folks on the adult side are doing so as to get inspired. And now that I know the release date of my own upcoming picture book (Fall 2011, y’all!) I’m looking at videos like this one for Newspaper Blackout with a whole new eye.
Thanks to The Book Case for the link.
By the way, I believe that it is important to remember that not all children’s book trailers out there are necessarily in English. Check out this video for ABCdario by Antonio Ventura and Noemi Villamuza. Lovely.
I’m not entirely certain when it was that YouTube allowed videos to be longer than 10 minutes. Whatever the case, here you can see a half an hour’s worth of Lois Lowry speaking recently at the National Book Festival in November 2009. Someday I shall create a website that compiles all videos of authors talking about their art. Someday.
Thanks to Duane Parsons for the link.
None of this is to say that these links I’ve sent you aren’t any good. However, this next video is one of the best I’ve seen in months. J.K. Rowling once gave a commencement speech at Harvard entitled "The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination." It is a sheer delight. Enjoy.
J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.
Many thanks to CBI Clubhouse for the link.
And for the off-topic link, I’m fairly certain I haven’t shared this before, though I know it’s pretty popular already. It doesn’t sound like much when I say that it’s merely Bobby McFerrin demonstrating the power of the Pentatonic Scale at the 2009 World Science Festival, but it’s worth watching.
Thanks to mom for the link.
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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This is an absolutely fabulous collection of videos. Thank you so much for sharing. It is always fun to see the unique ways people communicate about books and creativity. I think we will start to see even more things like these book previews as the iPad and other ereaders take off and make rendering children’s books more feasible. What a great post.
I really liked what you said about adult writers trying to re-create that feeling they had when they read a book as a child. I try to mix it up with a healthy amount of adult books and children’s lit, but I constantly find myself loving my children’s lit more and more, and I think that’s because it’s so truthful and it does just give you that wonderful feeling that’s not quite describable, but I rarely encounter it in adult fiction.
If only we could bottle that feeling. 🙂