Fusenews: Warning – Lint Ball Metaphor Approaching

Sometimes I feel like a children’s literature news lint ball.  I just roll about my merry way, picking up the stray bits of ephemera that happen to fall within my purview.  Alternate metaphors: We would have also have accepted lint roller and/or dust bunny.

• Let us begin today with some movie news.  If you’re like myself, you’re desperately searching the horizon for signs of the impending children’s/teen book-to-film adaptations so that you won’t be caught unawares when they hit theaters.  A show of hands of all the librarians who had enough copies of How To Train Your Dragon in stock when that film took off.  Yeah.  I know.  Me too.  In any case, as far as I can tell the only things I’ve heard of lately are:

– Eclipse due out June 30th
– Ramona and Beezus (putting the “loose” in “loosely adapted”) due out July 23rd.
– Beastly due out July 30th
– Flipped due out August 6th.
– Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole due out September 24th.
– Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part One due out November 19th.

If you can think of any others, please let me know and I’ll add them accordingly.  I should probably make this a permanent reference list.  Then we could all stay on top of things.

• In other movie news director Neil Jordan has started to open up about the cinematic adaptation of Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book.

• And finally, from Cynopsis Kids, some good news about Greg Taylor’s novel as well:

“Chris Columbus’ 1942 Pictures and South Korea’s CJ Entertainment unveil their production slate of three movies, two of which are targeted to kids/tweens/teen, per Variety .  1942 Pictures and CJ Entertainment entered into a three-year development deal in fall 2009.  The two kid/tween/teen projects are feature film adaptations of Neil Gaiman’s (Coraline) novel The Graveyard Book and Greg Taylor ‘s book Killer Pizza .  The Graveyard Book movie will be written and directed by Neil Jordan.  CJ Entertainment is set c0-finance and distribute Graveyard in South Korea and Japan.  Wayfare Entertainment, Framestore and Gaiman. Killer Pizza is being written by Adam Green and will be projected by Raffaella de Laurentiis.”

Jasper Fforde is one of those authors who is so popular with children’s librarians and the like that I tend to forget half the time that he’s writing for adults.  Well, apparently my confusion is soon to increase as he is penning his first children’s book.  It’s going by the name The Last Dragonslayer which, understandably, bring to mind this.  In any case, Monica Edinger at Educating Alice has further details on the Fforde-i-fication of our youth.

• I see the way editors hop from publisher to publisher as reported in the Publisher’s Weekly Children’s Bookshelf, but honestly it can be a little hard to keep track of.  That’s why I was so grateful when one Casey Girard recently highlighted Harold Underdown’s list of Editorial Staff Changes at Children’s Book Publishers.  A chronological list.  Very useful.

• Now that’s a trend I didn’t see coming.  Maybe it’s because I don’t read a lot of YA.  In any case, check out the impressive 100 Scope Notes piece on the Psycho-inspired jackets out there.  Note too how that blog recently won third place in the School Library Blog category as determined by Salem Press.

• Betsy-Tacy fans of the world take note.  The homes owned by author Maud Hart Lovelace (a.k.a. Betsy) and her best friend Frances “Bick” Kenney Kirch (a.k.a. Tacy) have been designated Literary Landmarks.  Way to go, Mankato!  Now someone please explain to me how you get an awesome nickname like “Bick” out of “Frances”.  I’m not objecting.  I just want to know the logic behind it.  Pity I’ll never be able to name my own kids Bick.  Bick Bird would probably just be too cruel.

• Twenty points is going to Dot for pointing out on the bookshelves of doom blog the other day that, “Theodore Boone Kid Lawyer sounds like a Saturday Night Live sketch.”

• Daily Image:

My sister was recently in Las Vegas and tells me she saw this ad for the the Las Vegas Library system in the airport.

Clearly NYPL needs to step up its game.  Heck, we’ve got the Rockettes in our city.  Let’s have ’em kicking for the library!

Filed under: Fusenews