Fusenews: So far, no snow here

• It’s always fun to see what other folks say about our specialty.  I gave great cheers today when Matt informed me that Greg Hatcher had yet another post up about his trips through various thrift stores in search of treasure over at Comics Should Be Good.  In this latest installment he finds a rare Meindert DeJong/Emily McCully title that has a misleading cover.  It says “Journey From Peppermint Street by Meindert DeJong” and then in smaller letters “Winner of the Hans Christian Andersen and Newbery Awards”.  Yeah.  Mr. DeJong won those awards . . . but not for this book.  Actually Peppermint Street did apparently garner a National Book Award, but I suspect that Greg isn’t the only person to think that the “winner” referred to was the book and not the writer.  He also locates some failed Stratemeyer syndicate boy adventure novels (awesome) and a Tarzan for kids.  Them’s good reading.

• Of course reading Greg just made me want to catch up on my Collecting Children’s Books.  Peter’s latest post Brunch for a Snowy Sunday shows a celebrity picture book I’d long since forgotten, a comprehensive list of celebrities that hold children’s books in the READ posters, and it features what may be the worst re-illustrated book jacket in the history of mankind.

• Travis over at 100 Scope Notes covers a cover trend that doesn’t really have a name yet.  Displaced Typography sounds good to me.  Or maybe just Jumbled Typography.

• When I heard they were relaunching The Animorphs series, that made sense to me.  What I find interesting, though, is that the Publishers Weekly article Scholastic to Give Animorphs New Life credits only Katherine Applegate as the author.  True, the books were penned by K.A. Applegate, but I always heard that she co-wrote them with her husband Michael Grant (now best known as the author of the Gone series for teens, as well as The Mighty Twelve for kids).  Any particular reason they don’t mention him, I wonder?  Oh, and anyone else find the covers (which move, so maybe it’s not fair to judge them like this) kinda uber-creepy?  This doesn’t help either.

• How many children’s books were published last year?  That’s the kind of question you wouldn’t expect to receive an answer to.  Yet American Libraries Magazine actually came up with a number, and it’s a doozy.  Check it out, and then compare the number of children’s books out in a given year to the number of YA novels.  And folks wonder why I don’t review teen . . .

• Hrm.  And so the librarians continue to grapple with Google.  School Library Journal‘s recent piece Google Ebookstore Offers Librarians Limited Use shows that Google isn’t exactly opening its doors to librarians as it should.  It would be nice if that changed in the future.  I’ve no predictions one way or another if it will, though.

• You want to know what to get me for Christmas?  Well I’ve got just the thing!  Won’t cost you but $40,000 – $60,000 either.  Aw, c’mon.  Totally worth it.  Thanks to PW Children’s Bookshelf for the link.

• Daily Image:

Yup.  It’s a list of five Fictional Kids Books That Should Be Real.  Fun stuff.  And believe you me, making a bounty hunter out of cut paper can’t be all that easy.  Thanks to Barry Deutsch for the link!

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