Video Sunday: Happy Easter

My thinking on the matter is that if you can’t have baby rabbits in cups on Easter then when the heck can you have them?  Thanks to mom for the link.

So!  It’s yet another on and off cloudy day here in NYC, but we’re heartened by the rise in temperatures from windy cold to merely this-is-spring?-cool.  Hope y’all are having a great day, Easter or not.  Here to fill in your days are some links of the children’s literature variety.  Chocolate bunnies, I regret to say, are not included.

Recently Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast featured Philip Stead, husband of recent Caldecott winner Erin E. Stead, and an illustrator in his own right.  Phil’s got a new book coming out and so we have this trailer.  After having seen my own fair share of picture book trailers in my day, I’ve come to the decision that the most important thing you need to establish when making a preview of a 32-page book is tone.  You have to set the tone correctly.  If it’s a jokey book, you need a jokey tone.  If it’s a thoughtful book, you must somehow convey that through both your images as well as your music.  Philip actually performs the music in this particular trailer himself.  The result is a tone that makes me want to immediately grab the book off of the nearest shelf and read it.  Pity we’ll all have to wait until June.

Thanks to Jules for the link!

Of course the other method is to go behind the scenes when making your trailer.  Show a little of how it’s done.  You might get a sense of that with Jennifer Fosberry’s My Name is Not Alexander.

A third way would be to make it as much like a movie trailer as possible.  Now this is a video for The Melancholic Mermaid by Kallie George.  What’s strange is that while the video is CGI, the book’s illustrations are most certainly not.  It does do the job of getting kids to wonder what happens next, however.

Thanks to Kallie George for the link.

Someday I hope to do an official post on this kind of stuff.  Maybe even a presentation.  If we could categorize all the different kinds of book trailers out there and identify which ones do and do not work, that could help us to identify their purpose.

Now for some practical applications.  The sound isn’t great on this one, but if you’ve questions about the different comic book apps out there that direct the purchases of comics for the iPad, this is quite the informative piece.  It came in conjunction with the recent SLJ article Shazam! Comic Apps!: The top picks for viewing comics on the iPad.

Full credit to the Please Come Flying blog for highlighting the current Bowdoin College exhibit Pop-Ups: They’re Not Just for Kids! Located in Brunswick, Maine the exhibit looks to be one of the more complete collections I’ve seen.  But don’t take my word for it . . .

Thanks to Josephine Cameron for the link.

And though the bunnies at the beginning were sufficiently off-topic, let us end today with the infinitely soothing drawing machine.  The only way this could be better would be if you got to sit on one of those swings.

Thanks to Swiss Miss for the link.

Filed under: Videos