Video Sunday: “And to prove it she bisected three young tourists from Utrecht”

Can’t tell you my relief when I realized that this was entirely on-topic.  I have Educating Alice to thank for this.  I listened to the video first and found myself thinking, “That sounds like Neil Gaiman.”  And then, “That singing voice sounds, in fact, PRECISELY like Neil Gaiman.”  Well, it is.  The creator of this video found out that, “Neil Gaiman and friends [were] making an album called ‘Nighty Night’ with 6 songs in 12 hours” explained in length here.  So she made a quickie animation to go with one of the songs.  Monica compares it to the work of Tom Lehrer.  I couldn’t agree more.  You can see a different version here or you can also listen to The Squirrel Suicide Song, if you like.

All right.  I’m always scouting for acting talent amongst the children’s authors.  Sometimes I feel like the internet is to books what MTV was to radio.  Suddenly, for a certain segment of the population, what you look like/how well you can act can have an effect on your book sales.  Or, at the very least, on your book trailers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_YsWwPpky8&feature=player_embedded

I know it’s not a When You Reach Me reference, but the removal of the note from the mouth still gave me that impression.  And no.  I did not change my last name to “Sparklepants”.  Thanks to Stephen Barbara for the link.  Jack should write a book with Mac Barnett and Dan Santat, just so we can see them cut loose in the video sphere.

Speaking of Santat, he’s not the only one to discover the wonders of video cloning.  Eric Luper goes a different direction with his own book trailer:

Movie time.  Remember when we discussed The Three Investigators earlier this week?  Grand times.  In any case, it’s a well-known fact that to this day the Germans love those books.  This film probably showed there, though I’m fairly certain it never made itself known here in the U.S.A.  Odd that.

My one objection?  What is it with films where they do away with the characters’ glasses?  Bob Andrews wears glasses, people.

While we’re on the subject of movies . . . well, who am I to stand on ceremony?

This next one isn’t going to make a lick of sense to the Yanks.  It’s probably the most Canadian of Canadian in-jokes of all time.  Even the premise is out of our sphere: What if Anne of Green Gables took place in Newfoundland instead of Prince Edward Island?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FANBD_sAisU&feature=player_embedded

Lots o’ in-jokes for the folks who used to watch the old Megan Follows version though.  Thanks to Kate Beaton for the link.

Oh.  Missed this one I did.  This is going out to all the librarians and teachers and booksellers who do regular storytimes.  I’ll have a hard time singing these next week:

One of my former bosses did a dramatic video of Where Is Thumbkin? which is, let’s face it, a very tragic song if done correctly.  Wish I had the video for THAT!  Thanks to Ann Baybrooks for the link.

And for the final off-topic video, let us go with this from Purdue University itself: “The 2011 Purdue University Rube Goldberg machine shattered the world record for most steps ever successfully completed by such a machine. In 244 steps the ‘Time Machine’ traces the history of the world from Big Bang to the Apocalypse before accomplishing the assigned everyday task of watering a flower.”

Thanks to Swiss Miss for the link!

Filed under: Videos