Video Sunday: Hey, you like Turkish Delight as much as I do

Oh, wow.  Just . . . wow.  Some of you may already be aware of the Boogie Woogie blog, run by author/illustrator Aaron Zenz and his three kids.  The fact that it may be the best blog out there in which kids participate in the discussion of children’s literature is evidenced by nothing so much as today’s video.  I hope you stayed for the credits.  This is their contribution to the James Kennedy 9o-Second Newbery Film Festival (to be held in my library in November) and if it doesn’t rock your socks off, nothing will.  Failing that, James received some more submissions on his blog the other day, including this magnificent take on The Witch of Blackbird Pond from Mrs. Mrs. Powell’s 5th grade class at Laurelhurst School in Portland Oregon.

Remember, folks, to get you kids’ classes involved!  Have them make a video of their own and submit!  I admit that the bar is high, but there’s a lot of great stuff going down.  We’d love more submissions.  Keep ’em coming!!!

Speaking of contests, I was tipped off about this fantastic video contest the Ottawa Public Library held for its teens.  The Teen Tech Video Contest may sound like it’s YA fare, but many of the videos submitted were definitely of children’s books.  And of the children’s books they covered, my favorite (hands down) was this take on The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe:

It came it second to The Outsiders which, this being Ottawa, says that they are on the “outside” of society in a delightfully Canadian way.  Be sure to check out some of the other videos going on there.  These Ottawa teens have some mad talent.  Big time thanks to Jane Venus for bringing these to my attention.

Picture book trailer time.  I think the genius behind this take on the Katie Davis book Kindergarten Rocks is the first child featured here.  Methinks the the child doth protest too much.  In any case, if your cute kid quotient is low for the day, here is the perfect cure:

Now for some of my favorite people all on a stage at the same time.  As a member of PEN I was disappointed to miss the recent panel at the World Voices Festival of International Literature concerning children’s book writers.  Fortunately, PEN was clever enough to tape the panel.  Here then you can see beloved Jenny Brown (of Shelf Awareness) moderating Giaconda Belli, Peter Lerangis, and Rebecca Stead. The discussion is about voice in children’s literature.  Fascinating stuff.  Like being there, really.

Geez.  Way to raise the bar on video reviews, New York Times.  Don’t know if you’ve noticed but the Times has started doing these kind of amazing interview connection videos.  This one brings together the two simultaneous Jane Goodall biographies and then proceeds to speak not just with Patrick McDonnell (author of my beloved Me…Jane), not just Jeanette Winter (author of The Watcher) but also Jane Goodall herself!  My apologies for the ad at the start but this is kind of amazing.

I’ll just throw these in here for fun.  I recently spoke on the Fireside Chat podcast about Hunger Games and they’ve turned my section of the talk into little videos.  So in case you find yourself possessed by some wild and uncontrollable desire to find out what a children’s librarian thinks of the future of the series (in terms of pop cultural awareness) your odd prayers have been answered:

And finally, if you watch Community then you must have seen the Star Wars paintball finale.  With that in mind, I recently stumbled across TWO very amusing Star Wars videos.  I suspect that a person could make a blog entirely out of Star Wars-based YouTube videos and have plenty of material for years to come.  Just the same, I absolutely adored these, so I figured I’d show ’em both at once.  First up, an existentialist Star Wars:

That’s for you guys in need of a Sartre fix.  For those of you who want something a little lighter, Star Wars as retold by someone who’s never seen the films.

Thanks to mom for the link.

Filed under: Videos