Fusenews: Zap! Pow! Zam! (Zam?)

Ruh-roh.  I’ve been having too much fun earning a living to leave enough time for blogging.  Time yet again for a super quickie point-by-point-without-the-details Fusenews!  Hold onto your hats . . .

Who are the artists overlooked by the Caldecott?  Elizabeth Bluemle has the scoop.

An East Harlem bookstore needs your help! Thanks to Heather Scott for the link.

• Can celebrities write good books for kids? One person points out that maybe they aid in giving illustrators a leg up.

• Everything in this Horn Book article Board-book-a-palooza by Cynthia K. Ritter I agree with.  Everything.

• Speaking of HB, Roger’s blog has a new format.  Love that bow-tied avatar of his.  Who drew it, I wonder?

• Don Tate has a fun piece about his time at the Highlights first illustrators intensive Founders workshop. He happened to stay in the same cabin that I did when I visited last summer.  I had no idea I’d stayed where Floyd Cooper had.  Fabulous!

• Don’t get me wrong.  I love Where’s Waldo but how dedicated am I?  Not this dedicated.  Yeesh!  Thanks to Molly O’Neill for the link.

• Dunno. If I were to find a title for this story of the 1500 pound Mo Willems sculpture of a pachyderm I think I would have gone with “Elephant and Piggie Iron”.  But that’s me.

• Who knew that random stills of that old Spider-Man cartoon could be this fun?  Particularly when they involve librarians.

Kseniya Yarosh, I tip my hat to thee.

• Beautiful vintage dust jackets from classic novels.  That Catcher in the Rye is particularly shocking to me.  Thanks to Mike Lewis for the link!

• That’s it. I’m making my own Funny Book prize.  This time for American books.  Because, quite frankly, they’re hard to write and I’m jealous of the Brits for getting to have their Roald Dahl Funny Prize.

• Was Ezra Jack Keats ambivalent about his Jewishness?  Marjorie Ingall investigates the matter while also pondering on blackness and fatness.  God, I love reading her articles.

• Book destruction.  Delightful delightful book destruction.

• What happens when Taylor Swift and Brian Selznick intersect?  Kidsmomo explains.

• That’s a bloody good idea.  The Guardian is having a competition for kids between 13 and 16, asking them to design a new Lord of the Flies cover.  Publishers in the States should follow suit.

• Shaun Tan has a new book with a title I’m particularly fond of.  Knowing Arthur A. Levine it’s probably just a matter of time until we get to see it here.

• I get interviewed by The Gatekeepers Post about my Amazon reviews.

• From Cynopsis Kids:

LaVar Burton, who hosted/produced Reading Rainbow, continues to help kids enjoy reading with the launch of RRKidz ( www.rrkidz.com ), a free app for iPad and select Android devices.  Designed to encourage kids to learn and explore through read, RRKidz will also offer a subscription service that will feature a library of e-books curated by Burton.  Founded by Burton and co-founder/Chief Strategy Officer Mark Wolfe (Terminator 3, K-19: The Widowmaker, Kinsey), RRKidz holds global rights to the Reading Rainbow brand through a partnership with series creator and a premier PBS station, WNED-TV (Buffalo, NY).  RRKidz’s CEO is Asra Rasheed, who co-founded and served as COO of video game rental service Gottaplay, and was co-founder and President of Thumb Media Group.  Raymonds Capital, a private investment company, led the first investment round, which also includes the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a foundation devoted to education and entrepreneurship.  RRKidz’s CTO is Duc Haba, with Sangita Patel serving as President/Digital Publishing.

• Daily Image:

Yup.  I agree.

If you’re going to have an image of Alice in Wonderland on your body, make it a Moser.  Thanks to Eliza Brown for the link.

Filed under: Fusenews