Fusenews: Goodbye Goodbye, Columbus

Oh, you think the award season is done, old bean?  Why we have only but BEGUN to hand out the 2011 awards!  The Newberys, Caldecotts, and other ALA Media Awards are just the tip of the old iceberg.  There are so many others to explore.  For example, did you get a chance to really examine the 2012 Notable Children’s Books list from ALSC that was recently released?  Absolutely fascinating stuff.  Some books delight, some baffle, and some I’ve not even heard of.  To the library!  Don’t forget that the Sydney Taylor Awards were given out recently too.  Offered to books that “authentically portray the Jewish experience” there were twenty-eight for 2011 alone.  Woot!  The Scott O’Dell Award went to a book that’s a bit better known since this past Monday.  Fun Fact: That award hasn’t gone to a Newbery Award winner since 1998’s Out of the Dust.  Then on the mystery side of the things the Edgar Award nominations were released.  I adore that they distinguish between “Juvenile” and “Young Adult” books.  Icefall is a particularly clever inclusion (I hadn’t categorized it as a “mystery” but I suppose that it is in the old-fashioned sense of the term).  Heck, I’m surprised they didn’t include Dead End in Norvelt as well.  And if I’m not mistaken, at some point here the American Indian Youth Literature Awards for 2012 should be released.  Anyone know roundabout when that might be?

• Meanwhile, other blogs have been doing their post-ALA Award round-ups as well.  There are many to pick and choose from, but I think I’ll highlight the Seven Impossible Things post that shows some prototypes from A Ball for Daisy and Travis at 100 Scope Notes who gives everything a once over.

• Who told me about this on Twitter?  Was it you, Rocco?  Or you, Mr. Schu?  Whoever it was I’m still puzzling it over.  Basically it boils down to five words: Sweet. Valley. High. Television. Musical. Throw in Diablo Cody and the guys behind Next to Normal and . . . words, for once, fail me.

• Now here’s a post that would catch anyone’s eye: AICL Coverage of Arizona Law that resulted in shut down of Mexican American Studies Program and Banning of Books.  Debbie Reese of American Indians in Children’s Literature has an in-depth and exhaustive post on the topic entitled Teaching critical thinking in Arizona: NOT ALLOWED.  I encourage you to take a look at both and to see what’s being done (and not done) at this moment in time.

• The Eric Carle Museum did their Photo Year in Review for 2011 and I’m in it!  Looking halfway human and everything!  Bonus.

• An excellent round-up of unexpected children’s authors over at the blog We Too Were Children, Mr. Barrie.  Many of these I’ve heard of but there are certainly a couple that sounded new to me.  Eleanor Roosevelt?  I had no idea.  Don’t know how I missed this one for so long.

• Along very similar lines you’ve got your Unexpected Inspirations Behind Beloved Children’s Books courtesy of The Atlantic.

• Maybe it sounds odd, but what do published authors of books for kids miss the most about being unpublished?  It’s an odd question but it sparks some really great answers over at Project Mayhem.  Great title too: Rushing towards that dream? Wait.

• Amen, sister.  Amen.

Oh!  Remember the other day when I posted that screen shot from Mad Men and asked you guys to tell me what book was featured?  Well, those of you who said The Twenty-One Balloons were dead on the money.  I admit to you that when I saw that cover I thought the balloons were puppy faces.  My bad.  Billy Parrott blogs about the solution and even includes images that prove how right y’all were.  Clever readers.  I don’t know what I’d do without you.

I’m not particularly girly.  Make-up is not an everyday occurrence.  I don’t understand the nature of handbags or why they need to be purchased.  I like shoes but tend to buy the pairs I need one at a time rather than simultaneously.  Yet I did find this post on gowns on YA novels compelling.  Sometimes for fun I like to show historical YA novels to my friend who works with costumes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  I think she’d get a kick out of this piece too.

• I’m not a betting woman, which is good because while I thought that there’d be a big old dust-up over the Daily Mail’s piece bewailing Walter Dean Myers the real controversy that erupted recently was best summarized in the PW piece Should Authors and Agents Weigh In on Citizen Reviews? Long story short: No.

• And from Cynopsis Kids, a l’il ole something to make the liquid in your eyeballs fizzle:

Filed under: Fusenews