Video Sunday: What no one tells beginners

I wonder how much of my readership is at the Midwinter ALA Convention right now.  Probably a big old chunk.  That’s okay.  Those of us stuck at home can make our OWN fun, even as we obsessively chew our nails in anticipation of tomorrow’s big ALA Media Awards announcements.  This video should be enough to start us off. It’s such a silly premise (I love the idea of a walking talking Margaret Wise Brown) that you can’t help but love it.

Thanks to Educating Alice and Jules for the link.

Next up, some writing advice, maybe specifically picture book writing advice (though a lot of it applies to writers in general) from Mr. Ira Glass.

I once attended an 826NYC event where you could play blackjack with Ira Glass.  Needless to say, the man intimidated the hell out of me, and I never went within 12 feet of him.  Ended up playing Jon Scieszka at Connect 4 all night instead.  Good times.

Did you not attend John & Hank Green’s moment of triumph at Carnegie Hall?  No?  Were you, like myself, harboring the world’s worst cough at home instead (a theme for the day)?  Then fear not!  The full presentation in all its rad glory is here for the viewing, start to finish.  An evening of awesome indeed.

Folks.  You’ve gotta stop letting me know about cool stuff all at the same time.  I have a hard time holding on to cool links for future weeks.  I wanna just get it all down NOW NOW NOW.  Case in point, this Oliver Jeffers video.  Geez.  Ironic forms of transportation and everything.

Thanks to Don for the link.

This next bit came to me in a press release but since it has a lot to do with video in general I’m slapping it in here.  Check it out:

The National Coalition Against Censorship is inviting everyone to participate in its annual Youth Free Expression Project film contest in a new way: by casting their vote for this year’s People’s Choice Award. Pick out the video that you feel best exposes the dangers of book censorship and show your love by liking it on YouTube.

This year’s theme of “You’re Reading WHAT?!?!” asked contestants to create a short video about a time when an adult tried to censor something they were reading, or a book-banning incident in the news that involved young people. We encouraged entrants to show off their video-making skills and to use their creativity, so take into consideration content, artistic and technical merit, as well as a willingness to think outside the box.

Come one, come all: students, teachers, librarians, authors, anyone with a love for free speech and good books—check out our 12 amazing semifinalist videos and vote for your favorite.

Voting is easy. View the videos here, then sign into your Gmail, Google or YouTube account and click “like” on your favorite video’s player window. The movies can also be viewed and liked on our 2012 YFEP Film Contest Playlist on YouTube. The video with the most “likes” will be declared the People’s Choice winner. The deadline for casting votes is February 15 at 5 p.m. EST.

And since this week has been just SUCH a great video week for me, even my off-topic video is a bit on-topic.  A year or two ago I posted a video of Jimmy Fallon singing the theme song to Reading Rainbow in the style of Jim Morrison.  Well, that version was pulled from the internet relatively swiftly, so if you didn’t see it there it’s gone, man, gone.  Fortunately, there’s such a thing as second chances as here we can see a stripped down version of the same song with a little backstory to boot.  It feels good to send you off with this.

Filed under: Videos