Fusenews: “Who is Fishface, and where can I find him?”

• Required Reading of the Day: Roger Sutton already told you to read it, and now I’m backing him up.  If you have not cast thine eyes upon Christopher Myers’s piece Young Dreamers in which he talks about the Trayvon Martin decision as well as Christopher’s own role in the world of children’s literature and the ultimate black character in a red hoodie (The Snowy Day, of course) . . . well, it’s the best damn thing I’ve seen in a long time.

• Someday, when you have been very good and eaten all your peas and carrots, I will tell you the story of how my husband and I met. It’s a good tale. It involves Jimmy Stewart and library chase sequences and the human brain’s capacity to hold onto information for five years at a time.  I thought of my How We Met story when I saw the recent NPR piece Libraries’ Leading Roles: On Stage, On Screen, and in Song.  A lovely little ode to libraries in all their myriad forms, it will do your heart good to listen to it today.  Enjoy!

• In other news, Boing Boing recently discovered the real reason why E.B. White wrote Charlotte’s Web.  I thought I knew every Charlotte story but apparently I didn’t know this one.  It reminds me of the fate of the real Make Way for Ducklings ducks . . . but that is a tale for another day.

• If you know me then you know that even if I worked for the smallest library system in the continental United States I would still be talking about it day and night like it was the bee’s proverbial knees.  Instead, by some bizarre quirk of fate, I work for New York Public Library, big stone lions and all.  And so it is with a bit of pride that I direct you to this fun infographic of NYPL stats.  It’s just the fact, ma’am.  Just the facts.

• While Publishers Weekly’s Spring Sneak Previews are fun anyway, this batch is particularly keen.  You might want to check out that Candlewick section there.  Roundabout where it mentions, “Wild Things!: Acts of Mischief in Children’s Literature by Betsy Bird, Julie Danielson, and Peter Sieruta, a collection of essays offering a behind-the-scenes look at favorite children’s books.”  Woot!

Where be Mo?  Mo be not here.  Mo be away.  Far far away.  Bye-bye, Mo.

It’s sufficiently snarky and some of the questions are obviously just there for padding but Buzzfeed’s 22 Questions “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory” Left Unanswered is worth reading if only for Fishface and the “bean feast” alone.  I want a bean feast too now.  Thanks to 100 Scope Notes for the link.

Speaking of Buzzfeed, they’ve been good to us as of late.  If you haven’t read their 28 Things That Happened After the Harry Potter Books Ended, all corroborated by J.K. Rowling then you’re missing out.  Plus fan art is always cute.

Aw, heck.  I just can’t get enough of these lists.  Good thing too since NPR just released their The Ultimate Backseat Bookshelf: 100 Must-Reads For Kids 9-14.  Our own Travis Jonker of 100 Scope Notes served on the committee amidst such powerhouses as Rita Williams-Garcia, Linda Sue Park, and others.  Ah, to have been a fly on the wall for those conversations.  They cleverly make the series their own submissions and it’s a mix of old and new.  Mostly old but that’s no crime.

This past Newbery/Caldecott Banquet I had the unique pleasure of getting a chance to meet the winners of the 2013 Penguin Young Readers Group Award.  That’s the award that gives a $600 stipend to librarians who have never attended an ALA Annual Convention before.  Good news too.  The 2014 Penguin Young Readers Group Award is now taking submissions for next year.  Sign up, sign up!  What do you have to lose?

• Well, you’re just asking for trouble if you call your post 9 Popular Yet Terrible Kids Books.  The Baby on Bored blog at Babble gave it a go, and it begins well enough with the usual suspects (Giving Tree, Love You Forever, Skippyjon Jones, etc.  But around the point you’re seeing Green Eggs and Ham and Good Night, Gorilla, you sort of have to mentally check out.  Ah well.  Still makes for good reading.  Thanks to PW Children’s Bookshelf for the link!

• Daily Image:

In the event that your Nancy Pearl action figure is feeling a bit lonely, there is good news to be had.  LEGO has now created a librarian to their set.  Better still, her hair isn’t in a bun.

The crazy part of all this is that the book she is carrying is an oblique reference to the librarian movie Party Girl.  To understand more you must check out Mr. Librarian Dude’s magnificent post on the topic where he also creates an additional 28 other librarian LEGO characters.  Thanks to AL Direct for the link.

Filed under: Fusenews