Fusenews: Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of Garbage Pail Kids and kings . . .

Happy Monday to you!  You want the goods?  I’ve got the goods.  Or, at the very least, a smattering of interesting ephemera.  Let’s do this thing.

First and foremost, you may have noticed the Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards were announced.  The BGHB Awards are some of the strangest in the biz since they encompass the nonexistent publishing year that extends from May to June.  How are we to use such an award?  No cash benefit is included.  And traditionally it has been seen as either a litmus test for future book awards or as a way of rectifying past sins / confirming past awards.  This year it’s a bit of a mix of both.  Both 2015 and 2016 titles appear on the list.  You can see the full smattering in full here or watch a video of the announcement here.  And, for what it’s worth, I served on the committee this year, so if you’ve a beef to beef, lay it on me.

Since this news item appeared on Huffington Post I’m not sure if it is in any way true.  If not, it’s still a lovely thought.  According to HP, the cover artist of Sweet Valley High takes commissions.  Just let that one sink in a little.  I’m not interested, though.  Call me when the cover artist of Baby-Sitters Club starts doing the same.

It’s odd that I haven’t linked to this before, but a search of my archives yields nothing.  Very well.  Whether or not you were aware of it, The Toast has The Giving Tree in their Children’s Stories Made Horrific series.  Shooting fish in a barrel, you say?  Not by half.  It’s not a new piece.  Came out three years ago, as far as I can tell.  And yet . . . it’s perfect.  The latest in the series, by the way, was a Frog and Toad tale.  Sublime.

This Week in Broadway: Tuck Everlasting is out. Wimpy Kid is in.

In other news vaguely related to theater, Lin Manuel-Miranda is slated to star in a 2018 Mary Poppins musical sequel.  And no, not on stage.  On the silver screen.  This, naturally, led to the child_lit listserv postulating over how this could be possible since P.L. Travers had a pretty strong posthumous grip on the rest of the Mary Poppins rights.

So I worked for New York Public Library for eleven years.  Eleven years can be a lot of time. During my tenure I observed the very great highs and very low lows of the system.  I like to think I knew it pretty well.  Now here’s a secret about NYPL: They’re bloody awful at telling you about all the cool stuff they have going on.  Always have been.  For example, I’m tooling about the NYPL site the other day when I see this picture.

I stare at it.  I squint at it.  And finally I cannot help but come to a single solitary conclusion . . . that’s my old boss!  There.  On the left.  Isn’t that Frank Collerius, branch manager of the Jefferson Market Branch in Greenwich Village?  Yup.  The Librarian Is In Podcast seeks to simply talk “about books, culture, and what to read next.”  Frank co-hosts with RA librarian Gwen Glazer and they’re top notch. I haven’t made my way through all of them yet.  I’m particularly interested in the BookOps episode since that’s where I used to work.  And look!  I had no idea that Shola at the Schomburg was on Sesame Street.

Howdy, libraries.  How’s that STEM programming coming along?  Care for some inspiration?  Then take a gander at the blog STEM in Libraries where “a team of librarians with a passion for creating fun and engaging STEM programs for library patrons of all ages,” have so far created fifty-seven different STEM program ideas.

A helpful reader passed this on to me, so I pass it on to you: “The latest New Yorker magazine, dated June 6 and 13, may be of interest to you, if you haven’t yet seen it. It’s the Fiction issue, and in it are some essays by 5 authors, each subtitled “Childhood Reading”…with memories of the books, articles, package labels, events from their childhoods that shaped their idea of what reading is and can be. Having read a couple of these so far, I thought of you, and decided to mention them to you, in case you don’t regularly look at the New Yorker, and might not see them.”  Thanks to Fran Landt for the link.

In other NYPL news, I miss desperately being a part of the 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing committee.  Fortunately, the folks on the committee recently confessed to the books they’re finding particularly good.  So many I haven’t see yet.  To the library!

Daily Image:

You know who won the Best Bookmark Left in a Library Book Award the other day?  That’s right.  This guy.  Check it out:

Sure beats finding bacon.  I was forbidden to own these guys as a kid, so I’ve placed this little fellow in a prominent place on my desk.  Who wants to bet money that some executive somewhere is trying to figure out how to bring these back?  Let’s see . . . the last time they were made they were illustrated by Art Spiegelman.  So if Pulitzer Prize winners are the only people who can draw them, my vote for the 21st artist goes to  . . . ah . . . wait a minute.  Maus is the only graphic novel to ever win a Pulitzer?!?

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