Fusenews: Posthuman Pooh

Today on the Fusenews we begin with a mystery. Help me out here, gentle readers, I need your crowdsourced wisdom to solve a query for the ages. Every week I get my new copy of Publishers Weekly and settle down during my lunch break to read it cover to cover. It is one of my favorite things to do.  A relatively new feature of PW is “Last Week’s Top Reviews” where they show the book reviews that got the most hits on their website. Cool, right?  Only there’s something odd going on.  Every single solitary week this book appears in the Top Five:

I haven’t read this Caldecott Honor title in years.  As I recall it’s lovely, but why is it consistently a top sought review? I know that summer reading lists might be part of the answer, but why this book and not another?  Anyone that can clear up the mystery will have my ever lovin’ gratitude.

Happy news! Have you been interested in getting a copy of my book FUNNY GIRL signed but don’t want to trek all the way to Chicago to have me put pen to paper?  Well tonight (Thursday, July 27th) at 5:30 CST I will be interviewed by the magnificent Andrew Medlar on Author’s Voice online.  It’s a live feed so I’ll sign books for you, talk with Andrew, and generally have the time of my life. Come watch it all here, if you can. Andrew’s a blast, so this is gonna be good!

This has only the most tangential connection to children’s literature but I think it has a lot to say about what we read when we’re kids. Particularly, when we’re at the very beginning of the adolescent process. Booklist editor Daniel Kraus is currently embarking on a 10-week long process of reading Stephen King’s IT. The reasons have a lot to do with how Kraus came to the book as a kid. Regardless of whether or not you’ve an interest in the title, Kraus’s encapsulations are worth the price of admission.

To work as a children’s librarian in a library is to do something significant in the youth of a child and to often never see how that story plays out in the end. That adorable 2-year-old that came to all your storytimes for three straight years? What ever happened to that kid? There are so many memorable kids I’ve worked with over the years and then just never saw again that when I read the Salon article Millennials Are the Biggest Public Library Visitors, I felt this cathartic kind of release.  Millennials are using the libraries in droves. Does this mean that they all did craft time when they were kiddos? Probably not. It might even say more about the current state of the economy, but I like to think that it’s a reflection on the great work of children’s librarians nationwide over the years. Well done, everybody!  Well done.

I don’t usually call out PW deal announcements, but this one was different. May well be the best “meets” I’ve seen in 2017. Behold:

You know anyone that seeks chapter submissions for an edited volume celebrating the centenary in 2026 of A. A. Milne’s The World of Pooh and who calls their post Posthuman Pooh: Edward Bear after 100 Years has got to be interesting.

Picture books. Occasionally they summit. That’s a verb, right?  No?  Ah well.  You can better understand my confusion when I tell you that there’s this upcoming Picture Book Summit on October 7th that will be featuring talks by Adam Rex, Carole Boston Weatherford, and Tomie dePaola amongst many others.  It’s virtual so you don’t actually have to physically be there. More information can be found here.

“I have a near constant sense that everything is for nothing and all the choices I have made have been disastrous.” That would be Daniel Handler talking with Blast Magazine about the adaptation of the Lemony Snicket books to Netflix. To be completely honest with you, I must warn you that it ends on a dreadful pun. That said, I have to commend Madeline Knutson, the interviewer, with coming up with some particularly interesting questions that I haven’t seen Mr. Handler tackle before. One of particular note came when she asked if he met any authors when he was a child that influenced him. His answer is the writer Marilyn Sachs, who died earlier this year and influenced how he interacts with children today.

Daily Image:

If you know me then you know that I’ve had a crush on Gene Wilder since I was just an itty bitty bit of a thing. My affection for him never waned. I am true blue to Gene. You can imagine my delight then when I saw that on io9 they linked to Dark Hall Mansion where they’ll be selling these Willy Wonka posters this Friday, July 28th. There are four different kinds to chose from but this one’s my favorite *cough cough*:

See the other posters here.

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