Fuse Gone Corporate

Why, hello there.

Don’t mind me.  I’m just going to poke and prod around the place.  Get a feel for it.  Test the floors.  Check the locks.  Bounce about on the sofa cushions.  You know.  Really dig in.

Change is scary but this is a nice little place for A Fuse #8 Production and I’m sure we’ll all get used to it.  It occurs to me that perhaps there are some of you out there who don’t know me.  If not, howdy.  I’m the newest addition to the School Library Journal blogger circle.  Yep.  Just me Amy Bowllan, Brian Kenney, Chris Harris, and Diane Chen (who, without knowing about this move, wrote a rather nice piece that’s up right now regarding me blogo).  I’ve been blogging for some time through Blogger, but SLJ made me an offer I just couldn’t refuse and here I am.  All shipshape and sea worthy.  As it were.

Okay.  I can link.  That’s good.  My ability to post pictures will come in time.  What does this superscript button do?
^{Ah. It makes tiny words. _{Both up and down.  How odd.}}

I’ll be toying around with a lot of these features this week.  As I do, feel free to give me some tips.  As faithful readers will note, my blogroll is missing.  In time it’ll come.  Plus, eventually my past posts will migrate over to SLJ, but for the moment they are now sitting adrift at my now bereft old site.  Lackaday.

Fun stuff to note.  First of all, my name is misspelled as I write this.  I can’t change that at the moment, but I’m sure that when you read this it’ll be okey-dokey.  I never really understood why people feel the need to put a second "e" in "Betsy".  It must say something about a person.  A spelling Rorschach Test.  Second, you’ll note that my head keeps popping up.  A lot.  It’s a fun picture, granted.  I don’t know if you can tell, but I’m resting my chin on the head of the Ugly Duckling right in front of the Hans Christian Andersen statue in Central Park.  Figured I had to work in some kidlit somehow.  Don’t bother clicking on it, though.  It doesn’t get any bigger.

My spell check isn’t kicking in on this site either.  That’s not good as I have an atroshuss way with words.  Ha.

Aw, who am I kidding?  Let’s do some posts, just for the heck of it!  I’ll crank this puppy up to 100 and see how fast she’ll go.  WOO-HOO!

So I’m in my library, minding my own business, and who should walk through the door but none other than newly minted fresh-as-a-daisy YA author Jay Asher!  Such a nice fellow.  I don’t usually note the nice guests to my library on my blog, but Jay has presented a fabulous encapsulation of the 4 Days & 4 Nights spent traipsing about the Big Apple.

There a nice little picture of Jay and myself in there.  What he fails to mention is that I was unable to give him a proper tour while he was there.  A class of sixty-some sixth graders literally entered the room ten seconds after I shook his hand and I had to conduct a Welcome to the Library presentation for them.  Sweet feller that he is, he gave me a lovely Disco Mermaids mug all the same. 

FYI, chickens.

No, really!  If you’ve a spare $1,200 to $1,800 floating about in your pocket, of course. 

I was recently drawn to a little place called Illustration House here in New York City.  If you select the Index By Artist you may note that a couple big name children’s illustrators are up for purchase.  The aforementioned George Cruikshank was the first I saw.  No?  How about a James Thurber instead?  The adult illustrators far outweigh those who did work for children’s publications, but it’s definitely worth a peek just the same.  Particularly if you happen to incline towards the "independently wealthy" end of the monetary spectrum.

Thanks to Drawn for the link.

Bookninja recently turned me onto a great article in the Guardian Unlimited called The name of the prose: what makes a great title?  It’s a worthy question.  Children’s book titles have to walk a delicate line.  Too looney and parents and children might both be turned off.  Too subtle and everyone remembers your book’s plot but can’t remember what title to tell the nice children’s librarian.  Ex: "It had a blue cover?  Does that sound right?  A blue cover?"

Of the memorable titles, just look at some we’ve seen coming out this year. 

• The Misadventures of Benjamin Bartholomew Piff: You Wish
• The Lemonade War
• The Broken Bike Boy and the Queen of 33rd Street
• A Girl, a Boy, and a Monster Cat
• 17 Things I’m Not Allowed to do Anymore
• Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

We’ve discussed what it is that makes a great children’s book cover, but titles require another set of muscles entirely.  I loved Reaching for Sun but darned if I forget the title every time I’m not looking at the book’s cover.  Ditto A Friendship for Today or last year’s Part of Me. Great books, but with titles that act like liquid mercury to the brain.  It’s worth thinking about, surely.

As first paragraphs go, this one from another recent Guardian article takes the cake:

The four lucky laureates included Anne Fine, Quentin Blake, Michael Morpurgo, and Jacqueline Wilson.  All worthy writer/illustrators one and all.  Not everyone was entirely pleased, it seems.  Said Anne Fine, she was, "seriously scared by the way she looked like the wicked stepmother in Snow White."  If she’s referring to the stepmother pre her cronification then that might be intended as a compliment.  Maybe.

I think this is an excellent idea, by the way.  We should holograph our own kidlit behemoths.  I say we start with Maurice Sendak.  Something tells me he might enjoy the creepy process in all the right ways.

So I’m in my library, minding my own business, and who should walk through the door but none other than newly minted fresh-as-a-daisy YA author Jay Asher!  Such a nice fellow.  I don’t usually note the nice guests to my library on my blog, but Jay has presented a fabulous encapsulation of the 4 Days & 4 Nights spent traipsing about the Big Apple.

There a nice little picture of Jay and myself in there.  What he fails to mention is that I was unable to give him a proper tour while he was there.  A class of sixty-some sixth graders literally entered the room ten seconds after I shook his hand and I had to conduct a Welcome to the Library presentation for them.  Sweet feller that he is, he gave me a lovely Disco Mermaids mug all the same. 

FYI, chickens.