Not Your Space. MY Space.

I can’t read everything.  Stuff is bound to slip through the cracks sometimes.  Still, while looking at a MySpace page for a fictional character today I couldn’t help but notice that there are whole library systems out there with pages of their own.  Hennepin County Library has one.  Central Falls Free Public Library another.  Even the Enoch Pratt Free Library comes up.  I stand amazed.  I also couldn’t help but wonder how a library system decided on whether they were male or female.  Hennepin and Central Falls both decided that female was the way to go.  Enoch Pratt, helped by the masculine name, decided to fall on the XY side of the equation.  New York Public Library, suffice it to say, does not have a MySpace page, nor will they for some time, I suspect.  Still, it’s interesting to watch.  I wonder how widespread this phenomenon is at this point in time.

No, no.  Not that one. The one of the Drew persuasion. I’m referring of course to everyone’s second favorite girl sleuth (number two to Trixie Belden, of course).  Today we’re playing a little point counterpoint with the release of Nancy’s new movie. In the one corner we’ve Sandhya Nankani who entered the film with skepticism and ending up liking it (it’s the June 15th post). In the other, the New York Times review, that says that Ms. Roberts portrayed the role, "with more pluck than brilliance" and that the film "corrupts the clean, functional, grown-up style of the books with the kind of cute, pseudo-smart self-consciousness that has sadly become the default setting for contemporary juvenile popular culture produced by insecure, immature adults." Mmm. That’s A.O. Scott ah-talking there. What I’ve noticed from both reviews is that there’s no mention of Bess and George. Am I the only one who was hoping against hope that they’d have made the cut? Why include Ned anyway? I want boyish George and plump Bess, dammit!

If you haven’t already done so, those of you who claim to be fans of the book should immediately go and read Leila Roy’s summaries of the first eight Nancy Drew mysteries.  Then turn about and read Monica’s posting Not My Nancy Drew, But So What?

I don’t actually know if this will work, but I think I might be able to swing the existence of YouTube videos on my new site.  Bear with me as I test this theory out.

So what struck my fancy this week video-wise?  Well, first and foremost was this mighty odd piece of news found via Children’s Illustration.  The Charles M. Schulz Musem and Research Center (who knew?) received a kind of gift on 9/10/01.  Bad timing, perhaps, but an interesting gift.  Say they, "the delivery of a wall of original Schulz art from the Colorado home of Polly and Stanley Travnicek. The wall arrived by special truck at a Schulz storage facility in Santa Rosa, where it was stored until its installation in the Museum."  I took a gander at the slideshow of the removal and couldn’t help but wonder why they called it "original Schulz art" when so many of the images were undoubtedly lifted from Little Golden Books.  Still, if you want to see a small blurry version of them removing the large brown creation, look no further.

Gail Gauthier was pondering the existence of book trailers this week.  She wondered if they made any difference in the world at all, which is probably a pretty legitimate question.  Personally, I don’t there’s any way to calculate that kind of thing.  What I do know is that when I show someone a booktrailer, the title of the story sticks in their mind more effectively than if I just recommended it out of the blue.  Now, as Gail was asking all of this, she began to get into the very definition of the term itself.  I mean, we’ve seen separate YouTube trailers for books, but could an intro on a website like this could be considered the same kind of beastie?  Hard to say.

Thanks to Book Moot this YouTube video of early early Jim Henson came to light.  You know I don’t usually post ads, but I suspect that you’re not going to all go out and purchase La Choy chow mein after viewing this.  It is notable for the following reasons.

1. It contains Jim Henson talking about Playboy (albeit briefly)
2. It shows Kermit the Frog getting eaten. Repeatedly.
3. Jim Henson was rather hot as a young man.
4. There are go-go boots.  How can you say no to go-go boots?

There is also a rather lovely book trailer here for Mitali Perkins’ new title First Daughter: Extreme Makeover.  I always like to work in one book trailer per week, if I can.

Simon & Schuster has finally launched its BookTV YouTube site. I was rather amused by the frozen still from the Susan Patron piece they did. I’m sure the woman pictured there is perfectly nice, but Susan Patron she is not. And there are no other children’s book-related videos at this time (oddly).

Finally, in the realm of Ads We Begrudgingly Like Because They Make Us Hungry, Diane Duane directed me to this.

Yum yum yum yum yum.