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Woot!  I’ve scraped and saved and slavered and after a couple weeks have culled together enough videos to constitute a truly lovely Video Sunday.  And since Halloween is near upon us (a holiday I will, strangely enough, be spending at an outside wedding in Maine) why not begin with the king of frightening children’s literature himself, Stephen Gammell.  Mental Floss recently released a post called 14 Terrifying Facts About Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.  Fine and good but the link to the documentary caught my particular eye . . .

Scary Stories (Official Trailer) from Cody Meirick on Vimeo.

As did the video they linked to showing how illustrator Stephen Gammell does his art.  Pretty amazing to see in process.

This next one’s a hoot. Author Steve Sheinkin, when he isn’t creating a comic styled interview series or writing National Book Award short list nominees is, apparently, doing some killer LEGO book trailers as well. Check this out. And since it features Nixon, yes indeed there is some slightly salty language.

Another book trailer, and this time for a book that I certainly hope will be getting some awards soon. The Martin Scorsese blurb is a nice touch.

That tune just slays me.

This next one is timed nicely with the Alice in Wonderland 150th anniversary.  It discusses Alice Hargreaves (the real Alice)’s trip to Columbia University in the 30s and has some very nice interviews with some of today’s Alice experts. It mentions things like a picture of Alice that was published in Punch before the book was officially published.  Be sure to get to the part where you can hear the real Alice’s voice.

For more information, just go here.

Writing parodies come.  Writing parodies go.  But writing parodies where the singer is thoroughly easy on the ears and parodies one of my favorite songs?  That’s just gravy.  As such . . .

Thanks to Watch. Connect. Read. for the link.

John August has signed on to write the script for a film adaptation of Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark.

August frequently collaborates with Tim Burton. Two of those movies were created for child audiences, The Corpse Bride (2005) and Frankenweenie (2012). At the moment, no director has been hired for this project.

Here’s more from Deadline: “The three-book children’s series that’s sold more than 7 million copies worldwide began with 1981′s Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark, continuing with More Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark (1984) and Scary Stories 3: More Tales To Chill Your Bones(1991). The collection of folk tales and urban legends also memorably haunted generations of youngsters with its surreal and nightmarish illustrations by award-winning artist Stephen Gammell.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

She’ll have a book contract within a week.  This was undoubtedly the most popular video of the past week, making the rounds amongst folks who (A) like cute French kids (B) like Winnie-the-Pooh and (C) are aware that Pooh books are strikingly lacking in “singes”.  Many thanks to BoingBoing for the link.

But really, this week 100 Scope Notes had all the good videos.  In fact, if you read your 100 Scope Notes regularly (as I know you should) then you’ve probably seen all of these already.  Like this young woman reading Fox in Socks faster than any human has ever been able to before.

What really stands out to me while watching that video is how remarkable Seuss’s writing is, was, evermore shall be.  He did something so original that it can never be effectively replicated.  Now I need to run off and read some Fox in Socks.

Oh, how adorable.  I’ve only attended the ALA Media Awards since they got huge.  But Travis managed to find an old C-Span video of the award announcement from way back in 2001.  A full ten years ago.  How time has changed things.  And did I hear Lisa Von Drasek screaming “Yes!” when Casey at the Bat was mentioned as a Caldecott winner?  I think I did.  In any case, these are always fun to watch, if only to hear the reactions from the audience.

Fabulous find, Travis!  Thanks to 100 Scope Notes for the link.

In this next one, I saw on Swiss Miss that a photographer had taken a lot of neat photographs around New York, many in Bryant Park behind my library.  I then discovered this video of how he made the photos.  The first one shown here is in the Bryant Park fountain.  Apparently they took some in my library as well (undoubtedly when the guards were looking the other way).  Here’s a video on how they were made.

Thanks to Swiss Miss for the link.

Booktrailer time.  Carolrhoda Books (in conjunction with Lerner) put out this great little quick look at how Stephen Gammell paints his newest creation Mudkin.  Gammell.  There is no one on this good green earth that kind paint like he can.  No one.