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Morning folks. I’ll start today with a video that contains some classy tunes. It’s my recent interview with Eric Rohmann about his new book GIANT SQUID. Delicious delicious giant squids. Sorry. This interview occurred on a day when I was half hoping the staff recording the interview would have a big steaming plate of calamari waiting for me. Twas not to be.

Britain’s doing that thing again. That thing where they throw a bunch of celebrities into a video for charity. I could recognize about 5.5 of them. You may have better luck in the end. How did Brittany get in there, by the way?

Hmmm. Boyz II Men plus The Snowy Day? Sure! What the heck. I’ll bite. This is for the new Amazon Prime Video holiday special. Oddly, it was the only clip from the special I was able to find online.

Oops!  Did I not post KidLit TV’s live presentation of School Library Journal’s Best of 2016 list!  Where are my manners?

And finally for the off-topic videos, Matt (the resident husband) had two more new one about the process of writing.  First up, finding that odd moment of humanity in your characters . . .

Second up, fun with exposition!

I do not know where Monica Edinger found our first video today.  All I know is that she discovered a video that is absolutely the most interesting thing you’ll see all week.  It’s a young Maurice Sendak.  He’d recently won the Caldecott for Where the Wild Things Are.  I’ve never seen anything like this before.  And who knew you could kinda sorta flip Pierre?

Thanks to educating alice for the link.  If you have a Margaret Wise Brown  interview hidden away somewhere I’d be happy to take it off your hands.  Ditto a copy of Pinocchio illustrated by Mussino.  He makes a strong case.

Not long ago I mentioned that Dan Gutman’s book The Kid Who Ran for President was notably talked up on Last Week Tonight (John Oliver’s show).  Now I’ve heard that the book was reportedly the most read review on pw.com last week.  It would be a shame not to show the video in question.  Here it is then, in all its Gutmanesque glory:

This just in! “Carla D. Hayden will be sworn in as the 14^th Librarian of Congress in a historic ceremony in the Thomas Jefferson Building Wednesday, Sept. 14 at noon. The ceremony will be broadcast live on the Library of Congress YouTube channel. The YouTube broadcast will be captioned.”  So it’s not up yet, but if you’ve time this Wednesday you might want to tune in and see it for yourself.  She is, after all, the first Librarian of Congress to have an actual library degree in over 50 years.

Here’s a fun one for the Dahl fans. In this hour-long video, David Walliams presents a celebration of Roald Dahl’s children’s books, from The BFG to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  It also happens to include contributions from Steven Spielberg and Julie Walters.

Thanks to Zoe Toft for the link.

Why did the PBS News Hour feature Christian Robinson recently?  I care not.  All that matters is that he’s great to listen to.

Thanks to Elisa Gall and Aunt Judy for the link.

And for the off-topic video of the day, I’m hat tipping Brian Biggs for passing this along.  I like a video that doesn’t pound you over the head with its message.  This sort of connects well to my recent interview with Mr. Biggs where we discussed gender roles in children’s books.  As they say in this video, have a think in your head.

Thanks to Brian for the video.

Aww. Didja miss these? It’s not like I see as many videos these days, y’know. Not for lack of interest. They just don’t float in front my nose the way they used to. Fortunately there are a couple that I’ve collected in my travels and I’m featuring them here today. They may be a bit old. You may have seen them 100 times before. But what the hey, right? Life is short.

First up, ALSC released the Newbery/Caldecott/Wilder reaction videos.  Grab your popcorn and enjoy:

I just saw this next trailer online (thank you, Monica!) and I cannot convey to you the avarice I hold for anyone who has already seen this.  It’s Matt Phelan’s latest.  And it’s gorgeous:

Another trailer to follow.  True, the violin brings to mind a kind of Ken Burns-y feel. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

A couple months ago young Marley Dias put out the call for middle grade black girl books. I missed the fact that she appeared on Ellen. Problem alleviated!

Thanks to Rita Williams-Garcia for the link.

I do not wish to take away from Travis Jonker his drop dead amazing compilation of peculiar I WANT MY HAT BACK videos he compiled.  So I will just put one here and tell you to go to his site to see the rest.

This does my little 1984 heart good.

It’s summer.  Everyone’s making summer reading videos.  This is my library’s.  My superintendent is sitting on a slide (at Penny Park, clearly).  It gives me great respect for the man.  Plus, check out that logo at the end.  I hate to say it, guys, but I think my library hosts the most attractive summer reading t-shirt this year.

Hm.  That would make a good blog post. . . .

And just to round this all out in a nice way, here’s the book trailer for Evan Turk’s The Storyteller (one of the most beautiful picture books of the year):

Happy 4th of July!

2014 marked a distinct increase in attention spent on children’s books with diverse characters. However, this is not to say that all books with diverse characters got the same amount of attention.  Take, for example, Saving Baby Doe by Danette Vigilante.  It was one of the only middle grade books in 2014 to sport a Latino boy protagonist (go on . . . name me two others in 2014).  It had great writing as well, so why has almost no one talked about it?  NYPL put it on their 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing list and recently our local station NY1 interviewed Staten Island resident Ms. Vigilante about the book in our Stapleton branch.  Watch carefully and you may see me in my cameo role as “New York Public Library” itself.

You better watch out, you better not cry. You better not pout, I’m telling you why. 90-SECOND NEWBERY FILM FESTIVAL IS COMING TO TOWN!!!  You can see the full listing of where the festival is headed here.  In the meantime, here’s one of the new videos.  Is it bad that it actually scared me?  It’s a bunch of kids doing The Graveyard Book (The Dance Macabray as kickline = inspired) but I had the same reaction to it that I had to Shaun of the Dead.  I honestly found parts of it (the sleer) scary.  I is wimp!!

Maybe I’ve been reading The Lorax to my kiddo too much but you know what this is, don’t you?

It’s a Thneed! Thanks to Aunt Judy for the video.

Have you seen the latest trailer for a new version of The Little Prince?  For the first 30 seconds or so of this you’re going to be confused, possibly angry.  Stick with it.  Please.

Beats Bob Fosse as The Snake, anyway.  Then again, points docked for not having any Gene Wilder. (Fun Fact: Most movies are docked points for this very reason)

No no no no no. Not allowed.  I call foul.  Illustrators have enough talent as it is.  They are NOT allowed to also be excellent authors and even if they happen to be precisely that they are NOT allowed to have pitch perfect voices that can read selections from their books with all the vocal skills of the highest paid celebrity.  Back you go, Chris Riddell.  Ply your magic dulcet tones elsewhere.

A Reading with Chris Riddell: The Wyrmeweald Trilogy – Returner’s Wealth from Beth Sabey on Vimeo.

At this point there are too many fantastic 2015 picture books out there to tell you about.  Thank goodness some of them make book trailers, then.  For example, have you heard about Kathi Appelt’s fabulous When Otis Courted Mama, illustrated by Jill McElmurry?  If not then remedy is at hand:

Now another trailer.  As blurbs go, “This book smells great” may be my pick of the week.

And for the off-topic video of the day, it’s a Swing vs. Hip Hop dance off from Montreal.  As my friend Marci put it, “the first swing round is sort of meh but it gets better.”

Thanks to Marci for the link.

The We Need Diverse Books campaign has kicked it up a notch with an Indiegogo campaign. They’re raising money to support authors, diversify classrooms, develop educational kits, promote diverse programming, you name it.  As of my writing this they are $40,000 or so away from their goal.  Check it out:

Diverse Campaign w Thanks Card from Undercurrent on Vimeo.

And now for something completely different.  Cookie Monster has parodied Harry Potter and Hunger Games (not to mention Star Wars).  Dare we hope Twilight is on the horizon?  Because I would pay a lot of money to hear him say, “Climb onto me back, little spider monkey.”

It was Travis at 100 Scope Notes who alerted me to the Vine illustrator videos at The Guardian.  There are lots there to choose from so I had a hard time figuring out which one to show here.  In the end I went with James Mayhew.  Lovely stuff.

Thanks to Travis for the link!

Moomins! Rivera Moomins! In Finnish, yes? Beautifully done.

By the way, when I die I’m coming back as one of Aaron Zenz’s kids.  A strange ambition but after watching this video can you blame me?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WNNJGJqnCA

I don’t think I need to tell you children’s librarians out there what a perfect fall craft this would be.  And talk about cheap!  Here are some additional photos of their creations.  These kids once did some Giant Dance Party fan art that I treasure to this day.  And as a side note, how cool is it that they watched Exit Through the Gift Shop as a family?

All I can say about this next Alice in Wonderland inspired video is that I am SO grateful I didn’t watch this while on any kind of drugs.  Lordy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGfNSitVQFM&feature=embed

Thanks to Marci for the link.

I don’t think I need remind any of you that this past week BookOps (the combined technical services of New York Public Library and Brooklyn Public Library) engaged in a sort-off with the Kings County Library system. You were all watching the play by play on your phones, right? Right? No? Hm. Well, in any case, I am happy to report that this year we won our trophy back.  It was a close race but that’s how we get it DONE, SON!  Now you can see this drone video of our freakin’ awesome sorter here, but if you’d like to check out the competition the following video shows a sorter very much like our own (and a Collection Specialist doing my job to a tee).

Granted, we don’t have a machine named “Mustang” in our building, but we’re still pretty cool.

I agree with Jezebel that Samuel Jackson’s reading of Go the F*** to Sleep is as good as it gets, but LeVar Burton reading it fulfills some deep hitherto unknown need in my soul. Do I really have to warn you about the language in this?

As for our off-topic videos, this one got me to thinking about how these goofy little internet videos often strip down a famous song to its most essential elements, and make it clear how strong the original melody really was.  I think it was Weird Al who pointed out that he could only parody songs that had a distinctive melody. Case in point:

Currently I am maxing and relaxing in Stratford, Ontario enjoying a play or two.  Just kidding.  By my calculations what I’m actually doing as you read this is driving hell-for-leather out of Canada back to New York City while seated in a rental car’s back seat next to a 3-year-old and a 13-week-old.  For hours.  And hours.  And hours.

As you digest that pleasant little mental image (fun fact: someone in this car gets carsick regularly and it’s not me) I’m going to do you a solid.  In case you missed it, we’ve been soliciting authors for special behind-the-scenes tidbits and facts about their 2014 books.  These appear one a day on our Wild Things blog (the blog that celebrates Wild Things: Acts of Mischief in Children’s Literature).  So enjoy what we’ve posted so far and stay tuned because there’s a LOT more where these came from!

First up, a video so good you’d swear we paid to have it made.  It’s N.D. Wilson talking gators, football, burning sugarcane fields, and there’s a live recitation of Beowulf in here to make the ladies swoon (the Beowulf lovin’ ladies . . . which is to say my friend Lori Ess):

Christian Robinson was up next and he brought some thoughtful consideration to the depiction of nontraditional families:

Bethany Hegedus followed and her talk touched on spelling errors and matchmaking:

When authors and illustrators asked what kind of video to do I always pointed them to this video of Steve Light.  His talk involves runaway primates, which is as awesome as it sounds:

And speaking of primates, Katherine Applegate was a true class act, appearing alongside primate keeper Jody Carrigan to discuss Ivan the gorilla’s more mischievous streak:

How great is Jack Gantos?  We asked the man to plug his book and he plugged ours instead!  Class act, that one:

Greg Neri came by to talk about the five things you might not know about Johnny Cash, Letterman style:

Jon Scieszka put on a fez.  Would that everyone did.  A fez just makes everything good:

Lisa Brown’s art may contain the only time in history this particular piece of furniture has appeared in a picture book:

Aaron Starmer told a magnificent story from his own youth that will honestly make your heart bleed a little:

And today we have Lauren Castillo, featuring an editor beloved to many:

Like I say, there are many more to come.  Perhaps your favorite will be up soon!

A couple thoughts on that video. First off, it is sung by author Deborah Underwood (whatta pretty pretty voice, eh?) and editor Arthur A. Levine (whatta pretty pretty voice, eh?) at what Vimeo calls an “agency retreat in Brandon, Vermont”. So I had to wonder what precisely an “agency retreat” really is.  Well, there’s a perfectly logical explanation for it right here.  I wouldn’t mind having the chance to go on a retreat but what I really want is to be in a band.  Anyone wanna start one with me?  I can’t play any instruments but I do know all the word to “Shoop” by Salt n’ Pepa.  Does that count for anything?

And now, ladies and gentlemen . . . . why we love LeVar Burton.

Thanks to Jules for the link!

Our Kickstarter video of the day (since we always have at least one per Video Sunday these days) is a good one.  Remember the Slate article that came out earlier this year called “This Is What a Librarian Looks Like”?  Well the fellow behind the piece wants to go to ALA and do something with a huge swath of librarians.  And for a modest sum of $3,000 too.  Granted he’s already doubled his goal, but no reason why he shouldn’t triple it, eh?

Oh my! A hat tip as well as a big thank you to Travis Jonker for locating this video of author/illustrator John Hendrix. As a big time fan of his work, I found this a real treat.

Thanks to 100 Scope Notes for the link.

I wasn’t able to make Book Expo this year and, by extension, wasn’t able to attend the BEA Children’s Breakfast.  So this Mem Fox speech at said breakfast is NOT persuading me that I wasn’t missing anything, people.  Doggone it.

And for your off-topic video of the day, ain’t nothing hotter than women who make classical musical funny and incredibly difficult all at the same time.  Love this stuff.

Here we are in the glory of spring.  With all the beauty just ah-popping outdoors, what better time to sequester ourselves inside to watch mad videos about children’s literature related affairs?

So first and foremost, you may have seen me make mention of the fact that I had a podcasting-related Children’s Literary Salon last weekend.  My Lit Salons are monthly gatherings of children’s literature enthusiasts who come to the main branch of NYPL to watch me finagle different topics out of incredibly interesting people.  People often ask me to record these, but at this time there is no place online for such talks to live.  Happily, that problem was solved recently when Katie Davis (Brain Burps About Books) , John Sellers (PW KidsCast), and Matthew Winner (Let’s Get Busy) came over and Matthew recorded the whole dang thing.  This is, insofar as I know, the very FIRST time a moderated event has covered this particular topic (children’s literature podcasts).  With that in mind, enjoy!

“John Newbery ate every single book he ever read”.  That was going to be my subtitle for today’s blog post.  I may still have to use it at some point because it’s one of the highlights of this James Kennedy / Libba Bray interaction at the recent 90-Second Newbery show here in NYC.  For years, I’ve been sitting on my laurels with my Randolph Caldecott music video.  Now I’ve been royally trumped and it’s all thanks to the song “What Would John Newbery Do?”  I can’t top this.

And now, with the approach of the Children’s Book Week Awards, time to break out the big guns.  And these, ladies and gents, are some SERIOUSLY big guns!

Turns out the CBC collected a whole CHUNK of these videos and they’re just out there!  Like this one starring two of my favorite author/illustrators, Amy Ignatow and Brian Biggs.  You must be SURE to stick around for the ghost of David Wiesner.  And it backs up my theory that every person in my generation has one rap song memorized.  Mine’s “Shoop”.

Nice use of “Rock Lobster” too.

We’re about three days away from El día del niño, otherwise known as the day of the child.  Unfamiliar with Dia?  Not anymore.  Here’s a quickie recap for those of you who are curious:

Día means “day” in Spanish. In 1996, author Pat Mora learned about the Mexican tradition of celebrating April 30th as El día del niño, the day of the child. Pat thought, “We have Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Yes! We need kids’ day too, but I want to connect all children with bookjoy, the pleasure of reading.”  Pat was enthusiastically assisted to start this community-based, family literacy initiative by REFORMA, the National Association to Promote Library & Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish Speaking. El día de los niños, El día de los libros/Children’s Day, Book Day, also known as Día, is a daily commitment to link all children to books, languages and cultures, day by day, día por día. Many resources and an annual registry are available at the Association for Library Services to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association (ALA). Every year, across the country, libraries, schools, and community organizations, etc. plan culminating book fiestas creating April Children’s Day, Book Day celebrations that unite communities.
Join us!

Interested in participating? It’s not too late.  Best of all, here’s a video from previous years of what folks have done in their libraries.  Viva Dia!

We’ve sort of an embarrassment of riches this year in terms of trans boy picture books (see the 7-Imp recap of this very thing here).  Now one of those books, Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress, has a book trailer that hits on the tone about right.  Let’s put it up on the big board!

Thanks to Fred Horler for the link.

This next one is a fictional tie-in to a nonfiction subject.  Which is to say, a CCSS dream.  I’m not usually on board with rhyming picture books, but this one actually gets away with it!

And for the off-topic video of the day, we all love Neil deGrasse Tyson.  This is the video of him slowed down ever so slightly.  He loves it.  Shows it at his talks sometimes.

And for fun, you can watch the original here:

Our good buddy James Kennedy alerted me to the fact that after his magnificent 90-Second Newbery show left New York City for other library systems in other states he received additional, incredibly funny and insane submissions that are worth seeing.  What we have here is a Tacoma-based Frog and Toad Together take on the story “The List”.  As James describes it it’s “done in the style of a French ye-ye music video or Wes Anderson movie.”

If you’d like to see the story that was based on you can see five stories from this book animated in five different ways.  I’m particularly fond of the one with the seeds.  There’s also a wholly fascinating take on The Story of Mankind that sort of has to be seen to be believed.

All right.  We’re gonna present this day by cheering you up, breaking your heart, and then piecing it back together a bit at a time.  That’s the kind of Sunday I’m dealing with here.  Now I don’t know if you read the recent SLJ article Kid Lit Authors, Illustrators Visit Sandy Hook Elementary School but you should.  And as it happens our roving reporter in the field Rocco Staino took some videos of the aforementioned authors and illustrators.  This one is of Bob Shea.  The very normality of it destroys me.  Utterly.

Now let’s do something nice.  In lieu of Kid President (which, correct me if I’m wrong, a whole great big swath of us have already seen) here’s “Obvious to you. Amazing to others,” coming at you via The Styling Librarian.

I’m not going to read too much into the fact that I live in Harlem and yet, until I heard from a Ms. Nicole Roohi this week, I had totally missed this whole “Harlem Shake” craze, as it were.  Fun Fact: Not from Harlem.  In any case, turns out there are a BUNCH of videos of this thing filmed in libraries across our fair nation.  You can find some here and here and here and here and here.  The one I will feature today, however, is from Goldenview Middle School in Anchorage, Alaska.

As Ms. Roohi told me, “The video production class filmed it, and the security guards starred in it (well, along with my assistant and myself).  The principal, teachers, students and even a bus driver joined in.”  Thanks for the link, Nicole!

In keeping with the peppy music today, if I lived in a world where every person had their own theme song that followed them around throughout the day, the tune that is featured in this trailer for Jesse Klausmeier & Suzy Lee’s Open This Little Book would be mine.  Granted, it would bug people, but I’d only turn it on when I was marching down the street.  Marching, I say.

Thanks to Mr. Schu for the link!

And finally, since we seem to be all trendy trendy today, let’s just end with something Downton Abbey-ish.  The fact no one else has done this yet is amazing to me.

Though I would take issue with that Lady Crawley line near the end.  Doesn’t he mean she loves ‘em?

Who says you need to be Ed Emerley to make fingerprints dance?  A canny bit of book promotion, this title is out this year but I certainly hadn’t heard of it until now (Laurence King Publishers, anyone?).  Now I’ll need to see it for myself.  It’s Let’s Make Some Great Fingerprint Art by Marion Deuchars.  Thanks to Julian Hector for the link!

Altogether now . . . awwwwwwwwww.

Okay, book trailer time.  Full discloser, Mr. Eliot Schrefer is in my writing group and I read this book, Endangered, in manuscript form.  The man can write.  I mean, really write.  I don’t see much YA in a given year, but I saw this and it was glorious.  But, in the words of the immortal LeVar Burton, you don’t have to take my word for it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p75AP5ABuE8&feature=embed

Or, if you’d just rather watch Eliot get covered in apes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nILY_hhsKvE&feature=embed

Then there’s Mr. Jarrett Krosoczka. Or, as I like to think of him, the hardest working man in show business.  Now I only assume this, but surely he teaches other authors how to use social networking and technology to connect with fans, yes?  I only wonder since he’s sort of really good at it.  Example A: a recap of a webcast his did with kids recently.  Theme song and all:

Example B: The comics that were made during the workshop.  I rest my case.

Finally, my off-topic video that isn’t very off-topic.  If I’m going to be honest, I almost opened the post today with this bad lip-reading of Twilight.  What can I say?  It made me laugh very very hard (on the second segment anyway).  Forgive me if there’s a political ad before it.

There was no question in my mind which video to begin with today.  I cannot help but think that meeting Quentin Blake must be akin to meeting Roald Dahl.  The man is a living legend and this video is a true treasure.  Would that every illustrator were half so thorough when discussing the preservation, creation, and process that goes into their art.  A very big thank you to Jonathan Cape Graphic Novels for the link.

Mind you, Quentin had some stiff competition for the top video of the day.  He only narrowly beat out this Reading Rainbow remix.

I’ve been trying to identify all the books in the video but it is incredibly tough.  I can account for Carl Hiaasen’s Flush, Christopher Paul Curtis’s Elijah of Buxton, and what appears to be a Civil Rights book that I can never quite catch the title of.  Other spotted books are welcome.  Mention them!  And thanks to mom for the link.  Probably the only time you’ll ever see the New Orleans Bounce on this blog, I’d wager.

Benefit books come out occasionally but rarely do they incorporate Broadway stars.  Over the Moon: The Broadway Lullaby Project is benefiting breast cancer research.  You’ve got big name vocalists singing songs from big name composers with a book illustrated by big name artists (for the most part).  Here’s the roster:

” . . . the project’s book component also features a distinctive cover illustration by fabled cartoonist/playwright Jules Feiffer, along with a foreword written by stage and screen legend Julie Andrews and her daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton. Among the award-winning illustrators lending their talents are Selina Alko, Lynne Avril, Paulette Bogan, Beowulf Boritt, Lauren Castillo, R. Gregory Christie, Seymour Chwast, Jane Dyer, Richard Egielski, Daniel Glucksman, Julia Gran, Ying-Hwa Hu, Genevieve LeRoy-Walton, Betsy Lewin, Anna Louizos, Victor Mays, Emily Arnold McCully, Wendell Minor, Barry Moser, Jon J Muth, Sean Qualls, Peter H. Reynolds, Marc Simont, Javaka Steptoe, Melissa Sweet, Cornelius Van Wright, Neil Waldman, Nancy Elizabeth Wallace, Tony Walton, Gary Zamchick, and Paul O. Zelinsky.”

I had no idea Jules Feiffer was a fable.  And here I was convinced he was a real person.  In any case, impressive list of names!  A couple I don’t know but most I do. And here, on a related note, is a glimpse at one of the songs.

Thanks to Rich Michelson for the info.

Speaking of Julie Andrews, I’m sure you’ve all seen Stephen Colbert’s interview with her in conjunction with his own picture book release of

Yep.  Your eyes do no deceive you.  You are looking at The World Premier of the book trailer for Mac Barnett and Adam Rex’s latest, greatest (yes, greatest) picture book collaboration.  For one day and one day only I get to be the first person to show this little vid.  Needless to say, I’m thrilled.  And I have a copy of Chloe and the Lion, the book in question, here in my hot little fist (which requires me to type with only my left hand and my tongue, but it’s cool).  The sole flaw with this book is the fact that when I start plugging away at my 2012 reviews, I don’t like to do the same author too often.  And yet already Mac Barnett is doing this book with Hyperion and the fantastic Extra Yarn with illustrator Jon Klassen and Harper Collins.  Which to review?  These are conundrums I like to face.

The holidays are near upon us and so, to celebrate, Chronicle Books has won the Best Happy Holidays Video of 2011.  Seriously, if you know of another publisher that has done better, I’d like to hear about it, because this is . . . well . . . pretty much this is what you’d expect from Chronicle.

So today was a pretty paltry video week for me.  Whenever that happens I get down on all fours and crawl on over to a selection of various blogs that I can usually count on to deliver the goods.  The best of these, of course, is Mr. Schu’s Watch. Connect. Read. That man knows how to find good videos and this week he featured one that I’d not caught before.  It’s Hervé Tullet, the Prince of Preschool Books, conducting a class visit.  Or, to put it another way, WARNING: CONTAINS ADORABLE FRENCH CHILDREN.

Of course now that I know how well the man speaks English I want to find a way to lure him to NYC to get him to do a program.  *taps fingertips together ala Mr. Burns*

This next video would have been included in one of Mr. James Kennedy’s 90-Second Newbery Film Festivals except that it was turned in a hair too late.  Great stuff anyway.  In it you can see a bunch of kids at 826CHI predicting the Newbery winners for the next ten years.

Orbit and Random has my vote.

And finally, for our off-topic delight, this goes out to all the authors who have ever received a rejection letter of any sort.  Though I don’t know if you’d necessarily want Bernard Black as your spokesperson.

Thanks to Tina Wexler for reminding me about this one.

Oh, wow.  Just . . . wow.  Some of you may already be aware of the Boogie Woogie blog, run by author/illustrator Aaron Zenz and his three kids.  The fact that it may be the best blog out there in which kids participate in the discussion of children’s literature is evidenced by nothing so much as today’s video.  I hope you stayed for the credits.  This is their contribution to the James Kennedy 9o-Second Newbery Film Festival (to be held in my library in November) and if it doesn’t rock your socks off, nothing will.  Failing that, James received some more submissions on his blog the other day, including this magnificent take on The Witch of Blackbird Pond from Mrs. Mrs. Powell’s 5th grade class at Laurelhurst School in Portland Oregon.

Remember, folks, to get you kids’ classes involved!  Have them make a video of their own and submit!  I admit that the bar is high, but there’s a lot of great stuff going down.  We’d love more submissions.  Keep ‘em coming!!!

Speaking of contests, I was tipped off about this fantastic video contest the Ottawa Public Library held for its teens.  The Teen Tech Video Contest may sound like it’s YA fare, but many of the videos submitted were definitely of children’s books.  And of the children’s books they covered, my favorite (hands down) was this take on The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe:

It came it second to The Outsiders which, this being Ottawa, says that they are on the “outside” of society in a delightfully Canadian way.  Be sure to check out some of the other videos going on there.  These Ottawa teens have some mad talent.  Big time thanks to Jane Venus for bringing these to my attention.

Picture book trailer time.  I think the genius behind this take on the Katie Davis book Kindergarten Rocks is the first child featured here.  Methinks the the child doth protest too much.  In any case, if your cute kid quotient is low for the day, here is the perfect cure: