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Before we begin I would like to have a few words with the publishers on behalf of catalogers nationwide.

Ahem.

Hi, guys.  How’s it going?  Heckuva weird weather we’ve had lately, right?  Yeah . . . so . . . here’s the thing.  You know how you’ve been rereleasing a couple classic children’s books recently like Slake’s Limbo and all the Ramona Quimby books?  That is just awesome of you.  Seriously, new covers were desperately needed.  But, you’re kind of doing this weird thing that’s messing everything up.  See, for some reason you’re changing the covers but you’re keeping the old ISBNs.  And we wouldn’t really mind if it was just the jackets you were changing, but in the case of the Ramona books you have new interior illustrations.  This is a HUGE disservice, not only to libraries, but to your new illustrator, Ms. Jacqueline Rogers.  If you keep the same ISBN then in records across the country previous illustrators will be listed in the system.  Not Ms. Rogers.  So, I know we’re supposedly going to go through some crazy crisis where we run out of all the ISBNs, but do a gal a favor and change the ISBNs on rereleases if you have new interior art (or, also in the case of Ramona, new pagination).  It just makes good clean sense.

Okay!  Moving on.

• If I say that Travis Jonker fellow at 100 Scope Notes is a nice guy I’m not exactly telling you anything you don’t already know.  But how nice is he?  Well, in his awesome 10 to Note: Spring Preview 2013 do you know what book he led with?  MINE!! I’m thrilled and flabbergasted all at once.  Ye gods!  I hit the big time, folks!  Now I just need to get my hands on that cool looking Lauren Myracle early chapter book and that new Charise Mericle Harper graphic novel.  Woot!

• You know you’re cool when the National Coalition Against Censorship collects cool birthday wishes for you.  You’re even cooler if those birthday wishes come from folks like Jon Scieszka, Lois Lowry, and the aforementioned Lauren Myracle.  And if you happen to be Judy Blume?  Icing on the cake, baby.

• On the one hand, it’s awfully interesting to hear folks speculating on what really made Mary Ingalls blind.  On the other hand  . . . . NBC News linked to me, linked to me, linked to me me me!

• In case you happened to missed it, I hosted a helluva Literary Salon the other day.  Yup.  Jeanne Birdsall, Adam Gidwitz, N.D. Wilson, and Rebecca Stead all gave up their precious time to stop by old NYPL for a Children’s Literary Salon where they debated why pop culture at large tries to label middle grade fiction as YA.  The whole conversation was, for the very first time, recorded for posterity.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is that the audio feed is lousy.  Not sure what I did but it’s a bit mucked up.  Clear enough that you could make a transcript from it (casts meaningful looks into the nethersphere) but not so clear that you could actually enjoy listening to it.  A little later in the podcast some folks stop speaking into mics.  That actually helps.  Rear in Gear reports on how it went from  the frontlines.  By the way, the title “Why YA” is a good one.  I might shorten it to Y.YA, then proclaim that to be the newest bestest trend without explanation.  Cause that’s how I roll.

• Speaking of my Children’s Literary Salons, I’ve one in early March on the topic of Diversity and the State of the Children’s Book that will prove to be most fascinating (and better recorded, I hope).  Much along the same lines is a truly fascinating post over at Ms. Yingling Reads.  The post concerns those book jackets that do not reflect the ethnicity of the characters within, but brings up a very interesting p.o.v. from that of the smaller publisher reliant on stock images.  This post is your required reading of the day.  Many many thanks to Carl in Charlotte for the heads up.

• The post on 10 Fictional Libraries I’d Love to Visit is a lot of fun, but I would add the library featured in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman books most certainly.  That would be the library that contains every book conceived of but never published by the world’s greatest writers.  The in-jokes alone are worth it.  Who doesn’t love Psmith and Jeeves?

Thanks to AL Direct for the link.

• Nerd that I am, I cannot help but be thrilled that the Bologna Book Fair has just established a new prize for the Best Children’s Publisher of the Year.  What a fantastic idea, and why has no one else come up with it before?  Now THAT is something I can get behind.  Boy, yeah.

• Flavorwire’s Conspiracy Theories About Classic Literary Characters doesn’t tell you a lot you haven’t already heard about your classic books (Nick Carraway = gay, Holden Caulfield = gay, yadda yadda yadda) but there are some fun exceptions on the children’s literature side.  I think I’ve heard the Winnie-the-Pooh theory before, and I certainly heard the Harry Potter one (Rowling herself even addressed it) but the Wizard of Oz one is actually entirely a new one on me.  Huh! Thanks to Annie Cardi for the link.

• I like it when authors reveal the covers of their upcoming books.  I especially like it when those authors are folks I’ve heard of before and have enjoyed thoroughly.  I met Matthew Kirby (The Clockwork Three, Icefall) at a SCBWI event recently and now I find out that he has revealed his latest title The Lost Kingdom.  Yep.  I’ll be reading that one.

• The other day I spoke on a panel for some young publishers about the library’s role in the pursuit of Common Core.  I was on that panel with Scottie Bowditch of Penguin and John Mason of Scholastic.  After the fact I learned that Scholastic has been working to get their hands on all this Common Core schtuf by creating the site Common Sense for the Common Core.  It was created to help parents through this tricky time, but no doubt we librarians would benefit a tad as well.  FYI!

• You may have heard that tornadoes recently ripped through Mississippi on Sunday causing untold devastation in their wake.  They hit in a number of places, including Hattiesburg, Mississippi.  Why do I mention this?  Well, are you aware what resides in Hattiesburg?  That would be the University of Southern Mississippi.  And what is the University of Southern Mississippi home to?  If you answered that it was the de Grummond Collection “one of North America’s leading research centers in the field of children’s literature” you would also be correct.  So did the collection survive the storms?  We are happy to report that they did.  And on the de Grummond’s Twitter feed they assured everyone that they were safe and sound.  Whew!

• Look me in the eye.  Right here!  Right in my beady little eye and tell me that this is not the smartest use of The Pigeon you’ve seen in a long long time.  The crazy thing?  I thought they melded together a bunch of different Pigeon books.  Not true!  Instead, all these panels come from The Pigeon Wants a Puppy.

• Remember when NPR started that program they called NPR’s Backseat Book Club?  They said they would pick a new book for kids every month and discuss them.  Well, the whole “every month” part of that plan has been spotty and the selections have been even spottier.  Seems to me NPR isn’t taking full advantage of the field.  I mean, Black Beauty and Wimpy Kid?  Is that the best you can do?  Fortunately it looks like they’ll crank things up a notch when they discuss Gary Schmidt’s Okay for Now.  In fact, kids are encouraged to submit some questions to the author ahead of time.  Got yourself some kids?  Then go to it!

In a weird way, Twitter sort of made my Fusenews posts this side of obsolete.  If you want cool things to see online it’s often just a case of knowing whom to follow.  And yet I love my little Fusenews.  Pressed as I am for time today, let’s pretend that these are little tweets:

Pinterest continues to remain a strange elusive creation that I have a hard time wrapping my head around.  Fortunately sometimes it will do something like post images from William Steig’s Agony in the Kindergarten (circa 195o) and all at once everything is clear. Thanks to Alex Penfold for the link.

And while you’re looking at vast numbers of images, why not look at this collection of international children’s art.  Purdy.  Thanks to Warren Truitt for the link.

Adrienne says, “I Can’t Imagine There Was Ever a Time in Which This Version of Little Red Riding Hood Wasn’t Creepy.” I don’t quite know what she means since I haven’t yet seen the . . . GAAAAAHHHHH!!!

• I want a new Leslie Connor middle grade novel for kids and I want it now now now now now. (This is called “baiting the universe” and should only be attempted under the strictest of circumstances.)

• Was anyone else aware that Thomas Locker died this year, or just BookMoot?  First I’ve heard of it.  Shoot.

• As per usual, the best round-up of the year is happening at Chicken Spaghetti.  If you want to see every last Best Of list printed for 2012 books, seek ye no further.

• Speaking of Best Of lists, I am not usually flummoxed by the books folks pick.  I like to think that on the children’s side I see almost everything.  So imagine my flummoxing when I check out the 100 Scope Notes Top 20 Children’s Books of 2012 and find that #20 is a book I have NEVER heard of before!?!  I am tongue-tied, stopped, and otherwise befuddled.  You win this round, Jonker, but I shall have my revenge!!

• The Bookbug children’s bookstore in Kalamazoo, Michigan does many things right.  But most recently they managed to make this remarkable little fellow:

Don’t try to buy him for your holiday shopping, though.  Apparently to make it you need to get “many different packages of legos from several different vendors.”  Worth it.

• You know how weird it was when they redid Spiderman with an all-new cast?  Yup.  Well, hold onto your hats, folks.  A children’s book is getting yet another reworking as well. From Cynopsis Kids:

Columbia looks to Zach Helm (Stranger Than Fiction, Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, which he also directed, and the upcoming The Secret Life of Walter Mitty) to write a new big screen adaptation of Jumanji, based on Chris van Allsburg’s 1981 book of the same name, per THR. Matt Tolmach (The Amazing Spider-Man) will produce the new Jumanji movie. Joe Johnston directed the 1995 feature film incarnation of Jumanji, which starred Robin Williams and Kirsten Dunst.

• Daily Image:

There is a giant swing installation somewhere in New York City right now.  You walk in, you sit, and you swing.

I may have missed the Columbus Circle installation but by gum I am finding this one!  Thanks to Crooked House for the heads up.

I can’t pinpoint what it was that made me think of this.  In this day and age with children’s picture book characters appearing as television and movie characters every other minute, to say nothing of the new deals being made with the names of classics we all grew up with, it’s a lot easier to pinpoint the ones that haven’t been appropriated by the entertainment industry. With producers more than willing to suck every little last bit of goodwill from a property, here is a list (insofar as I know) of the characters that haven’t been seen in their own television shows / CGI films.  Oh, and I should note that when I say these haven’t been adapted I am not referring to the multiple very clever stage shows made of each one of these.  Theater is the classy version of what I’m envisioning here:

- The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle : Not that you can miss him.  If you don’t own Caterpillar bedsheets or hand puppets then maybe you have him on your curtains and wallpaper.  I’m no different.  My child is proud to sport Caterpillar shoes and eats from Caterpillar plates.  Still, we haven’t yet seen the Caterpillar Saturday morning cartoon show.  And it would be soooo easy to do so.  The Caterpillar and his friends (The Very Quiet Cricket, the Very Grumpy Ladybug, the Very Lonely Firefly, etc.) have a variety of preschool-friendly adventures, usually involving counting, colors, and days of the week.  Oh, you just know some exec has pitched this to Carle himself.  Fortunately the fellow doesn’t need the dough.

- Peter and friends from the books of Ezra Jack Keats : They have been adapted into books by authors other than Mr. Keats, and in the 70s there were some pretty awesome live action short films made of their stories.  However, there’s been nothing recent, which raises my suspicions.  Is there a belief that stories about inner city kids wouldn’t sell or are the characters too enmeshed in their era to be timely?  I suspect the former but I’m naturally suspicious.  Could just be the Keats estate is full of classy folks unwilling to sell out.

- The Pigeon from Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems – Or Elephant and Piggie for that matter.  This isn’t entirely surprising, of course.  Mo’s not exactly a small town rube.  He knows the television world well having worked there for a while (to say nothing of this) and I wouldn’t be surprised if the multiple folks courting him have been rebuffed mightily over the years.  Like Carle, Willems doesn’t need ‘em.  His Pigeon does well enough on its own.

- Harold from Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson – Short animated films of Harold have been made, but I live in fear that . . . oops.  Didn’t see this.  Just found out about 7 Comments on It’s Only a Matter of Time: Licensed Properties That Haven’t Made the Leap to Film, last added: 11/22/2011