Top o’ the Tuesday to you, gentle readers! After a delightful Memorial Day Weekend of doing very little (aside from watching somewhat strangely high statistics for my dinky little Saturday review) I am now working my final week at NYPL before the imminent arrival of a brand new Baby Bird. So let’s pack in the news items while we may, eh?
First off, big time thanks to everyone who showed up for the BEA Kidlit Drink Night. We raised excellent money for Reading is Fundamental and Rasco from RIF provided her own sweet thanks as well. Y’all are sweet and good and I appreciate you thoroughly.
And now the sad news. I’m sure that some of you may have heard that librarian, blogger, and 2012 debut author Bridget Zinn died of colon cancer at the age of 33. Tributes to her have been springing up all over the web and Liz at Tea Cozy has created a very impressive rundown on all the best Zinn links. I was sorry not to have known her better.
- I mentioned everything in my Day of Dialog rundown except the new books coming out. Until I get around to typing that up, why don’t you head on over to the PW post BEA 2011: A Bountiful Fall for Children’s Books. I’ve read some of those books, but a lot are unfamiliar to me. Get a glimpse of what the publishers think will be big (warning: may differ wildly from what librarians think will be big).
- I just can’t stop mentioning Candyland these days. One minute I’m talking about the Candyland movie. The next I’m insisting that you head over to The Scop where Jonathan Auxier talks up his favorite board game of all time: The Settlers of Catan. Sounds a bit like Risk except, as Jonathan says, “Risk is Candy Land in wingtips and a smoking jacket — a game of luck pretending to be a game of skill.” I’m just amazed that no one’s done a Risk movie yet. I mean, come on! We’re already shooting most of our films in New Zealand/Australia anyway. Clearly that’s where you’d have to set it.
- Sounds pretty standard at first. The online children’s book magazine Books for Keeps puts out a piece called Ten of the Best Dystopian Novels. You probably are, like myself, expecting them to cover the usual. Your Eva. Your Z for Zachariah. So it was with great pleasure that I noticed the #1 was The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. Wait . . . oh! Dystopian. Not post-apocalyptic. The other choices are just as fascinating (I always liked The Wind Singer).
- Saying that there is go
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On the YA vs MG issue: I would say that YA books seem to be a “hotter” market right now in terms of film rights and multi-book deals. (maybe I’m wrong about this — any YA authors care to clue me in?) However, I would agree that MG books might enjoy a cultural edge insofar as they get to be more directly connected to the larger tradition of Children’s Literature. Given the ages of their protagonists, books like TREASURE ISLAND or ANNE OF GREEN GABLES should probably be called YA … and yet the MG crowd claims them.
Yep. That’s a much clearer and concise way of saying what I was attempting. Cheers, Jonathan.
Regarding your hits: as far as I can tell, your blog stats don’t include all the people who read you through their google reader (like me). My g-reader says you have 586 google subscribers.
Have a comfortable, happy, healthy maternity leave, Betsy!
Wow. Thank you so much for the wonderful comments, and the great article (as always.) A pretty awesome way to start a Tuesday morning! All the best, Donna
Didn’t Anne Carroll Moore [sp?] write a column called The Third Owl? Ah-ha.
And it’s Brooke for the win!!!
I was glad to see that the stand-alone article mentioned Charlotte’s Imaginon, which I worked at for four years.
Other stand-alone children’s libraries include the Children’s Resource Center located in New Orleans and one of the New Orleans Public Library branches. It’s also a Carnegie library, I believe.
There’s also the Saucier Children’s Library (Saucier, MS), a branch of the Harrison County (MS) Public Library (located in the Biloxi area).
Speaking of NOPL and Harrison County libraries…these libraries are still in recovery from Hurricane Katrina (6 year anniversary).
NOPL has exciting plans for their reimaged and reconstructed libraries: http://www.nutrias.org/~nopl/recovery/recovery.htm
Harrison County is also closing their temporary library in preparation for their new Biloxi library: http://www.harrison.lib.ms.us/
How did I not think of Captain Sweeto until now? I shall hang my head in shame. Delicious gumdrop flavored shame.