Elizabeth Bird

Fusenews: We'll be Fine As Long As We Hold Onto Those Accordions and Boy Scouts

• Illustrator Pauline Baynes died on August 1st. You can find her obituary here on The Guardian. Jane Yolen called her, "C. S. Lewis' favorite Narnia illustrator," and if you've ever read a Narnia book with the original pen-and-ink illustrations inside then you have seen her work.  Thanks to Jane Yolen for the information.

• Jo Walton over at Tor.com gives author Robert Heinlein's juvenile novels a close look.  All the descriptions of his books are great but this one proved to be my particular favorite:

In Farmer in the Sky, a family emigrates to Ganymede to struggle with terraforming. Before they leave we see a little of Earth – food rationing, counting points, not wanting to waste the last scrape on a butter paper. This Earth is overpopulated and starving, even if it still has accordions and Boy Scouts.

Thanks to BoingBoing for the link.

• The other day I discovered that Blueberries for Sal was reportedly going out of print.  Today, much odder news.  Apparently the Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace are soon to be no more.  I find this particularly odd since the Betsy-Tacy series is one of the few in this country with an active (and vocal) society.  Little Willow has more information on her blog, with some info reprinted from the readergirlz site.  Personally, I can attest that the puppies get read.  We've the full paperback series in my library (or we used to *sniffle*) and I regularly reshelved and reorganized the books found there.  I never had anyone ask for them personally, yet they were in constant rotation.  Interesting.

The Jim Flora website has just created a separate section dedicated to all the children's books Mr. Flora created in his time.  Those of you interested in great design should give it a peek.

For those of you fond of The Lord of the Rings who have pondered the idea of becoming an elf... AUUUUUGGGGGHHHHH!

I am offering up oodles of thanks to J.L. Bell for directing me to the author Nick Green's recent entry on the British mondo blog An Awfully Big Blog Adventure.  It describes in harrowing detail a three-year-old's thwarted attempts to remove his own shirt.  "All attempts to assist, even the most surreptitious, blind-sided fingertip grip on the seam of his sleeve, to make it easier for him to extricate his arm, is met with screams of apoplectic fury." Basically, this is what good writing is all about.

• Daily Image:

Hello, fellow children's librarians.  Do you have a gigantic box/basket/former ice cream container full of crayons?  Have your toddlers managed to reduce the bulk of them into mere nubby nubs, undesired by any and all?  Do you feel oddly reluctant to throw away these little pieces of nubbly goodness and seek a solution?  If so, observe:

Posted by Elizabeth Bird on August 7, 2008 | Comments (10)