Elizabeth Bird

Fusenews: How come no one has thought of this before?

• After reading Pimp My Novel's post about The Next Big Thing, I think I know what novel I want to write next for NaNoWriMo is. Picture This: A fallen angel comes to earth, only to immediately be bitten and turned into a vampire. In the course of avoiding doing evil he gets himself killed, only to be resurrected by the woman he loves in zombie form.  Set, naturally enough, in a crazy Victorian past where everyone flies around in brass bolted jet packs. It's the angel trend meets the vampire trend meets the zombie trend meets Steampunk. Publishers, I await your flurry of interest.

• Twitter provides a whole host of fictional Twittering characters.  None are quite so funny and opinionated, however, as the once real, now fictional Laura Ingalls Wilder or @HalfPintIngalls.  Her recent recap of Halloween on the prairie is worth the price of admission alone.

• Cheerios isn't making it easy on you.  At this moment in time they are conducting a poll wherein you, gentle reader, can vote on which book should appear in the next Cheerios box.  It would be fine if they were offering just generally awful titles, but these picture books are actually quite a fabulous array.  Whoever chose the initial selection did their homework.  I love all these babies equally (not true, but it sounds good) so vote with your heart.  Once you've selected your choice, you'll see how tight the race is right now.

• Laura Amy Schlitz fans take note.  You may not know it but she has a new novel on the horizon.  Candlewick has become seven kinds of clever and has paired Ms. Schlitz with the luminous art of Angela Barrett for The Night Fairy.  You can see the magnificent website Candlewick provided for the book here.  I'm just itching to review this one!

• Happy day.  I was pleased as punch to hear about the finalists for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Prizes for Excellence in Science Books for children and young adults on SLJ the other day.  While the winners won't be announced until early January, it's wonderful enough to look at some of the fine non-fiction on the list.  It is a bit strange that Heiligman's Charles and Emma isn't there, but otherwise I have few complaints regarding the nominees.

• As strange but delightful picture books go, none quite surpass the remarkable and loony Who Needs Donuts? by Mark Alan Stamaty.  Omnivoracious gave a lovely tribute to that strange little critter (which, to my infinite delight, ended up as #82 on my Top 100 Picture Book Poll, back in the day).

• Recently artist Dan Santat made his way to New York City.  His recap is funny in and of itself, but I like it because he is the first person I've ever seen to take a photograph of our massive guestbook.  These days, whenever I see an author or illustrator walk through the door I physically compel them to sign "the book".  Dan Santat put his in right next to Eric Carle.  Not too shabby.  Still, I'm a little jealous of a guy who comes to NYC for a couple of days and somehow manages to randomly run into Color Me Katie by accident.  I've lived here five years and I've never seen hide nor hair of her!  Grr!  Lucky guy.

• They've starting releasing pictures of the upcoming Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie.  Yup.  Could be okay but, I'm sorry, Rachael Harris as the mom?  Dudes, you totally canNOT have a hip mom in this film.  She better be nerded up within an inch of her life if it's gonna work.  Seriously.  Thanks to @boydesigner for the link.

• Sometimes I worry that I don't link to my fellow SLJ bloggers quite enough.  Well recently Good Comics for Kids engaged in a roundtable discussion of Who decides what kids read?  A lot of good points and issues are raised here.  Go!  Readeth!

• The debate as to whether or not Where the Wild Things Are is a children's film or not continues.  EW had a nice piece on the topic recently (which I can't seem to find online, alas).  And as for the kids themselves, more of Monica's class are writing and blogging their opinions of it.  Real kids talking about the movie.  What more could you want?

• Daily Image:

A good name for a mystery novel for kids:  The Case of the Tetris Dress.

A good name.  An even better dress.

In my dream world, this dress would play the Tetris theme song every time you walked.  Yes, it would be annoying, but maybe (just maybe) worth it.  Thanks to Ingrid Henny for the link.

Posted by Elizabeth Bird on November 2, 2009 | Comments (2)