Elizabeth Bird

Fusenews: When is LOST Going to Reference a Kids Book Again?
February 16, 2008

Sorry.  Off-topic title there.
But really, when are they?

• The winners of the Cybils Award (the award given by bloggers working in the children's and YA literary sphere) have been announced.  And a prettier l'il ole select there never could be.  Very gratifying to see some of those titles finally get their due).  And I really like that the first person to nominate each book got credit on the site.  What a great idea!  Of course, it means that for 2008 I'll be ah-rarin' to go at the starting gate to get my picks in first.  There are worse fates in this world.  Go looky!

• British book marketing took a turn for the interesting recently.  According to Bookwitch, Puffin left 100 copies of the Kevin Brooks book Black Rabbit "all over the place".  It gets better.  "The first person to find a book and contact Puffin will win £150 worth of books."  Sounds like something we could do here in New York.  Then again, I suspect that if you left 100 copies of, oh say, the latest Rick Riordan title lying about the place, at least half would end up at Barnes and Nobel by people trying to "return" them while they still can.

• The elusive Editorial Anonymous has actually been interviewed over on down at the Longstockings site.  Me likey the Teen Wolf pic.  Here is part one.  Here is part two.

• I forget to give thanks for many things, but one thing I have not failed to respect is ShelfTalker.  Getting the skinny on the publishing world from a bookseller?  Priceless.  Particularly when she knows her children's lit.  This week Alison Morris gave the skinny on sales reps.  I wouldn't know a sales rep if they walked up to me, bonked me on the nose with a sausage, and proceeded to sing all the lyrics to America the Beautiful (even the weirdo ones).

• New Blog Alert:  This one's coming at you from Sue Stauffacher and it's fabulous.  Called Readia: Children's Book Reviews, the site reviews quite a lot of books.  "The goal of Readia is to alert parents, teachers and others who work with children and low-level readers to high quality literature that fosters a love of reading. Readia is specifically aimed at children who are reluctant to read because they prefer other forms of media. They may also have low skill levels. The books that Sue features will be appropriate for all readers, but are targeted at readers from a variety of cultures and/or low socioeconomic backgrounds."  Great stuff and well worth your eyeballs.

• Kudos to Jacketflap for the nice write-up in the most recent Publishers Weekly.  Guess I should update my member profile, eh Tracy?
  
  

• Here's some interesting New York Public Library news.  But you didn't hear it from me.

• Behold!  The impressive Sarah Beth Durst and her amazing Obscure Fairy Tales!  Thrill to the trials of The Princess in the Chest!  Gasp at Godfather Death!  And then read my favorite tale Tatterhood.  That's a story just ah-itching to become a YA novel one of these days.  See if it doesn't.  Thanks to bookshelves of doom who got it from Wands and Worlds.
  
  

• David Fickling is a genius.  A more obvious statement could not be made, but I offer as evidence his defense and revival of ye olde comic book.  Creating something called The DFC (The David Fickling Comic), each week subscribers will receive a new 36-page comic.  "This is something I’ve always wanted to do. I grew up with comics . . . There was a huge comic industry in this country, and now we’re one of the few countries in the world that doesn’t have them anymore, [except for] bits and pieces here and there."  The article on his creation gets all foggy around the edges when you try to figure out whether or not this beautiful idea will stay in Britain or come to the U.S. at some point.  I guess our Random House will wait and see whether or not it makes its money overseas first.  Hope it works.  I miss comic books.
  
  

• I think it was Laini Taylor (author of what might be one of my favorite post titles of this or any other year) who mentioned that my blog posts should always have pictures.  I can't post pics from my laptop and nobody on God's good green earth can tell me why this is so.  I can only assume that my laptop bears me ill will.  In any case, uploading a pic means bodily throwing my husband off the other computer in our home.  Therefore, each and every single picture that appears on this site has to be worth it.  And when I flipped to BB-Blog today, I found the one that was.  Vintage posters!

Posted by Elizabeth Bird on February 16, 2008 | Comments (8)