I'm glad you're finding this useful! (Although now you've mentioned it on your blog, I'd better watch my inbox today!) My hope is that libraries and teachers will find this collection of reviews useful, too. Thanks for contributing!

In my rant, I forgot to say thank you to Kelly for putting this together. It's neat. Is there anyway that the identity of the reviewers could be on the main page next to the titles of the books reviewed? There are reviewers I trust to know what I like, and I'd read their reviews first. *knows nothing about wikis* Fuse, when I click on your "contributer" link, it takes me to all of your reviews broken out by catagory. If that's what you've been doing with your time . . . thanks.

Oh look, my rant didn't show up. Probably a good thing.

Yup. That's what I'm doing with my time. A-dic-tive stuff. It takes a while to post each review in three places (my page, under its title, under its author) but it's nice if people want to see everything I've reviewed. Other people can do it too, if they like. It'll take me a while to get it shipshape, though. And Kelly's the one who can make the decision on whether or not each review should have the contributor's name on it. I don't mind, but maybe other people would? Dunno.

My rant in a nutshell. More reviews of biographies please. They are assigned every year. It doesn't matter who the subject is, but it's hard to find good ones. Not easy-peasy photo-biographies for non-readers, and no more civil rights workers--we've done those. Oppenheimer? Simon Bolivar? Lucretzia Borga? James I? Annie Oakley? Pol Pot? Anyone?

The Brave Little Toaster defined my childhood. Every summer, without fail, we would visit my grandma's house in Florida and I would proceed to watch her copy at least three times. Not only am I quite weird now, but in high school, my friend Kim and I went through a phase where we re-watched the Brave Little Toaster and its sequels. We made several toasters out of clay and even wrote a poem about toast. It was a bit of an obsession. Just a bit.

Oh my goodness, how I love The Brave Little Toaster... I watched it over and over again as a kid, never realizing how truly bizarre it is until I watched it again as a teenager. I fully plan on hosting a Brave Little Toaster night soon and inducting my coworkers into the wonder that is TBLT.

I've just started adding to the wiki too. It's a great resource collection. I didn't know about making a new page listing all my reviews - thanks for the tip!

I read the Wikipedia page on The Brave Little Toaster and found that it premiered at Sundance and played at the Film Forum here in New York. I still don't understand why it doesn't have an organized cult fan base out there.

RE: rant - One useful aspect of the wiki is that it really does highlight the areas where we need to be reviewing more. I know that many people enjoy middle grade fantasy (my review for day is no exception) but we have to remember to expand our horizons and review as many different areas as we can.

ooh. i ranted about bios being underserved without actually looking at the number of fantasy reviews. wow, that is a disparity, isn't it?

Think the film version of "Brave Little Toaster" is weird? Try reading the 1986 children's novel it was based on. Written by Thomas M. Disch, it has a softer, sweeter ending than that of the film. School Library Journal gave it a bad review back then, but my advisor in library school (Maggie Kimmel) recommended it as a read-aloud, so I had to give it a whirl. The low-down? Disch's prose is so gentle that the conceit pulls off, (just barely). Pretty amusing lil' thing. I put it in my personal pantheon of All-Time Wacky Children's Fiction. Oh, yeah -- the film's sequel, "The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars" is based on the novel's sequel of the same name. Because a concept that odd just couldn't have been written by a group of screenwriters.

To the anon commenter (#2). I see no reason why people can't put their names next to the reviews. In fact, I think that's a pretty good idea. I'll admit, I set this thing up. But it's a resource for the community and for anyone looking for reviews. Anyone can suggest or change anything. I only have a password system so random trolls can't go in and delete things just for fun. I do like the idea, Anon, and may start doing that.

Excellent! I think I'll do that too, Kelly. In fact, I've already started when I see two reviews of the same book by different people.