Fusenews: In Springtime the Only Pretty Ring Time When Flowers Sing
May 1, 2008
From author Kathleen Krull I saw this interesting announcement on the CCBC-net listserv:
An Evening with I.N.K. @ http://inkrethink.blogspot.com/
I.N.K. bloggers will be having a live chat the evening of Thursday, May 1st, beginning at 8:00 PM Eastern Standard Time. The topic is Author Visits. Participants include David Schwartz, Vicki Cobb, Kathleen Krull, Sue Goodman, Tanya Stone, Anna Lewis, and more.
We welcome questions and comments from writers, librarians, teachers, and others from the kidlitosphere.
As someone who has Baby Got Back on her iPod (I'm one of those people who prefers to walk through life with it permanently set on random so that my day contains at least one kind of controlled random event) I had nothing but true unfettered appreciation for Cheryl Klein's recent parody Baby Got Book . This is due in large part to the fact that she even adapted the opening word for word. Extra points for the sentence, "You say you want to get in my shelves?" Maybe just those of us who have the darn thing memorized will love it right, but I've no shame. Thanks to bookshelves of doom for the alert.
Movie news didn't go away in my absence, I'm sorry to say. A new BACA Alert, and not from the Spice Girl you'd suspect. From Cynopsis Kids :
Spice Girl Geri Halliwell new kids' book series, Ugenia Lavender , launches in the UK next month. Aimed at K7+, the series is based Halliwell as a young girl. Macmillan will publish the six book series in the UK on a monthly basis May through October 2008. An audio version of the book, read by Halliwell, will also be available on CD as well as for download.
Cynopsis Kids also had the skinny on the new Hobbit movie too:
Middle-earthlings, Hobbits, Elves, Orcs, and others, take note. Guillermo del Toro will direct the movie adaptation of JRR Tolkien's first book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit and its sequel (no title yet), it was announced yesterday by the movie's executive producers Peter Jackson, New Line Cinema's Fran Walsh. Del Toro will relocate to New Zealand for the next four years to work with Jackson and his Wingnut Films and WETA production teams on the two movies, which will be shot back-to-back. The sequel, will tell the story of the 60-year period between The Hobbit and the first of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring . New Line is overseeing development and will manage the production of The Hobbit and its sequel, which are being co-produced and co-financed by New Line Cinema and MGM, with Warner Brothers distributing domestically and MGM distributing internationally.
I'm sure that the fact that they just cast their first actor from the previous films doesn't hurt matters any.
The secret behind finding the perfect pen name is answered for us at long last. Big A little a was good enough to link to the secret formula . According the rules, mine would be Antonia Saul Avis, which ain't half bad. And no, I didn't pick a birdy last name on purpose.... okay, maybe I kinda did. I like The Story of Avis, but maybe she's not my favorite character. But any other last name I put would be too nerdy for words, and I don't want to make you too embarrassed for me to read my blog.
One of my favorite awards are the Jane Addams Children's Book Awards . They're given out every year to "children's books published the preceding year that effectively promote the cause of peace, social justice, world community, and the equality of the sexes and all races as well as meeting conventional standards for excellence." Simple enough. From SLJ's Extra Helping I discovered that the most recent winner was Emily Arnold McCully's fabulous The Escape of Oney Judge: Martha Washington’s Slave Finds Freedom (Farrar), which took the top prize in the category of Books for Younger Children. Yessss! The other winner was We Are One: The Story of Bayard Rustin (Calkins Creek) by Larry Dane Brimner which swept the Books for Older Children category. The honor book turned out to be a title that I meant to review but never got around to last year. One Thousand Tracings: Healing the Wounds of World War II (Hyperion) was written and illustrated by Lita Judge and was on the New York Public Library's 100 Books for Reading and Sharing as well. Happily the honor books in the older children's category were Rickshaw Girl (Charlesbridge), by Mitali Perkins , Elijah of Buxton (Scholastic) by Christopher Paul Curtis; and Birmingham , 1963 (Wordsong) by Carole Boston Weatherford. Well done all around.
