Elizabeth Bird

Fusenews: Hand Written . . . Literally!
March 29, 2008

• I've had many an interesting conversation with librarians and teachers over age-appropriate non-fiction topics.  When do you start to discuss the Holocaust with kids?  Is a five-year-old going to have an appreciation for a picture book biography of Anne Frank?  When do you start to introduce the word "atrocity" in their vocabulary?  The Washington Post had a piece up recently called Question for the Ages: What Books When? that isn't perfect but certainly touches on some of these issues.

• I suppose you all heard this already, but from the PW Children's Bookshelf: "The Last Apprentice: Revenge of the Witch by Joseph Delaney (Greenwillow) has been bought for the movies. Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures will co-produce the film, to be titled The Spook's Apprentice (after the book's U.K. title) Kevin Lima ( Enchanted ) will direct. Revenge of the Witch is the first book in the seven-part series, about a 13-year-old boy who leaves his family to apprentice with a legendary warrior. Production is scheduled to start later this year."  Legendary warrior???  Geez, guys, you're making it sound like every other book out there.  Howzabout mentioning the whole ghostly scary aspect of the book?
  

• The Science of Fairytales sounds like what a bunch of scientists would come up with after sitting round the campfire cooking smores.  "Dude, what if, like, hair could hold people up?  No, I mean really hold people up!"  Not that I'm not amused.  Thanks to bookshelves of doom for the link.

• Virtual pop-up books prove that in at least some things the internet is a poor substitute for a physical object.  Still, I think we should still thank the University of North Texas for at least giving us a teensy taste of what's in their collection.  Found via Oz and Ends.

• Today my vocabulary has produced two entirely new words.  Behold the glory of the omnictionary alongside the sad truth of the bibliobituary.  It's an "ary" kind of day.

• And via BB-Blog, your daily delightful dose of "Whaaaa?"

Posted by Elizabeth Bird on March 29, 2008 | Comments (1)