Saturday Afternoon Visits: From Holiday Gift Ideas to Musings on Series and Picture Books

I hope that you all had a lovely Thanksgiving. The Kidlitosphere has been relatively quiet of late, but I do have a few links to share with you all this weekend.

Abby (the) Librarian has launched her annual Twelve Days of Giving series, where she "post(s) for twelve days and recommend books for your holiday giving!". She started on Friday with suggestions for buying books and making the world a better place, and added suggestions for a two-year old today.

See also a fun post from Terry Doherty at Booklights with "ideas for ways to give the gift of reading that don't require batteries, computers, flashcards, or workbooks." I especially liked the section on ways to "promote your little detective". Also at Booklights, Pam Coughlan discusses ways to give a book (a continuing theme that's she's presented at MotherReader over the past few years). In the Booklights post, she shares some common themes, such as giving the book along with a handmade gift certificate for a movie date for a rental or a theater release." 

Liz Burns shares a post about giving books for the holidays at Tea Cozy. The post is a republication of something she wrote for Foreword Magazine a couple of years ago, but it remains timely today. Rather than a list of book suggestions, Liz includes tips for both giving and receiving books (like "Be Obvious About What You Want"). This is a post that many of us will want to quietly share with our friends and relatives.

Speaking of giving books, Anne Levy has gritted her teeth and written her annual Cybils fundraising post. She shares ways that you can, in conjunction with your holiday shopping, send a bit of financial cheer in the direction of the Cybils organization. I also talked about this idea a bit in my post about choosing Cybils books for holiday gifts.

Leila from Bookshelves of Doom is accepting orders for TBR Tallboy #2, a short story magazine featuring stories by a variety of talented writers (including Tanita Davis and Sarah Stevenson from Finding Wonderland). I'm kind of curious about the story on "a pizza delivery guy who has an experience straight out of a pulp-horror magazine".

Speaking of talented writers, Colleen Mondor has an introspective piece at Chasing Ray about how she does (and does not) talk about being a writer when she's at holiday parties. Here's a snippet: "They just shake their heads when you say you are a writer and they laugh a little bit inside. And they look down on you as foolish or flighty or deluded. That doesn't happen though when you say you own airplanes; in fact when you say that they don't have any damn thing to say back at all."

At Maw Books, Natasha has an interesting guest post from author Bonny Becker. Bonny says: "Bad things happen. As a child, I found it scary, intriguing—and encouraging—when bad things happened in books... Now, as a grown-up writer of picture books, I wonder if we’ve gone too far in stripping “bad things” from our mainstream picture books?" She gives some great examples.

At Confessions of a Bibliovore, Maureen muses on series books, and the way that some series ("especially the ones that get up to about four or five books with no end in sight") lose their pull after a few books, while others don't. She asks: "At what point does a series lose the pull, that Oooh, What's S/He Going to Do Now and become More of the Same? What has an author done that has pulled it out for you?". I shared what I think in the comments at Maureen's.

Quick hits:

• This week's Poetry Friday round-up is at Becky's Book Reviews.
• For more Kidlitosphere links, check out Travis' Morning Notes post at 100 Scope Notes, Betsy Bird's latest Fuse News at A Fuse #8 Production, and Cynthia Leitich Smith's latest Cynsational News & Giveaways.

That's all for today. I'll be back Monday with this week's Children's Literacy and Reading News Round-Up (prepared with Terry Doherty) and a new post at Booklights. Hope you're all enjoying a restful weekend!