Jen Robinson's Book Page

Wednesday Afternoon Visits: January 13: Kidlitosphere News and Views

There is a lot going on around the Kidlitosphere this week. Here are a few highlights:

MotherReader reports that this is National Delurking Week (the graphic is one that she downloaded from Paper Napkin in 2007). The idea is to encourage people to take a few extra minutes to leave a comment on blogs that they visit regularly (instead of just lurking silently in the background). Fits in well with the 2010 Comment Challenge, doesn't it? (I'm continuing to enjoy the Comment Challenge, by the way. I find that once I start leaving comments as I go through my reader, it's impossible to stop at just five. And I love receiving comments on my reviews. Kind of motivates me to publish some more.)

In the End-o-the-Week Kid-Lit Roundup, Paul from Omnivoracious links to an interesting Economist article about the global economic impact of the Harry Potter series. Most of the article is about the market side of things. But I liked this part: "even at their clumsiest the books are well-plotted and full of invention. They also avoid the temptation to sneak ideology into children’s heads by wrapping it in fantasy. C.S. Lewis’s children’s books, to which Ms Rowling’s are often compared, are spoiled by creeping piety. Philip Pullman’s suffer from strident anticlericalism. Although the Harry Potter series endorses traits such as bravery and loyalty, it is intended above all to entertain. It has, hundreds of millions of times."

Terry Doherty is looking for suggestions and ideas for the upcoming 2010 Share a Story - Shape a Future literacy blog tour (March 8-13). I'm hosting Friday, Reading for the Next Generation. Terry explains: "Jen has invited guests to answer some of the things parents wrestle with, like being the opposite reading personality of their child, or feeling pressured to create a reading superstar, among others." I this description inspires you to want to write something, please do drop me a line. [Logo by Susan Stephenson, The Book Chook.]

James Kennedy emailed me about a gallery show that he's organizing in Chicago for fan art for his novel The Order of Odd-Fish. You can find the call for submissions here. He says: "It'll be not only an art show, but also a costumed dance party and theatrical hoo-hah. I'm working with the Chicago theater group Collaboraction to decorate their cavernous space to portray scenes from the book (the fantastical tropical metropolis of Eldritch City, the digestive system of the All-Devouring Mother goddess, the Dome of Doom where knights fight duels on flying armored ostriches, etc.)." Doesn't sound like quite my sort of thing, but it definitely seemed like something that readers would be interested in.

Another email request came to me this week from Nick Glass of TeachingBooks.net. Nick wanted me to mention "the Coretta Scott King Book Award Online Curriculum Resource Center—a free, multimedia, online database for educators and families featuring more than 250 original recordings with award-winning authors and illustrators and hundreds of lesson plans." He says "It is a great reading resource as teachers, librarians, and families plan for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and Black History Month. The resource center includes more than nine hours of originally produced audio with Coretta Scott King Book Award (CSK) authors and illustrators talking about their books in two- to three-minute clips." And speaking of Black History Month, at Wild Rose Reader Elaine Magliaro shares her list of resources for Black History Month.

At the Reading Tub, Terry just announced the January I Can Read Carnival. She explains: "The first carnival (or MEME if you prefer) for celebrating Easy Readers and Short Chapter books is here at the Reading Tub. I am really excited about the chance to regularly collect books that will engage and excite new and developing readers. I Can Read! is a three-day, mid-month carnival whose host rotates each month. To see the list of hosts, check out the list on the right sidebar... If you have a post that reviews an easy reader or short chapter book or offers ideas for helping new readers, we’d love for you to participate in the carnival. Your post can be up to one year old, so posts back to January 2009 can be included in this inaugural event." 

Congratulations to Mitali Perkins and Melissa Wiley, each asked to write the foreword of a reissue of a favorite childhood book (both books part of the Betsy-Tacy series). Melissa says: "Can you hear me smile? I am so honored. I’m pretty much over the moon!" I especially identified with Mitali's response: "Anyone have a time machine? I want to find nine-year-old Mitali scouring the NYPL shelves for anything Maud Hart Lovelace and tell her the news." That's how I've felt (on a smaller scale) with merely emailing with favorite authors from my childhood. My heartfelt congratulations to nine-year-old Melissa and Mitali, and their successors.

At Galleysmith, Michelle has the scoop about an upcoming conference for book bloggers. This is not to be confused with KidLitCon (now in planning for the 4th annual conference), but is a broader conference for all sorts of book bloggers. Michelle says: "the first annual Book Blogger Convention is open for business! Being held on Friday, May 28th, 2010 participants are welcome to join us in New York City for a great day of food, fun and education."

At Presenting Lenore, Lenore recently announced: "I would like to continue supporting international book bloggers and have decided to start the International Book Blogger Mentor Program. Any book blogger who blogs in English about books and lives outside the US and Canada can apply. Each month I will pick one blogger to send 2-3 of my most recent review copies to. Upon request, I will also look over the reviews you write for the books and suggest improvements. Once you post your first review, I will feature you and your blog on Presenting Lenore." Nice display of community spirit, I think.

And in another display of community spirit, Sherry Early shares 12 Tips for New Bloggers at Semicolon. Seems to me that Sherry's tips will be useful to all bloggers, not just new ones. For example: "Title your book reviews with the title of the book and the author. This tip may seem self-evident, but it’s tempting to try to come up with catchy titles for books reviews. However, when someone searches for a review of X book on Google, they won’t be as likely to hit your blog if you called your review “A Look at the Newest Great American Novel” instead of X book by Z author." It's all good stuff!

At Chasing Ray, Colleen Mondor questions a Heavy Medal blog discussion by Jonathan Hunt about Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me, a discussion criticizing Stead's decision to include a non-white character without identifying the specifics of the character's racial background. Colleen says: "What bothers me about this is the double standard at play here. A Caucasian character can be described as white with no one blinking an eye but Julia must be more than her skin color because it is not specific enough."

Quick hits:

• The 2010 Sydney Taylor Book Awards were announced this week. Tasha Saecker has the scoop at Kids Lit. Also, via email from Heidi Estrin, "a blog tour featuring winning authors and illustrators will take place February 1-5, 2010. The schedule will be posted on the Association of Jewish Libraries' blog People of the Books at jewishlibraries.org/blog."
• Justine Larbalestier has an excellent post on how to conduct an author interview (and how not to).
• Betsy Bird has an extra chock-full edition of FuseNews at A Fuse #8 Production today. Betsy also has an informal poll going about whether or not we children's and young adult book reviewers are sexist in our selections. I counted up my reviews from last year, and must admit to having reviewed many more titles by women than men (though this was never a conscious plan).
• In a timely post, Mitali Perkins shares a list of children's and young adult books set in Haiti. Tricia also adds to the list at The Miss Rumphius Effect.
• Also at The Miss Rumphius Effect, Tricia suggests some fun reads in honor of National Puzzle Month.
• Becky from Becky's Book Reviews has direct links to all of the posts in Shannon Hale's fabulous How To Be A Reader series.
• Melissa at One Librarian's Book Reviews has a thoughtful little piece on the books that stay with us. She says: "I wonder about those memorable books of my formative years.  Were they so powerful because of the age I was when I picked them up?  Or do they have a timeless nature that can affect people at any age?"
• Sara Lewis Holmes muses on what makes a good magazine at Read Write Believe.
• And last, but not least, Episode 8 of The Exquisite Corpse Adventure is now available, with a contribution by Tuck Everlasting author Natalie Babbitt.

Hope that gives you some food for thought. Happy reading!

Thursday Afternoon Visits: January 7: Kidlitosphere News and Views

I'll tell you - leave the computer behind for a few days, and hundreds of posts pile up in the reader. But I found digging out to be a good excuse to also spend some time weeding out inactive feeds. Anyway, here are a few highlights from the Kidlitosphere of late:

Terry Doherty just published this month's roundup of new resources for literacy and reading at The Reading Tub. This monthly series is an offshoot of the weekly Children's Literacy Roundups that Terry and I do together, one that Terry has largely taken responsibility for. This month, she focuses on several resources related to literacy and reading, including a new service for recording books for your kids.

MotherReader has provided a FAQ for the upcoming 2010 Comment Challenge (co-hosted with Lee Wind, and which I previously described here). You can sign up tomorrow (Friday) with either MotherReader or Lee Wind.

This weekend is also Bloggiesta, hosted by Natasha from Maw Books. As MotherReader put it, "It’s a chance to spend some time improving your blog, catching up on your reviews, and taming your Google Reader." I don't know that I'll be formally participating in this one, since I've been catching up on my blog quite a bit this week already (and because I really MUST do some reading this weekend). But I'll be there in spirit.

The deadline is approaching to submit titles for the ForeWord Magazine's Book of the Year Awards. You can find more information at the ForeWord website. "ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Awards were established to bring increased attention to librarians and booksellers of the literary and graphic achievements of independent publishers and their authors."

It's also time to submit titles for Betsy Bird's Top 100 Children's Fiction Chapter Books poll at A Fuse #8 Production. This is a follow-on to the previous Top 100 Picture Books list that Betsy compiled. Readers have until January 31st, 2010 to submit their top 10 middle grade fiction titles of all time (NOT just 2009 titles). No early readers, no young adult books. This poll is focused squarely on middle grade fiction. You can find more details here. There's also a young adult poll brewing at Diane Chen's School Library Journal blog, Practically Paradise. Diane says "These are the titles that appeal to teens including young adult novels, nonfiction, and picture books for teens (ages 13-19)".

John Green has an interesting article in School Library Journal about the future of reading. It's quite long, but well worth the time to read. For instance, in regards to the future of book distribution, he says: "Just this: if, in the future, most books are sold either online or in big box stores like Costco and Wal-Mart, you (librarians) will become even more important to American literature. How you choose to build your collection, whom you buy from, and how you discover the works you want to share with your patrons will shape what Americans—whether or not they ever visit libraries—will read and how they will read it." And "There’s no question ... that librarians are to thank for the astonishing growth of YA fiction over the last decade." Oh, just read the whole thing. I found this link at The Miss Rumphius Effect.

As previously mentioned, the Cybils shortlists are now available, and the Cybils judges (myself included) are reading away. For those in need of more reading suggestions, however, Cybils Deputy Editor Sarah Stevenson has a compilation of recommended reading lists from Cybils panelists. She notes that they are "not predictions, DEFINITELY not hints, and probably not prophecies, but certainly a great source of reading material if your TBR pile is getting low." Now, this is not a problem I ever expect to have again in my life. But still, they're nice lists. Elaine Magliaro also has a roundup of some more "official" best-of lists at Wild Rose Reader. And Sherry Early has a roundup of reader-submitted year-end booklists at Semicolon, 138 and counting. And last, but definitely not least, Betsy Bird has a scaled back version of her must-read Golden Fuse Awards (including such helpful categories as Best Swag of the Year).

Speaking of the Cybils, in response to the previously mentioned discussions about lack of diversity in the Cybils shortlists (more a symptom of a larger issue than any criticism of the panelists themselves), Colleen Mondor calls upon readers to demand diversity in publishing. She says: "We have to make this a big deal. No more holding a diversity challenge and thinking that is enough. No more having an event where we look at books by POC or with diverse protagonists. No more making diversity something we look at on special days or for special reasons." See also Doret's take at TheHappyNappyBookseller. What do you all think?

On a lighter note, Laini Taylor today described a Reader's Retreat in New Hampshire, organized by Elizabeth MacCrellish, that sounds (and looks - she has photos) wonderful. Here's the gist: "Reading reading reading, a juicy stack of wonderful books, and taking breaks for yummy meals prepared for you, in the company of other lovely kindred spirits who have also been living inside books all day?" This event, a Squam Arts Workshops (SAW) session scheduled for September 1-5, sounds amazing to me. Perhaps someday...

Quick hits:

• The Readergirlz spotlight title of the month is The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart. Little Willow has all the details.
• Last week's Poetry Friday roundup was at A Year of Reading. Tomorrow's is scheduled for The Miss Rumphius Effect. This week's Nonfiction Monday roundup was at Picture Book of the Day. Next week's will be at All About Children's Books.
• If you're looking for weighty topics to post about, check out Liz B's "terribly important to post about list" at Tea Cozy. I look forward to reading her eventual posts on all of these topics.
• Jules has a simply mind-boggling 2009 retrospective post at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast.
• At Everyday Reading, Janssen shares her techniques for fitting reading time into her regular life. There are some additional suggestions from readers in the comments, too. I agree with Janssen and commenters that audiobooks are a great way to eke out some extra reading time. I listen while I'm cooking, folding laundry, and when I'm driving anywhere.
• And if that's not enough linkage for you, Betsy Bird has a huge new edition of Fusenews at A Fuse #8 Production. Really, it's well worth a look.

Wednesday Afternoon Visits: December 23: Kidlitosphere News and Views before Christmas

Things have quieted down on the blogs this week as Christmas approaches. But me, I've finished my shopping and my wrapping. Work has quieted down. And I find myself with a bit of time to catch up on the blog posts from the past few days. Here are some things that caught my eye. Consider this an early Christmas present for those of you still online...

One of my favorite posts of the season is the Shrinking Violet Promotions Holiday Survival Guide for Introverts. Here's a snippet: "A plea on behalf of all the introverted children out there in the world—for introverted children, having to get up in Santa’s lap and TALK to this perfect stranger, usually IN FRONT OF other perfect strangers can be the 6 year old equivalent of public speaking." Robin and Mary understand, from deep down, what it means to be an introvert. [Image credit: Microsoft ClipArt Gallery]

Margo Rabb has an interesting essay in the New York Times about people who steal books from bookstores. Who would have thought that a certain demographic would consider stealing books cool? And you'll never believe which book is the most frequently stolen. See also Liz B's commentary on the piece at Tea Cozy. Liz talks about how stealing from the library is even worse than stealing from bookstores, because this keeps other people from being able to access books.  

At Book Moot, Camille talks about the advantages of board books, complete with some recommended new titles. She also discusses how essential she considers a bookshelf in every nursery (I certainly agree with that!). On a related theme, Lori Calabrese lists several of her favorite Christmas-themed board books. And, though not board book-focused, see also Esme Raji Codell's Christmas Book Picks.

Colleen Mondor has a lovely post about remembering where we came from at the holidays. Here's a snippet: "when I look at this picture (from 1972) all I know is that in every way that mattered, it was. I have always been, and still remain, the lucky daughter of wonderful parents and the little sister of the best brother in the world." Sniff!

For those feeling a bit grouchier around the holidays, MotherReader has her annual Festivus post, for the airing of grievances. You can click through to see mine. Speaking of MotherReader, she's selling Snowpocalypse shirts in her Cafe Press store, in honor of the recent East Coast storm.

Various people and institutions have been coming up with their "best of" lists for 2009. Sarah Stevenson is going to round some of those up on the Cybils blog soon. But there are a couple that I couldn't resist sharing here.

• At 100 Scope Notes, Travis offers a toast to 2009 Children's Lit: The Year in Miscellanea. He has topics like "most uncontroversial children's lit controversy" and "YA cover trend that was too popular to mention." Fun stuff!
• At A Fuse #8 Production, Betsy Bird shares her Best of the Decade: A Look Back at Children's Literature from 2000-2009. She discusses the rise of the children's book "phenomenon", the rise of YA fiction, and the rise of blogging and online media, among other relevant topics. This is a don't miss it post. See also Monica Edinger's response to Betsy's post at Educating Alice. Monica responds to most of Betsy's main points, and adds a few observations of her own about self-publishing, and the evolution of quality nonfiction.

You can also share your "best of" lists in a special January 2nd edition of Semicolon's Saturday Review of Books. In this post, Sherry explains how the Review of Books works in general, and invites people to participate in the regular and special editions.

Lois Lowry has been sharing some recent insulting reader feedback on The Giver (here and here). She notes that the vast majority of the emails that she receives aren't like these, but I think it's brave of her to sine a light on these negative ones. I think that these messages say something about the decline of politeness in our culture.

Quick hits:

• Friday's Poetry Friday round-up was at Susan Taylor Brown's blog. Nonfiction Monday was at the Simply Science blog.
• Literacy Toolbox has an essay by Links to Literacy about how to choose nonfiction picture books.
• At Jenny's Wonderland of Books, Jenny Schwartzberg has an article about using the Internet to help with collecting children's books.  
• At The Spectacle, KA Holt muses on speculative fiction that creates such wonderful worlds that she feels pained that they don't really exist (like the world of the Harry Potter books).
• At The Reading Tub, Terry Doherty offers tips for helping kids write letters to Santa, and including literacy in the process.  
• In honor of a recent watching of the movie The Day After Tomorrow, Abby (the) Librarian asks: "If you were trapped in the New York Public Library and had to burn books to stay alive, what sections would you start with?"
• Justine Larbalestier offers her suggestions for blog commenting etiquette.
• Kim and Jason suggest 61 Ways to Put the Brakes on Holiday Stress at the Escape Adulthood blog.

And that's all I have for you today. I'm off to watch It's a Wonderful Life in front of the fire with Mheir. Wishing all of you who celebrate it a Merry Christmas!!  

Quick Hits: Booklights, An Upcoming Must-Read Book, and Jon Scieszka

I'd like to share a couple of tidbits with you all this morning:

First up, I have a new post at Booklights today. It's the fifth entry in my Tips for Growing Bookworms series. This week's tip is about taking children to libraries and bookstores. Timely for the holiday season, but a good practice year-round. I hope that you'll check it out.

Next, many congratulations to Betsy Bird from A Fuse #8 Production, Jules Danielson from Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast and Peter D. Sieruta from Collecting Children's Books on their new book contract. You can find their write-ups here, here, and here. This must-read title, due out from Candlewick in September of 2012, is tentatively titled Wild Things! : The True, Untold Stories Behind the Most Beloved Children’s Books and Their Creators. Very cool!

Third, Meghan Newton from Goodman Media shared a link with me today that I had somehow missed. It's an article by Jon Scieszka from the Huffington Post, musing on the close of his tenure as National Ambassador of Children's Literature. It's classic Scieszka - breezy and fun, but full of concrete tips for helping reluctant readers. This is must-read stuff.

And:

• SeriesPalooza kicks off at GalleySmith today.
• Today's Nonfiction Monday is at In Need of Chocolate (one of my favorite blog names).
• Colleen Mondor muses on who will step up to the plate in light of Kirkus Reviews closing.
• Mary Hershey has an excellent Introvert's Holiday Wish List at Shrinking Violet Promotions.
• Darla D shares a well-thought-out review policy at Books & Other Thoughts.
• Lee Wind highlights a new blog dedicated to picture books for children about having a gay parent, family member, or friend.
• Kate Coombs shares her top middle grade fiction picks from the past 100 years. Many of my favorites are there.

Wishing you all a wonderful week!

Friday Visits: December 11: Kidlitosphere News and Views

Given the bustle of the holiday season, I've had trouble keeping up with Kidlitosphere news lately. But here are some highlights from the past couple of weeks (at least those that I think are still timely).

Michelle is running a Cybils Award Challenge at Galleysmith. She says: "The Cybils Award Challenge is where participants are encouraged to read from The Cybils Award nominees for the given year." The challenge runs through the end of 2010, so you have plenty of time to participate.

Speaking of the Cybils, several Cybils bloggers were nominated for this year's EduBlog awards. You can find the list at the Cybils blog. And, of course, it's not too late to use the Cybils nomination lists (and past short lists) to help with your holiday shopping!

Speaking of holidays, in honor of Hanukkah, I'd like to bring to your attention a podcast at The Book of Life, in which Heidi Estrin, Esme Raji Codell, Mark Blevis, and Richard Michelson discuss a variety of topics, including their predicted winners for the 2010 Sydney Taylor Book Award. For my Jewish readers, I wish you all a Happy Hanukkah!

Book lists abound this time of year. I mentioned several in Monday's post at Booklights, but have a few new ones to share here. Lee Wind offers a list of GLBTQ books for middle schoolers. Another list I like a lot is Kate Messner's list of her favorite 2009 titles, broken into creative categories (starting with my favorite, dystopias). Colleen Mondor has an excellent three-part piece with book recommendations for girls from several authors (the regular participants in Colleen's What a Girl Wants series). And, Library Lady from Read it Again, Mom! shares her lists of Best Picture Books of the Decade and Best Chapter Books of the Decade. Finally, for a fun list of movies, Susan Taylor Brown shares over 200 movies about the literary life.

This is very late news, but the Readergirlz author of the month is Tamora Pierce. Little Willow has all the details at Bildungsroman.

Liz B. at Tea Cozy was inspired by the recent School Library Journal cover controversy to start a list of "books where an alcoholic (including recovering alcoholic) is portrayed as something other than the evil, abusive person". (Have I shared that? People were offended because the librarians mentioned in Betsy Bird's SLJ article on blogging were shown on the cover having drinks in a bar.). Also from Liz, see the William C. Morris YA Debut Award shortlist.

Speaking of recent controversies, Steph Su has a thoughtful post on the recent situation by which certain young adult titles were removed from a Kentucky classroom in Montgomery County (see details here). What I especially like about Steph's post is that she links to comments from a blogger who she doesn't agree with, so that she can understand both sides of the debate. My personal take is that the county superintendent is using a specious argument about academic rigor to remove books that he finds personally offensive from the classroom. See also commentary on this incident from Laurie Halse Anderson, Colleen Mondor, and Liz Burns.

Quick hits:

• Excitement is building for the January 5th announcement of the next National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. Reading Rockets has the scoop. Whoever is chosen will have some big shoes to fill, coming after Jon Scieszka.
• Janssen has a truly beautiful post at Everyday Reading about her family's last Christmas with her younger brother, Shepard. It's a tear-jerker, but also a nice reminder about what's really important.
• This week's Poetry Friday round-up is at Random Noodling by Diane May. See also an explanation of Poetry Friday from Susan T. at Booklights, and the results of this week's Poetry Stretch at The Miss Rumphius Effect (an assortment of poems that mention time).
• This week's Nonfiction Monday round-up is at Rasco from RIF.
• This week's Middle Grade Fantasy and Science Fiction review round-up is at Charlotte's Library.
• Becky Levine said some nice things about my blog last week, and I just wanted to thank her publicly. She also recommends several other blogs of particular interest to writers. Those are well worth a look. Also worth a look are the 31 Blogs You Might Not Know that Susan Taylor Brown is highlighting each day this month.
• For more links (including author Grace Lin's appearance on the Today Show) visit today's Around the Interwebs post from Abby (the) Librarian. See also Travis' most recent Morning Notes post at 100 Scope Notes and Omnivoracious' latest YA Wednesday post from Heidi. 
• And, of course, you can always find lots of news in Betsy Bird's Fuse News posts at A Fuse #8 Production (here and here, for example). Betsy also broke the news this week that Kirkus Reviews (a journal heavily used by librarians for collection development) will be closing.

And that's all I have for you today. I hope that you find some tidbits worth reading, and that I can do better at keeping up with the Kidlitosphere news in the future. Happy weekend, all!

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!

Sunday Visits: November 22: Kidlitosphere News and Views

Happy Sunday, all! Sorry I've been so absent from the blog lately. I've had a tough time recovering from my recent travels, and I've been a bit under the weather to boot. This weekend, I did finally manage to make it through all of the blog posts in my reader (though some amount of skimming was required). Here are a few (mostly from this past week - everything older than that started to feel like old news):

There are too many wonderful interviews from this week's Winter Blog Blast Tour for me to highlight them all. But I did especially enjoy Shelf Elf's interview of Laini Taylor, as well as 7-Imps' interview of Laini's husband, Jim Di Bartolo. Their daughter Clementine Pie is adorable. You can find the complete set of links to the WBBT interviews at Chasing Ray (home of WBBT organizer Colleen Mondor). See also Liz B's background piece on the WBBT at Tea Cozy. I also enjoyed Mary Ann Scheuer's interview with Annie Barrows, which included tidbits about Annie's reading with her own kids.

Speaking of Laini and Jim, they did not, alas, win the National Book Award for Young People's Literature (for which Lips Touch was shortlisted). Kudos to the winner, Phillip Hoose, for Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice, a true-life account of the 15-year-old African-American girl who refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus in March 1955.

The Cybils nominating committee panelists are reading away. And Cybils tech guru Sheila Ruth reports at Wands and Worlds that "Tracy Grand of Jacketflap has once again created this terrific Cybils nominee widget. It rotates through the Cybils nominees and displays a different one each time the page is loaded. You can get the widget for your own blog here." See also Sheila's post at the Cybils blog about publisher love for the Cybils, and our thanks to the many publishers and authors providing review copies for the Cybils process. Sheila has been doing an amazing job as this year's Publisher Liaison.

Betsy Bird also links to various write-ups about the recent Children's Literary Cafe at the New York Public Library (focused on the Cybils).

Posts about holiday gift-giving are already proliferating. I especially liked this Semicolon post with book ideas for eight and twelve-year-old girls, and this post at The Miss Rumphius Effect with gifts for readers and writers. Elaine Magliaro also has a fabulous list of Thanksgiving-related resources at Wild Rose Reader.

Pam shares the results of the KidLitCon09 charity raffle at MotherReader. She says: "With more than five hundred dollars raised with the charity raffle at KidlitCon, we gave two projects at Donors Choose a huge boost. Now with additional contributors, both DC school literacy projects have been fully funded!" She shares teachers' notes from both programs.

I've seen a couple of responses to Betsy Bird's article about Amazon's Vine program. Maureen has some excellent thoughts at Confessions of a Bibliovore on what it means to review in a professional manner, whether on a blog or not. Roger Sutton from Read Roger, on the other hand, just thinks that blog reviews are too long.

Kate Coombs has a very detailed post at Book Aunt about books that are currently popular with kids. After discussing many of the usual suspects, she says: "I'll conclude my report on the coolest of the cool. It's kind of like watching the popular kids at school. Sometimes you wonder why they're popular when they seem so ordinary, or even, in some cases, so unappealing. On the other hand, there are times it makes sense. Some of the popular kids are truly extraordinary, and their singular status seems completely deserved."

Quick hits:

• Gail Gauthier linked from Original Content to an article recommending 50 Best Books for Boys and Young Men. I personally found the list a bit classics-heavy, but there are certainly some good suggestions. And I like the article's slant that "reading books is manly."
• Playing by the Book shares a list of picture books about trucks, prepared by Lynn from Chronicle of an Infant Bibliophile. The article also includes Playing by the Book's favorite truck songs.
• The Book Dads have a nice reading list on fathers and adoption.  
• Mitali Perkins highlights 15 new young adult titles featuring forgiveness.
• Sarah Mulhern has a new installment of her "hot books in my middle school classroom" series at The Reading Zone.
• Charlotte has started a regular Middle Grade Science Fiction and Fantasy Round-Up at Charlotte's Library. The latest installment is here. She says: "please leave me a comment if I've missed yours, and I will add it to the list!"
• This week's Poetry Friday Round-Up was at The Drift Record. Last week's was at Gotta Book. This week's Nonfiction Monday Round-Up was at Tales from the Rushmore Kid.
• Donalyn Miller suggests that Book Whisperer readers work to get themselves out of their reading ruts. She also shares her recent positive experience in getting her students out of their reading ruts.
• At Just One More Book! Mark Blevis shares the "warrior theme" audio that he made for his wife, Andrea Ross, with good wishes from "a host of authors, illustrators, librarians and publishers from around the world (including England, Spain and Israel)". I'm happy to join all of them in wishing Andrea the best in her battle against breast cancer.
• Speaking of cancer-fighting kidlit bloggers, Jone MacCulloch shares news at Check It Out about a second fundraising auction for Bridget Zinn, who is fighting colon cancer.
• As usual, you can find additional links at Abby (the) Librarians' November 20th Around the Interwebs, Book Dads' November 15th Weekend Wander, and last week's End-o'-the-Week Kid-Lit Roundup from Paul at Omnivoracious. Not to mention various Fuse News posts at A Fuse #8 Production, of course. And there's a new player in the link roundup fray. Travis from 100 Scope Notes has started a new regular feature called Morning Notes. He has gorgeous headlines, and a nice combination of quirky and insightful selections. Great stuff!

That's all for today. It's nice to be feeling a bit more caught up on my reader, I'll tell you that. More soon...

© 2009 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page. All rights reserved. All Amazon links in this post are affiliate links, and may result in my receiving a small commission on purchases (with no additional cost to you).

Sunday Afternoon Visits: November 8: Kidlitosphere Links and News

It's been a fairly quiet weekend on the kidlit blogs, for whatever reason. However, I have run across a few things of potential interest for you.

At Scrub-a-Dub-Tub, Terry Doherty shares a monthly roundup of new literacy and reading-related resources. The new resources section was something that we spun out of our weekly children's literacy roundups, in the event of streamlining those, and Terry's been collecting ideas for this monthly column. I hope you'll check it out. She's got lots of useful tidbits.

The NCBLA blog reports that the fourth episode of The Exquisite Corpse Adventure is now available. This installment was written by Susan Cooper. The post adds: "And if you need further incentive to share the Library of Congress and the NCBLA's reading outreach project with the young people in your life, take a look at Timothy Basil Ering's electric new illustration for Episode Four!"

In the context of a recent graphic novel kick, Gail Gauthier muses at Original Content on how many books are "rigidly" formulaic. She says: "Maybe reading the same formula/pattern/storyline over and over again assists them in some way I've just never heard about." In the comments, Becky Levine adds: "I wonder about this often--how many things we see as formulaic, "old" don't feel that way to a child reading them--since they don't have X number of decades of this kind of reading behind them." What do you all think?

At Books & Other Thoughts, Darla D. wonders whether it's a good idea for parents to "ink out all of the bad words" in books before giving them to their children. Darla says: "A discussion between this parent and child about unacceptable language and why the parent believes it is not a good idea for her daughter to use those words might be more productive than expurgating the text." There are a range of opinions in the comments - it's quite an interesting (and civil) discussion.

At Biblio File, Jennie Rothschild discusses Amazon's new capability to quickly share Associates links on Twitter, in the context of the new FTC disclosure regulations. She notes: "the way I understand it, you'd have to disclose ON YOUR TWEET that you'll make money off the link. But how does one fit a link, why you're linking to the product, and a disclosure all in 140 characters? That, I don't know." I don't know, either. The idea of being able to share a Tweet that says "I'm reading this" and then get a small commission if anyone should happen to click through and buy the book, well, that has some appeal. But I think that the disclosure would be very tricky to pull off in any meaningful way.

Lori Calabrese has started a new monthly meme (possibly to become a weekly meme, if there's sufficient interest) in which she'll link to book giveaways around the Kidlitosphere. Don't you love her cute logo for Fish for a Free Book? She says in the launch post: "If you are hosting a children’s- young adult book-related giveaway, sponsoring a giveaway, or just found a really awesome giveaway that you’d like to share with us, please leave it here! (Please make sure it’s children’s book related)".

Speaking of giveaways, I, like Betsy Bird, don't usually link to them in my roundups (there are just too many). However, Betsy recently talked at A Fuse #8 Production about one that I think is brilliant. From the press release: "The YA and MG authors of the 2009 Debutantes are giving away a 46-book set of their debut novels to ONE lucky library, anywhere in the world! In light of recent budget cuts to libraries in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and other communities, these debut authors would like to contribute their library to your library, offering up brand new novels for your patrons at no cost." Pretty cool!

Quick hits:

• Susan T. identifies a bunch of additional "best of" lists at Chicken Spaghetti. Really, it would be redundant for me to link to any of these. If you're interested, you can peruse Susan's 2009 list of best of lists.
• This week's Poetry Friday roundup is at Wild Rose Reader, hosted by Elaine Magliaro.
• 5 Minutes for Books has a lovely guest post by Fiona Ingram about her adopted daughter's "journey into the wonderful world of words."
• Daphne Lee explains the high cost of books, including children's books, at The Places You Will Go (books are particularly expensive in Malaysia, where Daphne lives). She also suggests alternatives for families having difficulty buying books on their own.
• Happy third blog birthday to Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect.
• You can find more links at the Book Dads Weekend Wander and Katie B's Odds and Bookends column at First Book.

And that's it for today. Hope you're all having a lovely Sunday.

© 2009 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page. All rights reserved. All Amazon links in this post are affiliate links, and may result in my receiving a small commission on purchases (with no additional cost to you).

Wednesday Afternoon Visits: November 4: Kidlitosphere News and Views

It's been a pretty active week around the Kidlitosphere. Here are a few links for you.

Today is Sesame Street's 40th birthday. Happy Birthday to Cookie Monster, Oscar, and the rest of the crew. One of my earliest memories is of singing "C is for Cookie, that's good enough for me" in the car. According to this news release, "Google, an innovator in the world of technology, has partnered with Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit educational organization behind Sesame Street, to create original “Google doodles.”  Starting today, Google will feature photographic depictions of the Sesame Street Muppets with the Google logo on its home page from November 4-10." Fun stuff!

Colleen Mondor has posted the latest installment in her "What a Girl Wants" series (a set of roundtable discussions that she's hosting with a panel of authors) at Chasing Ray. This week's topic is: mean girls in literature. Colleen asks: "did literature create the myth of mean girls or have the reality of mean girls created accompanying literature?" As usual in this smart series, the responses extend in a variety of intriguing directions.

The Readergirlz will be celebrating Native American Heritage Month for November, spotlighting Marlene Carvell's novel Sweetgrass Basket at readergirlz. In her customary organized manner, Little Willow has all the details.

At Pixie Stix Kids Pix, Kristen McLean takes on "the Amazon Vine brouhaha kicked off by Betsy Bird over at Fuse #8 last week", saying "I think this discussion has some larger implications for the industry, which is why it’s going to continue to get play." She begins by discussing the lack of transparency in the Amazon program, and moves on from there.

Picking up on another Betsy Bird article (her recent SLJ piece about KidLit blogs), Roger Sutton asks at Read Roger "whether or not there is such a thing as a blog-friendly book", if "some books more than others will appeal to people who like to blog about children's books." He also makes some interesting points about the usefulness (or lack thereof) of blogs for libraries researching for their book collections, in context of "The glory and the bane of book blogging is its variety".

Speaking of Betsy's SLJ article, Liz B. has a fun piece about the photo shoot for the cover at Tea Cozy. Betsy's article also inspired in librarian Ms. Yingling some philosophical musings on why she blogs. She also makes the excellent point that "The more good people we have commenting on books, the easier it is for the rest of us to keep on top of the huge number of new books that are coming out". 

Anne Levy is running a new contest on the Cybils website related to NaNoWriteMo (where people try to write a whole book in November). Well, actually she links to a contest, and then also asks people to share 50 word blurbs from their NaNoWriteMo projects, for publication on the Cybils blog. Fun stuff! 

Mitali Perkins recently announced an ALA Midwinter Kid/YA Lit Tweetup. She says: "Coming to Boston for the ALA Midwinter conference? If you're a tweeting librarian, author, illustrator, publisher, agent, editor, reviewer, blogger, or anyone interested in children's and YA lit, join us on January 16, 2010 from 4-6 in the Birch Bar at Boston's Westin Waterfront Hotel." Still not enough to make me wish that I still lived in Boston as winter approaches, but this comes close...

It looks like blogging friend Liz Garton Scanlon is going to have her picture book, All the World (with Marla Frazee), included in the Cheerios Spoonful of Stories program next year. Congratulations, Liz! Liz shares some other good news for the book at Liz in Ink.

Sixth grade language arts teacher Sarah asked at the Reading Zone for "a few “words of wisdom” for a presentation" on reading aloud to middle school students. There's some good input in the comments. It's an inspiring post all around, actually.

Quick hits:

• This week's Nonfiction Monday round-up is available at Books Together. Anamaria did a great job, didn't she?
• The latest Kidlitosphere institution to be profiled by Liz B. at A Chair, A Fireplace, and A Tea Cozy is the wonderful Just One More Book!, founded by Mark Blevis and Andrea Ross. See some additional good thoughts for Andrea (who is fighting cancer right now) at The Reading Tub.
• At Steph Su Reads, Steph comments on the YA novels included in Amazon's Best Books of 2009 list, and also offers her personal commentary on Amazon's Best Books for Teens 2009 list.
• At 100 Scope Notes, Travis will be celebrating book covers next week (Nov. 9 to 13). Travis also links to some Dr. Seuss Mash-ups that are, well, interesting.
• Cynthia Lord reports that there are now Twilight Barbies. Seriously. Leila reports at Bookshelves of Doom about an even more alarming Twilight-related accessory.
• Rick Riordan shares the scoop on his new Egyptian mythology-based series, the Kane Chronicles, at Myth & Mystery. The first book will be called The Red Pyramid.
• The new edition of The Wash Rag (PDF link), the Reading Tub's quarterly newsletter, is now available from Terry Doherty.

© 2009 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page. All rights reserved. All Amazon links in this post are affiliate links, and may result in my receiving a small commission on purchases (with no additional cost to you).

Friday Afternoon Visits: Halloween Eve News from the Kidlitosphere

There's been nonstop action around the Kidlitosphere this week. Here are a few highlights.

Halloween-themed posts abound this week. I, of course, liked this one from Joyce Grant at Getting Kids Reading: Hallowe'en Literacy: Some ideas for working literacy into your Hallowe'en festivities. Like "Do a Hallowe'en recipe together. A perfect combination of math, reading and - yum!" Also, via a link from Katie B's First Book's Odds and Bookends column, bookish Halloween costume ideas from Laura Nathan. And Roberta Gibson at Wrapped in Foil is mulling giving out books for Halloween, inspired by a Books for Treats promotion in the comic strip Luann. And Pam Coughlan profiles three books about monsters at Booklights.

I found an interesting article about adults reading young adult fiction via @DonalynBooks and @TheReadingZone on Twitter. The Courier-Journal.com article by Erin Keane says "Young adult fiction's appeal has grown way beyond the school library. What was once considered entertainment for kids has become big business for adults, who are increasingly turning to the children's section for their own reading pleasure, according to publishing experts."

As for what teens themselves enjoy reading, Publisher's Weekly recently published the results of a TeenReads.com survey about teens' reading habits. See Carol Fitzgerald's article for details. Roger Sutton comments at Read Roger that "The most interesting statistic of this teen reading survey concerns who responded to it: "while we purposely marketed the survey to attract male readers, females are the vast majority (96%) of responders.""

In other news about teen readers, Becky Levine shares a lovely story about boys excited for a book signing by Eoin Colfer. She says: "I hear SO much about boys not liking books, about losing boys from reading as they get into their teens. I watch my son and, too often, see him as the exception–myself as the lucky parent who gets to keep sharing this with her son. Last night, I realized he’s not the exception and neither am I. Write for the boys, folks. They’re here, and they’re starving for more books to read, more books that show them why they want to write, too."

My blog was included in recent lists of 101 Book Blogs You Need to Read and 100 Best Book Blogs for Kids, Tweens, and Teens by Online Universities. I especially liked the second list, because lots of my blogging friends are on it, too. Both lists are diverse, classified, and annotated. Although, as you know, I'm not a huge fan of "bests" in reference to blogs, I am happy to be in such good company.

Speaking of bests, Susan Thomsen has started her annual list of lists of best children's books of 2009 at Chicken Spaghetti. She explains: "Last year I started compiling all the year-end "best of" lists in newspapers, magazines, and other sources. I added in many of the various children's literature prizes throughout the year, too. (You can peruse "The Best of the Best: Kids' Books '08" right here.) A person who chooses titles from these lists will read—and give and recommend to children—many good books."

Still speaking of bests, Amazon is counting down their 100 best books of the year at Omnivoracious. You can find books 20 to 11 here, with links to the previous lists. I've been particularly happy to see The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate (#83), Shiver (#62), Catching Fire (#42), The Last Olympian (#29), and When You Reach Me (#21). That's some representation for children's and young adult literature in the overall list. I mean, I'd like to see more, but I agree with the titles that they did include.

If you're going to be around New York City next Saturday, November 7th, there's an excellent Cybils-themed Literary Cafe being hosted by Betsy Bird at the new Children's Center at 42nd St. You can find details in this post/news release at A Fuse #8 Production. Panelists will include Pam Coughlan, Elizabeth Burns, Susan Thomsen, and Anne Boles Levy. I'll tell you - this is one of those rare occasions when I wish I still lived in the Northeast.

Speaking of Betsy Bird and of Amazon, Betsy provoked quite a controversy recently when she asked some pointed questions about Amazon's Vine reviewer program. She said things like "the Vine reviewers are sometimes not the best representative readers for books that are a little different" and "The difference being that you can rely on a professional reviewer to give insightful commentary and acknowledge a book's intended audience, and you can determine whether or not a blog reviewer is the kind of person you want looking over your product. And you don't even have to pay us. The Vine folks, by contrast, are not professional reviewers and yet they enjoy a newfound #1 status of sorts." The comments about "professional reviewers" vs. not seem to have caused the most sting for people. Me, I tried the Vine program very briefly, and didn't like it. I didn't like the idea of having to review books I was lukewarm about in order to receive more books (though I can see that requiring a certain number of reviews is necessary for this type of program). But I think that Betsy raises some issues worth thinking about. See also Kate Messner's take.

Colleen Mondor took on this Vine controversy at Chasing Ray, tied it in with two other recent conflicts, and noted one alarming overall issue that connects the three. She says: "I wanted to point this all out to emphasize the many small ways in which book choice is constantly under attack. It's not just banning that is a problem, in some ways that is the least of our problems because at least it is obvious. We know who to fight and when. The removal of choice in places big and small is insidious however and it's easy to lose sight of but we need to be thinking about it and doing what we can to combat it all the time." The comments there, though not as extensive as the ones at Betsy's, are similarly mixed.

Liz B points out at Tea Cozy one more must-read article about the FTC Guidelines for Bloggers. Olgy Gary typed up a detailed transcript of Mary Engle's session at KidLitCon, and then sent it to Mary for editing/approval. The result is an sanctioned transcript of the discussion - well worth your time. You can find it at Olgy's Children Come First website. Olgy, a first-time attendee to KidLitCon, is clearly going to be an asset to the Kidlitosphere. Also at Tea Cozy, Liz highlights Cynthia Leitich Smith's blog, Cynsations, in the latest of her Kidlitosphere profile features.

I'd like to offer a fond blogging farewell to Eisha from Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast. after co-founding 7-Imp with Jules (who will still be blogging there), Eisha has decided to move on to pursue other interests. I'm glad that she's found other things to interest her, but she'll certainly be missed in the Kidlitosphere. See also Tanita Davis' farewell to Eisha at Finding Wonderland.

Quick hits:

• This week's Poetry Friday round-up is hosted by Jennie at Biblio File. In other poetry news, Tricia introduced a new math-based form of poetry from J. Patrick Lewis at The Miss Rumphius Effect, the Zeno.
• My Friend Amy has declared the week of November 9-13 Baby-sitters Club Week.
• The Spectacle is having a roundtable discussion about Favorite Villains from speculative fiction. You can find many villains in Part 1 and Part 2.
• Maureen links from Confessions of a Bibliovore to an interesting post at MiG Writers about middle grade and young adult books, and the sometimes blurry borders between then.  
• Mitali Perkins describes her recent visit to Orchard House (where Louisa May Alcott lived, and wrote Little Women).
• For more Kidlitosphere links, see Abby (the) Librarian's Around the Interwebs post from earlier today. I enjoy these posts even more than I used to, now that I finally met Abby at KidLitCon. Wishing Abby a happy 2 year blogiversary, too. Happy Blogiversary also to Sherry from Semicolon, who has been blogging for SIX years.

And that's all for today. I'll be catching up on some literacy news this weekend for Monday's roundup. Wishing you all a festive and freakish Halloween.

© 2009 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page. All rights reserved. All Amazon links in this post are affiliate links, and may result in my receiving a small commission on purchases (with no additional cost to you).

Sunday Afternoon Visits: October 25: Post-KidLitCon Catch-Up Edition

It took a bit of doing, after traveling for five days last week, but I am finally caught up again with the blogs in my reader. Here are some highlights.

Pam is rounding up KidLitCon writeups at MotherReader. If you have a post about the conference that's not included, leave the link in the comments at MotherReader, and Pam or Bill will get it added to the list. I've been hearing feedback on my conference post that people who didn't attend are finding the various writeups useful, which is good to hear.

Cybils nominations are now closed, and nominating committee panelists are reading and reviewing away. Approximately 950 titles were nominated across the nine categories. Sheila Ruth is contacting publishers about review copies, and shares details at the Cybils blog.

Tuesday was the National Day of Writing. I was digging out of email after last weekend's trip, and pretty much missed the festivities. But I did manage to submit an entry to Mary Lee and Franki's Gallery of Writing: A Lifetime of Reading. You can even see me on a short video that Mary Lee made about the gallery at A Year of Reading (at least, I think you can - I never have the nerve to actually watch myself on video). I especially loved Melissa's submission, childhood and a love of reading, which you can find at Book Nut. Melissa describes how she rediscovered the power of children's literature as an adult, and never looked back. Of course I agree with her completely that "some of the best stories out there are being written for children and young adults".

This weekend many book bloggers are participating in Dewey's 24-Hour Readathon. Here's a brief description from the Readathon website: "For 24 hours, we read books, post to our blogs about our reading, and visit other readers’ blogs. We also participate in mini-challenges throughout the day. It happens twice a year, in April and in October." There are about 140 bloggers participating (some from the Kidlitosphere, others from the broader book blogging community).

The blog Saffron Tree is hosting a "book festival called CROCUS, for a week, starting yesterday, Oct 23rd, 2009. The theme is "Around the world in 7 days" and true to this, there will be an avalanche of reviews of wonderful books focusing on folktales, immigrant tales, modern tales, a crossword contest, and some interesting author interviews. This is all in the spirit of the blog to promote reading to children, and more so, of culturally diverse books." (Text from an email that I received about the event.)

Quick hits:

• At Kiddosphere, Jennifer Schultz has a feature in honor of Children's Magazine Month. Jennifer also shares her thoughts on children's books that would make great movies.
• Episode 3 of The Exquisite Corpse Adventure is now available. This installment was contributed by Kate DiCamillo and illustrated by Calef Brown.
• The most recent Poetry Friday roundup is at Big A little a. The most recent Nonfiction Monday roundup is at Lori Calabrese Writes!.  
• Cheryl Rainfield shares part 6 of her occasional series on gift ideas for book loves, writers, and editors.
• Lee Wind suggests that anonymity regarding book covers is a plus of eBook readers for boys reading books that might be considered "girly", and for boys and girls reading GLBTQ titles.
• At Educating Alice, Monica Edinger discusses the question of whether or not a picture book could receive the Newbery Award (inspired by a post at Heavy Medal).
• Tristan Bancks has a nice little post about the power of time off. He notes: "Creative work starts to feel samey when you work too hard for too long. You forget why you love it", and recommends getting away from time to time.
• James Preller (author of Six Innings) has a powerful memorial post about a boy named Ben.
• Angie has a thoughtful post at Angieville about "those unexpected moments that give you pause, the passages, the words, the emotions they evoke. These are the passages that become favorites, that you go back and re-read to savor."
• Also, following up on her bad boys piece from last month, Angie has a post about nice guys from stories. She starts with the prototypical nice guy from literature, Gilbert Blythe (noting "capable of a little wickedness" as a requirement for the list).
• GreenBeanTeenQueen shares her favorite sick day books and movies. Anne Shirley features prominently. Some of my favorite comfort reads are by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Georgette Heyer, Jane Austen, and D. E. Stevenson.  What about you?
• At Tea Cozy, Liz B profiles Semicolon's Saturday Review of Books feature.
• Travis has an entertaining, tongue-in-cheek post at 100 Scope Notes about "things librarians fancy".
• And, for a final fun post, the NCBLA blog links to an online contest at the New Yorker by which people can submit photos of their pets dressed up as literary characters (for instance, long-suffering dog Poppy dressed as The Velveteen Rabbit).

That's all for today. Wishing you all a peaceful weekend.

Wednesday Afternoon Visits: October 14: National Book Awards Shortlist Edition

First up, congratulations to the Kidlitosphere's own Laini Taylor, shortlisted for the 2009 National Book Award for Young People's Literature (for Lips Touch, which was already on my "must read soon" stack). I have raved about Laini's other two books, Blackbringer and Silksinger, and heard great things about Lips Touch, too. Laini is a fabulous writer, and this is much deserved. Not to mention that Laini was a Cybils panelist last year, and co-organizer of the second Kidlitosphere Conference in Portland (with Jone MacCulloch). And she's growing a young bookworm, even as we speak. Oh, I am just so happy for Laini!! {Edited to add: here's Laini's response.} Congratulations to the other nominees, too. Especially Deborah Heiligman (author of Charles and Emma), who I haven't met, but who is my Facebook friend. See the full young people's list at the Cybils blog.

Cybils nominations close at midnight tomorrow night (10/15). You can access the nomination form, and lists of all of the nominated titles in each category, here. So, if you have a title that you LOVE, that you think is well-written and kid-friendly, the kind of book that you want to shout from the rooftops about, and it hasn't been nominated yet, don't miss your chance to see it considered for the Cybils. You can also read a bio/manifesto for Cybils co-founder Anne Boles Levy here.

KidLitCon is also fast approaching. Sara Lewis Holmes and her blogging author co-panelists are looking for your input. Sara asks: "What would you like to know about blogging as an author? Do you have questions about how we decide what to blog about/how we got started/why we continue/what benefits we see/what the pitfalls are?  Or any other question?" See also Pam's most recent post, encouraging locals who haven't signed up yet to give the conference a look.

Susanna Reich wrote to me from I.N.K., saying: "Twenty-two award-winning authors who've been blogging at INK: Interesting Nonfiction for Kids, have created a searchable  database, INK Think Tank: Nonfiction In Your Classroom,, at www.inkthinktank.com. Visitors will be able to search by keyword, subject, author, title, grade level, and most significantly, by national curriculum standards. Our goal is to get trade books into the classroom, and initial response from teachers and librarians has been enthusiastic."

Becky Levine has an inspirational post about re-opening doors that you might have closed earlier in your life. She says: "I’m finding a big plus to being a person “of a certain age.” And that is that I believe in more possibilities than I did when I was younger... Possibilities. What doors have you closed and either forgotten about or too stubbornly ignored? Is it time, perhaps, to go oil the lock and hunt out the key?"

I ran across two additional responses to the FTC Guidelines for Bloggers:

• Jennie at Biblio File is making a few changes, in light of the FTC guidelines (even though she thinks the whole thing is "STUPID STUPID SO STUPID!").
• Becky shares her updated review policy at Becky's Book Reviews.

Quick hits:

• Kate Coombs shares five great out of print read-alouds at Book Aunt.
• At Tea Cozy, Liz B shares information about the ALA's Great Stories Club: "The Great Stories Club reaches underserved, troubled teen populations through books that are relevant to their lives. Libraries located within or working in partnership with facilities serving troubled teens (including juvenile justice facilities, alternative high schools, drug rehabilitation centers and nonprofits serving teen parents) are eligible to apply."
• Liz is also continuing her series of informational posts. This week she talks about children's and young adult literature listservs.
• Pam Coughlan has a repeat of an excellent article that she wrote about being a mother and a reader (they don't call her MotherReader for nothing).
• The Shrinking Violets have an interview with Laurie Helgoe, author of Introvert Power (which I reviewed here). This is an interview that particularly resonated with me (as did the book).
• Terry Doherty has a great post at Booklights about Easy Readers (starting with The Cat in the Hat, of course, and including the Geisel and Cybils awards). This week's Show and Tale at Booklights is Eloise.
• Angie from Angieville has good news for fans of Dennis Lehane's Patrick Kenzie/Angela Gennaro mystery series (like me).
• Don't forget that next week is Teen Read Week. See more details about the Readergirlz plans at Miss Erin.
• A new issue of Notes from the Horn Book is now available, featuring an interview with Kristin Cashore.
• The authors at The Spectacle are discussing Suzanne Collins' Catching Fire (with spoilers).
• Monica Edinger links to a New Yorker article by Daniel Zalewski about how strongly kids seem to be in charge in today's picture books. He criticizes a number of modern books for their portrayal of browbeaten parents and rampaging kids (citing Kevin Henkes as an exception).
• See more news at Terry's Tuesday Blurbs post at the Reading Tub. She is highly recommending " the pictures from the Read for the Record event at Nationals Park", and I agree with her.

That's all I have for news for this week. I'll be taking a few days off from the blog to attend KidLitCon. Ironic, I know, that I won't be blogging because of a blogging conference. But there you have it. I have left a review or two queued up for delayed posting. Wishing you all a lovely weekend!

© 2009 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page. All rights reserved. All Amazon links in this post are affiliate links, and may result in my receiving a small commission (with no additional cost to you).