105 Ways to Give a Book

KidLitosphere Public Service Announcements

With SCBWI’s New York conference info filling Twitter and the massive snowstorm engulfing the United States and the news from Egypt blasting our brain cells, I’m thinking that most of us in the kidlit world are playing a little catch-up. Here are a few things that should be noted:

The January Carnival of Children’s Literature is up and ready for reading at Challenging the Bookworm. Don’t miss the linkity goodness.

Yesterday marked the beginning of 28 Days Later, a Black History Month celebration of children’s literature, with daily profiles of 28 artists/authors at The Brown Bookshelf.

Long, looooong-time kidlit blogger Tasha Saecker of Kids Lit now has her blog at Waking Brain Cells. Please change your feeds, blogrolls and whatever else the kids are using these days.

This year's contenders for SLJ's Battle of the Kids' Books were announced last week, so let the games begin!

If you’re up for a kerfuffle, Liz at Tea Cozy and Colleen at Chasing Ray get you up to speed on the... interesting changes made in the Bitch Magazine list of 100 Young Adult Books for the Feminist Reader.

Oh, great. Weird Al has a children’s book. It is clearly time to revive BACA — Bloggers Against Celebrity Authors. Will you help me?

9 comments:

Monica Edinger said...

Don't forget SLJs Battle of the Kids' Books. This year's contenders were annoucned last week! http://sljbattleofthebooks.com/2011/01/24/the-2011-battle-of-the-kids-books-contenders/

Tasha said...

Pam,

Thanks for sharing my blog change. And also for the "looooong"!! :)

MotherReader said...

Monica, I KNEW I was forgetting something as I was writing. Thanks for the reminder.

Tasha, no problem. I've changed my feed and the new site is lookin' good!

Suzanne Casamento said...

Thank you for the info! And I heard about Weird Al. Seriously? Let's revive BACA Off!

J. L. Bell said...

Is it BACA policy to be against books one hasn't read?

MotherReader said...

JL Bell, It is allowable in BACA policy to be against books one hasn't read, as people come to BACA with their own reasons for being against celebrity authors. Some hate the large sums of money or media attention that the celebrities receive, esp in contrast with the book quality. Others resent the celebrity "double-dipping" in the mild fame pool that is kid's lit. Others plan for quality control, finding that generally the celebrity books are mediocre at best, cloying at worst. But in this case we have the added advantage of the Weird Al reading: http://www.youtube.com/alyankovic

Liz B said...

I've seen the Al Yankovik book in f&gs and liked it. One of the things I liked was that the author's name did not include the "weird" so it's not quite the celebrity-promotion that is seen with other books. While I sympathize with BACA's concerns, not every book written by someone who is a celebrity is a BACA book.

J. L. Bell said...

Well, as long as BACA is based at least part on resentment, then there's nothing to worry about.

I sampled Al Yankovic's book in both pages and video before commenting, and I agree that the silent form is better. But the text itself seems okay, in the mode of Dr. Seuss’s If I Ran the Zoo. His experience in lyrics-writing appears to have helped him understand metre.

I don’t think it’s up to the level of his movie UHF, but it's not the embarrassment of several other celebrity picture books.

Unknown said...

Oooh, I have to rush to the defense of Al Yancovic! I'm the first to admit there have been some incredible stinkers among the volumes of celebrity-penned tomes, but he's actually a *writer*, you know? I mean, his song parodies are incredibly sharp and funny. I think he's tremendously gifted: he works within very tight forms (having to match the rhythm & rhyme scheme of the original songs) and has contributed some deliciously smart and funny commentary on popular culture over the years. "White and Nerdy" is downright genius.

So it doesn't seem a stretch at ALL to me that his talents would apply themselves to children's books as well. I too got hold of an F&G at Midwinter and I have to say I think it's quite a charming book and my kids really enjoyed it!