Tidbits

• Perhaps the best literary map I've seen this year: The United States of YA.  
• I'm not even going to sugarcoat my huge disappointment that Ann M. Martin did not also feel that her Super Specials were super special enough to make her Babysitters Club Top Ten...
• My fellow Masshole Librarians are tatted, fierce, and fundraising!
• Out of this list of 21 classic opening lines in books, I'd like to give big snaps to the one of the only two children's titles that made the list for having the best opening line in my humble, totally correct opinion (The Graveyard Book).
• Everyone knows that the only wetsuit Finnick needs is his skin (and your imagination). 

Old School

Oh snap, ALA Libraries Direct.  It's like you knew how excited I used to get in anticipation of the school book fairs in elementary school.  It's like you knew how much often I read those fine, newspaper print beacons filled with the hopes of future books.  But seriously, including a link to old book club fliers?  GENIUS. Most of them appear to stylistically be from before my (reading abilities) time, but hey, we all can't be awesome harem pant, hypercolor t-shirt wearing, side pony-tail sporting children of the 90's, can we?  

And you, URLesque, well played on choosing to feature a 1990's Scholastic Book Club version containing a Maryanne and Logan Babysitters Club Book (also how I learned the world versus and that it could be abbreviated, not like it was a big deal or anything...).    It's not like I identified with Maryanne and had my first secret literary crush on Logan or anything...  Incidentally, a while a go a friend passed along the link to The Hairpin's The Babysitter's Club: Where Are They Now?  Most of them?  Dead on.  But the Logan assessment?  Dead off.  There is no way he's not fabulously Southern and gay.  Who's with me?