Tidbits: One ring really could rule us all...

• Big news in the publishing world...Random House and Penguin may merge.  As in, they are going on some dates together and thinking about taking it further...  Still, there may be a ring in their future...woah!  One ring really could rule us all (more on that below)!
• I love little libraries.  I want a fancy little library, so bad.  But until such time as I frolick away into the mists of the Stars Hollow town of my Gilmore Girl dreams and have me a little library on my hobbitesque yard, I will travel the world to visit tiny libraries, using this handy map.  Pakistan, anyone?  (Also, check out these photos of said world o little libraries).
• Good to know that despite their not being able to fit inside libraries, kids are learning to read good.  Heartening news: Pew says kids use libraries, youth librarians both say duh and do a kickline across the interwebs.  
• Remember AIM away messages?  LOL guyzzzz.  Literary away messages.  (#4 made me snort in a very unladylike way)
• I only have one thing to say about this.  If I had to go into battle, I'd probably use a Christopher Paolini book as a weapon. Maybe the nice boxed set I bought in 2007 under the impression that there were only going to be three...
• Veronica Roth on Disney Princess Factions.  So true, so true.  
• Perhaps you've heard about a little movie coming out in December called the Hobbit?  No? Perhaps you've been too holed up in your local Denny's eating about it.  Yes, eating about it.  According to this article, and the rest of the internet, "Denny’s is hoping one onion ring will rule them all."  Well played.  Bonus points for Air New Zealand's new flight safety video.  
• OH MAN.  I wish I could sew, because Mo Willem's Pigeon inspired costumes are so great...
• This is it people.  I already expressed how this makes me giggle endlessly even thinking about it.  And now...THIS.  This is the cake I want for my birthday.  Bring. It. On.  

Tidbits

I am only what is best described as incredibly behind, so enjoy this collection of links you've probably already seen elsewhere, while I enjoy sleeping past 6 am for the first time since my 9 day first week of school back started, 9 days ago.

Business:

• Four different people have sent me the link to Mental Floss' roundup of 11 Amazing Librarian Tattoos.  So I think now is as good a time as any to reveal that I have a tattoo of my favorite misogynist Melville Dewey's face in a very secret location.  Not.  But there are some awesome additional photos in the comments, so scroll down when you visit! 
• The Atlantic Fall preview of YA lit is fairly decent - I've read and will write brief reviews of three (let's just say I liked two).  
• In news that is not news to librarians or booksellers anywhere, sales of YA literature to adults account for more that 55% of total sales - and we cold, hard, selfish adults aren't buying for our disenfranchised teenage friends. 
• With that said, I'd also like to vote negative on this whole new 14-35 year old "New Adult" labeling. Stop trying to make it happen, Guardian.  If you want to raise that age bar to people who can drive cars, and lower it to people who can't afford to buy new cars because of their student loans, maybe I'll reconsider.  
• In a sweet twist of irony, Amazon is basically the only winner in the publishing anti-trust brouhaha, which makes total sense in trying to prevent monopolies, right?  Good work, team!
• Oh Wikipedia.  You are the best friend of iPhones and dinner party debates, but not Phillip Roth! Mwahaha - no way I'm not using this in this years research orientations!

Design:

• OhEmGeeWhiz you guys! Tablescaping based on literature.  I think I'd like to go to a Game of Thrones dinner party the most. 
• In addition to work, I've been furniture shopping. Okay, so it's just for a kitchen table.  But whatever whatever.  I found these instead.  Please enjoy my new bathtub and my new lounge chair.   I think they'll go well with my new candles. 

The Talkies:

• Did I black out and miss the news that Divergent is going to be a movie?  Because now it has a release date.
• Also, we're still talking about Y: The Last Man being a movie.  Can't HBO or FX or somebody just get on board and adapt it to the miniseries it would do so well as? (Not that I'm complaining - this news excites me).
• The Wuthering Heights trailer makes it seem almost endurable.  Unlike Heathcliff. 

PrE-view:

• Daughter of Blood and Shadow!  Which apparently has had its movie rights optioned too.

Bonus:

• Kind of hoping POTUS uses the white folks soundbite during debates... 

Case of the Angries: Dudes obvi don't like YA, didn't like the Supremes either, obvi.

OH NO SHE DIDN'T.  While sassily snapping your fingers in any formation you'd like, I'd encourage you to read the following article, A Prestige-free Zone: the reason why women writers dominate young-adult literature is the reason why many guys avoid it, annoyingly titled and filled with falsehoods.  First of all, you dummy.  Blame the publishers and the book jacket designers, not the authors.  Authors write stories; people of all genders like stories.  Publishers sell books.  They know how to design them so they will be sold; market rules often say that teenage girls will spend more than teenage boys on XY and Z - and perhaps in this case that's because the books they are being sold are designed to catch their eye (you know, because publishers read the same stats I did when I crafted the earlier statement about girls spending more).  Frankly, it's like saying boys and men didn't like the Supremes because they were all women.  Hogwash. 

I could have rolled my eyes and moved on with my morning...but then she had to go and include this line:

Many grown men recall segueing briskly from middle-grade kids’ books to adult fiction in their teens, skipping the YA section entirely. They were, they say, keen to move on to the “real” books. No surprise, then, that fewer of them are inspired to write for a genre that they never particularly wanted to read and that, like teaching and librarianship, has traditionally offered little recognition.

UM. Bish please.  Should have stopped with the segueing line, which, if I can point out, is true, only because if you are talking to adults for your "research," WHICH YOU ARE, you need to recognize that there wasn't a huge variety of YA when we were teenagers!  That's a very recent, past 5-10 years development.  Adult fiction was kind of what you had to read if you wanted to read something other than RL Stine or Sweet Valley (obvi there are others, but let me make my point, h8rs).  Boys can, will, and do enjoy reading, but sometimes they need a little more of a push because some of the covers are hard not to judge, and because articles like this propagate the myth that men don't like to read! 

But way more seriously, who are you to say that men avoid careers as teachers and librarians because it offers little recognition?  Do you know any guybraians or teachers?  I do.  And I have, as a teen, as a college and grad student, and as a professional.  I recognize their prestige, in my own life, in my own career path, and in the tremendous good they do for their communities.  And I recognize the prestige of the many, many talented male YA authors (of which if she'd done her research she'd learn there are too many to name) churning out words and stories for the male, and female, teachers and librarians of the world who turn both students, kids, and adults onto reading them. 


EXHALE.

And now I will return from my pre-coffee rage blackout to my regularly scheduled compilation of links for your procrastination needs...

Tidbits: Ketchup on the week

I was away for a week, frolicking on the shore, reading boatloads, eating indecent amounts of ice cream (so much so that we're seeing other people for a while), and having close encounters with nature (had a dance off with a fisher cat, found a dead bird INSIDE THE HOUSE, and something touched me while I was swimming, leading me to think of this...before I realized I was in two feet of water).   Turns out I missed a LOT of things on the Internets, so let's have some ketchup, shall we?

• Best. News. Of. The. Week.  Ron Moore, he of the Battlestars Galactic, will be adapting Paperblog Guilty Pleasure Numero Uno (excluding food and YA):  OUTLANDER.  For HBO.  That squee you hear?  It is not a rogue piglet.  It's meeeeeee, snitches!
  
• The Hunger Games casting people went on a bender last week, and hot dog, they done good.  Meet Johanna Mason, Wiress (aka Nuts), and Plutarch Heavensbee, solid contender for best inexplicable name of a  Hunger Games character. 

• Everyone, and their mom, and their mom's mom have seen this by now, but I don't know why we don't have 6 year olds judge books by their covers more often.  If only her assessment of Fifty Shades of Grey happened to be true...("The book is about a zebra that wears pants.")

• YAY: Vote for your favorite YA novels in NPRs election for the best-ever YA titles!

• Donald J. Sobol, the man behind some of my favorite childhood books (The Encyclopedia Brown series), passed away.  (I really could have used Leroy Encyclopedia Brown to solve the curious case of why there was a dead bird inside my cottage - jury is still out.)
  
•  Guys, libraries have cool things in them.  Like say, the Boston Public Libraries digitalized vintage travel posters library, which claimed, oh, about an hour of my day.  This one totally qualifies for vintage Case of the Terribles status.  I dare you not to groan.  Really, America?)

• Are you a school librarian for a high-need public school in the United States?  Don't miss out on these  Department of Education grants, due August 10th.  

• The DoJ is moving ahead with the anti-trust settlement against the big three publishing houses.  They included this ruling, leading me to believe that none of them actually have e-Readers:

  It called arguments that Amazon will eventually monopolize the e-book market “highly speculative at best” and noted that with Apple, Microsoft, Google and Sony all in the e-book market “there is no shortage of competitive assets” being brought to bear on the e-book industry.”

  Yes, DoJ, there are competitive assets.  But what are the sales like in comparison? For serious...has anyone actually ever purchased a book off of the Googles?  I want to know who that one person is.  I didn't even KNOW that Microsoft was in the game... #librarianfail.  

• I'll leave you with an awesome tidbit.  Sherman Alexie wins a Gold Star for super sass this week!

Tidbits: Carl Sommer and why publishers, librarians, and educators can save the world (together)

• Okay, anyone care to explain to me why at last glance, in the past month there have been 69 visits (sweet irony) to my post on Carl Sommer's Sex: If You're Scared of the Truth, Don't Read This Book, 61 of them in the past week?  Did a shipment of these just land in libraries across America?  Does the Rapture have anything to do with this?  Anyone care to share why you are googling this title? 
  
• This opinion piece (Publishers as Partners in Literacy) on the NYTimes website is such a great argument and explanation on why book donations are not a solution for the book shortages in low income schools, how low cost publishing for low income schools is great, and how it can be mutually beneficial to libraries, the communities they serve, and, yes, THE KIDS. 

  Libraries, as noted, can make a huge difference. In fact, public spending on libraries has been shown to correlate with improved learning outcomes (something that the Congress should remember as it cuts budgets). But many of the families that First Book targets lack a strong tradition of reading or library use. Parents who struggle with their own literacy issues often feel ashamed by their lack of education, and some feel out of place in libraries and schools. A middle class adult who has grown up with books might say that these parents should just get over it and help their kids read — but that’s not how behavior change happens. Where there is resistance, an appreciation for books needs to be cultivated. Which is why efforts to deliver new books to poor children through educational channels are vital. Any program that gets books into the hands of children in a way that sparks their interest in reading serves as a bridge to other books and to libraries.

  Win, win, win, you guys!  The piece makes you feel warm and fuzzy.  There may have been more mist in my eyes than outside when I read the part about incarcerated dads recording first chapters of books for their teenagers...This is a great way to use up one of your quota of five (or whatever it really is) articles per month on the NYTimes website.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Check back soon for a new review of a YA translation done real, real well, and two more recipes!