Tender morsels

I work on a 24-hour-a-day clock (unfortunately) but the world around me seems to be going double-time today. Thus, I only have time for some happy linkage:

• Check out Diablo Cody's "In Praise of Judy Blume" article in EW. As if we didn't already know how awesome she is (Diablo and Judy...)! Thanks to my Child_lit listserv for the link.
• Deborah Wiles has a lovely account of Coleen Salley's funeral in New Orleans. What a fitting celebration for such a good-hearted, spunky woman! The world needs more people like Coleen. Thanks to Educating Alice for the info.
• Dear god, Gwyneth Paltrow apparently is starting her own lifestyle website? To "nourish the inner aspect"? And she claims that her life is good because she is "not passive about it"? This comes second-hand from Thursday Night Smackdown - the website isn't up yet - but I'm already feeling all cringey about it. And I love Gwyneth. But this could be going too far. Especially with everything going on economically, socially, and politically. So not the time for self-promotion and flaunted privilege. If she starts a magazine, I'm losing ALL respect. (Here's more info from US Magazine. I felt betrayed reading this because I do love her. But ugh.)
• Alison at Shelf Talker has a spectacular rant about Urban Outfitters and their blatant sexism (my words, not Alison's) in the literary t-shirt department. Come on, UO! Get a friggin CLUE!
• Last but not least, the real-life And Tango Makes Three penguins have broken up. Apparently Silo has left Roy for a female penguin...and Roy sits in a corner alone, staring at the wall. The best part is the end quote by one of the authors of the book: "We wrote the book to help parents teach children about same-sex parent families. It's no more an argument in favor of human gay relationships than it is a call for children to swallow their fish whole or sleep on rocks." Hee-hee! If only it were that easy, no?

Eat, drink, and celebrate banned books week!

UPDATE: Oh, you're all going to wish I had got my information right when you see this, but I did not. Gwyneth Paltrow's site is actually up and running. I present you with GOOP. Indeed...

Chipping away at Bloglines: the Kids' Edition

Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that, even though I’m back from my ALA/California vacation adventure, my kiddo is not. The now-7-year-old darling stayed on with my parents for TEN MORE DAYS. Hence the low bloggage right now…I’m having too much fun with Adam. However, we’ve realized that, even though we are child-free for the moment, it does not mean we can successfully relive our glory days of staying out until 2 a.m. My head still hurts…

There are some California-related posts and photos coming. However, in the meantime, I’m catching up on my 300+ Bloglines posts. While some people (Anali…) are able to click “Mark all read”, I’m incapable. Thus, I have discovered some gems...even though they were written two weeks ago!

-- While I was gone, someone by the email handle “sophie4am” (who?) sent me this fantastic comic about the NYC subway system, created by Christoph Niemann (Police Cloud). He/she sent it to me as incentive to come back from Cali. You need to take a look, especially for all you NYC-philes. Fuse #8 and Read Roger also linked to it.

-- I love cemeteries and, thanks to Allison over at Shelftalker, I realize I’m not the only one (and her pictures are gorgeous). This might be worth the trek up to Boston…and I can finally go to Eric Carle’s museum while I’m up that way.

-- Everyone's all abuzz about Jill Lepore's article in The New Yorker, "The Lion and the Mouse." It's a fascinating article, not terribly sympathetic toward Anne Carroll Moore, but I particularly loved the cartoon at the beginning. Wonderful!

-- Chicken Spaghetti has an interesting post on Tasha Tudor’s obituary by Wall Street Journal’s Meghan Cox Gurdon. "Violently impressionistic” children’s illustrations are the vogue? Really? I wasn't aware of it... Overall, I was really put off by the grumpy, jaded tone of the tribute.

-- I feel all yucky and disappointed because I just read that Steven Page, of Barenaked Ladies, has been arrested on drug charges in upstate NY. But he just did an awesome children’s album! Was it just marijuana? Because I don’t find that a big deal. To quote Meg Ryan in French Kiss, “I mean, is marijuana really a narcotic? Come on.” Sadly, though, Page was reportedly with two women and there was marijuana and cocaine. Ugh. On one hand, I find myself naively thinking, “But what about the children?” On the other hand, I shrug and say, “What else do you expect from a band calling themselves Barenaked Ladies?”

More favorite blog posts and links coming up…all the food-related ones!

Eat, drink, and appreciate how long all this linking takes!

ShelfTalker, Bloomsbury, and Editorial Anonymous

Okay, so I’m long overdue to do some children’s literature chatting. I have a couple fun things:

First, Alison over at ShelfTalker has riled everyone up again by asking which books were loved by everyone but you. There’s lots for me, but what sticks out is The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane (likewise, Great Joy), Wrinkle in Time, Artemis Fowl, Kitten’s First Full Moon, Stinky Cheese Man, anything by Giselle Potter. Now, don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying I loathed these books (okay, well, I did a couple…). I’m just saying that so many looooooved them and thought they were wooooooonderful. And I just didn’t get the big deal. Either way, check out Alison’s post – last I checked, there were 86 responses and climbing.

Second, Editorial Anonymous has a post up about why publishers don't seem to work more closely with librarians and teachers to publish the sorts of things we find important, useful, and interesting to children. After all, we're on the front lines, right? EA was honest in her opinion, which I happened to agree with. Think about your colleagues, whether they be teachers or librarians. Thinking? Okay, how many are dedicated to children, know children's interests, work with children all the time? Most of them, right? But how many can you honestly say are up-to-date, current, in-the-know with children's literature? Not as many, I would venture. At least, that's the case with me and my workplace. Likewise, most of them also don't understand or have access to the business of publishing. It is a business, after all. And while we might find a book useful for reports (why, oh why, aren't there more books published on Verrazano?!), if it's not going to also appeal to bookstores and other outlets, then the publisher most likely can't make a profit. And they need to make a profit to stay in business. Also, I argue that publishers make lots of effort to connect with librarians and teachers: conferences, publishers previews, sales reps, etc. Anyway, lots of posts over at EA on the topic - go take a look.

Third, remember I went to lunch with David Fickling last week? Well, what I didn’t talk about in that post was that I visited Bloomsbury Children’s afterwards. Now, in the spirit of full disclosure I did an internship with Bloomsbury back in 2005 when I had just earned my Master’s and wasn’t sure what direction I was heading in, and I have kept in touch with a few people there in the past couple years. Anyway, so I stopped by, mostly as a social visit. Naturally, I wasn’t there for five minutes and Stacy Cantor, editor at Walker Books, hands me a galley of her first solo book: Violet Raines Almost Got Struck By Lightning by Danette Haworth. I haven’t had the chance to read it yet, but I’m assured that this first-time author is very promising. And then, besides gossiping, the rest of my time there was spent trying to pilfer a copy of Rapunzel’s Revenge, Shannon Hale’s upcoming graphic. Victoria Wells-Arms, editor-at-large and mother of the cutest damn twin girls ever, had already left for the day but, when we stopped by her office, she had THREE copies of Rapunzel’s Revenge there. Oh, you guys, it’s so RAD - I couldn't stop delighting in the eye candy. Did I dare take one? Of course not, Victoria wasn’t there. Deb Shapiro, publicist extraordinaire, could hook me up. But she was out too! What does a woman have to do to get a copy of this book?!?! That’s right – I have to blog about it.

(And lest I forget to mention her, one of the best people at Bloomsbury is Liz Schonhorst who hooks me up with all my galleys, introduced me to the Flatiron Grill and Go Fug Yourself, and generally keeps me in the loop)

Eat, drink, and don't be ashamed to beg for Rapunzel's Revenge

A Nibble of This and That

I was a tad more eager than usual for this week’s NYT Dining section because I was really curious to see the Letters section re: last week’s “The Fat Pack Wonders if the Party’s Over” by Kim Severson. Alas, no Letters section in the physical paper and no section in the online version. Not one that I could find, anyway. No one had anything to say, that was printable, about that article? Really? I was hoping for some great discourse and was totally disappointed to not get it.

Once again I find that combining food and children’s literature in a single blog isn’t entirely random. Check out Allison’s post over at Shelftalker about Mud Pies and Other Recipes: A Cookbook for Dolls written by Marjorie Winslow and illustrated by Erik Blegvad. Allison has included a couple of the “recipes” in her post and it sounds so “completely and utterly charming.” I’ve put a hold request on the one single copy at Queens Library.

As part of the prerequisites for NYU’s Food Studies program, they require you to have some hands-on experience that extends beyond your own home kitchen. So I’m looking through the course schedule at the Institute of Culinary Education (aka ICE) with absolute delight. A Greenmarket cooking class! A knife class! A “Fine Cooking” class! A salt class! Where to start???? I’m thinking of the knife class – it’s only a 3-hour class I can take after work so I don’t have to worry about too much commitment at this point. If it goes well, I can do the “Fine Cooking” class, which is much more money and five 5-hour classes. Between those two classes, I will have satisfied the prerequisite. I’m on my way!

I recently heard about the journal Gastronomica and thought a subscription might be in order. So I went to the website to check it out and read an intriguing letter from the editor that is in a similar vein to our earlier discussion about NYT’s “Fat Pack” article. She discusses the juxtaposition of providing healthy, delicious, affordable food to disadvantaged families and communities with the idea that good food – or any food, really – should cost more. Those ideas seem completely contradictory to each other. She’s right, though: I live in a lovely part of Queens with decent restaurants, a fish monger, a cheese store, and a great market for my other needs. And I spend a significant portion of my income on food. But I work in a disadvantaged neighborhood, right across the street from the bus depot, and it is incredibly difficult to find healthy food around here. I usually bring my lunch to work but, occasionally, I’ll forget and need to buy lunch here. You wouldn’t believe the difficulty in doing that. There’s a market nearby, but the produce is sub-par and comes from everywhere but New York. Forget good bread or any unprocessed cheese. Everything comes frozen, in a can, in bulk, or vaccuum-packed. Not surprisingly, you’ll see a significantly larger number of overweight and obese people in the neighborhood I work in as opposed to the one I live in. During my info session, the director of the Food Studies program repeatedly threw around the term “food crisis in this country” and I don’t think that’s stating it too strongly. Darra Goldstein’s letter just added one more voice to the dull roar.

On that note, the Sustainable Table has a wonderful blog and they posted about a curriculum package by Equal Exchange. It teaches kids about fair trade, food production and sustainable living. This seems as good a place as any to start turning this thing around.