A bit of pandering to His Excellency....

The 23rd Annual Lambda Literary Award Finalists were recently announced. Lambda Literary is "The leader in LGBT book reviews, author interviews, opinion and news since 1989."

And, good news for us: they have a children's/young adult category! Here are the finalists - I'm pretty lazy and I screen-capped it, so go here (scroll down to the sixth category) if you want to click on the review links and such:

Enjoy! And be sure to scroll around for other books - there's a SF/Fantasy/Horror category, at least two books about public schools, A Twist of Grimm: Erotic Fairy Tales for Gay Men, and a fiction book that has (kind of) been described as winnie-the-pooh-esque. And more!

Are you all sitting comfortably?

Maybe we should try some improvisational storytelling on Wednesday!

"better book titles"

"better book titles" is pretty great, and children's literature is included, including books we've talked about in class. boom.

Coloring books!

Back to age appropriateness and adaptation: Genderific Coloring Books

Daily Show Clip: Huck Finn

In lieu of our brief Huck Finn talk last week, I thought I would point y'all towards this fab Daily Show piece:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-january-11-2011/mark-twain-controversy

Linking back to this morning

This is an accessible but well-written (and supa-short!) online essay which discusses the "Victorianization" (or whatever) of fairy tales - which is what I feebly tried to express today near the end of class. Although the title and conclusion of this essay are geared toward choosing Christmas gifts, the bulk of it is concerned with history, revision, and adaptation, and it takes the Little Red Riding Hood tale as its example.

Also, Spongebob.

Link clusters: adaptation, challenged books

Alright, I just decided to dump all the mildly relevant things from my tumblr blog into one post -

adaptation-related things:
sesame street fans? anybody like elmo?
Dr. Seuss "does" Star Wars
Nerdalicious LOTR chart
youtube: star wars according to a three year old.

"bad"/banned books things:
ALA: Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books: 2000-2009
ALA: The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000
Wikipedia: List of most-commonly challenged books in the United States
and, along those lines, http://www.flickr.com/photos/clair_voyant/2142583766/sizes/l/

90-Second Newbery

Hey all - check out the New York Public Library's new 90-Second Newbery Video Contest! (here)