Monday, February 21, 2011

Sheree: exciting and new

Climb on board, she's expecting you.

Maritime writer, poet, children's author, public speaker, award winner, tongue-tripper and all-around ball of energy, Sheree Fitch, has started a blog as part of her professional website. You can pay her a visit here, right after you've put down your copy of Pluto's Ghost or have finished reading Sleeping Dragons All Around and/or Mabel Murple out loud for the 100th time. She's smart, she's fun, and today's post has the prettiest darn pictures: Words on Art: The Wheel Deal. Way I Feel. Weee of Letting Go.

Say "hi" while you're there, because she's awfully friendly to boot.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Excellent resource: Picturing Books

Over the last few years, I have given several workshops on visual literacy and the picture book. I've also written quite a bit about it on this blog. It's one of my favourite topics to discuss with students and educators because it's one of my favourite pastimes to pursue. When new picture books come into the library, first I do a little happy dance in my office and then, more often than not, I am the first to sign them out.

A couple of months ago I stumbled upon this excellent website that's devoted to the picture book. The most interesting part of the site, from an academic standpoint, is The Palette section that's listed on the left-hand side bar. Here you will find numerous slide shows that explain in detail the complex sophistication of the picture book form. One of the slideshows, this picture book timeline, makes for a perfect coffee- or lunch-break escape.

Monday, February 7, 2011

Feminist books for children and young adults

There was a big hullabaloo in the book blogging world last week when Bitch Magazine published a list of 100 Young Adult titles for the Feminist Reader. I won't go into the drama here but I will sum it up briefly: there were a few reader complaints about the list which lead to Bitch removing three titles and admitting to the fact that maybe they hadn't necessarily read all the titles on the list in the first place, and then a whole lot of people got upset at the removal of the titles in question and-- well, if you want to lose a day to following the drama, you can, but I'm not going to perpetuate it here. Suffice to say, some very interesting debates arose around this issue and some very smart people furthered the discussion in fascinating ways. Sure, I have an opinion on the whole affair but, really, I'd rather be reading the books at this point in the game.

One thing that came out of the hullabaloo is that I learned about a long-standing blog/list that I'd never heard of before. It's called The Amelia Bloomer Project: Recommended Feminist Literature for Birth through 18. If you want to print out the project's 10 year collection of annual lists, click here. Keep in mind, you can also nominate books yourself, so don't be afraid to become part of the conversation. Now I am off to do a bit of list reading myself, with my library card at the ready.