rising from the ashes

Back in the pre-blog day, my children's literature loving friends and I used to talk about starting an award for classic books. Presumably because it was the pre-blog day, we never heard about The Phoenix Award, which is given by the Children's Literature Association to outstanding children's books from previous years. The winner for 2006 was Howl's Moving Castle; I'm so thrilled to see my favorite, A Chance Child, was a winner in 1998.

What I'm wondering now is, is anyone making use of this award? Putting stickers on the books? Including it in press releases? What else can we do to keep excellent books from the past from disappearing into obscurity?

Thanks to A Chair, A Fireplace and a Tea Cosy for the link.

when worlds collide

I was pretty startled by this review of Twilight. Not too often you read a YA book review that casually mentions masturbating. Then I remembered, oh right, this is a review on a romance site, not a kidlit site. Okay then.

Wendy, Master Criminal

I have an issue of Notes from the Windowsill almost ready to go, but am being held up by that thrice-cursed review of The Rules of Survival. Not only did I sweat blood over that thing, but apparently I stole it as well! Yes, I discovered that what I had thought was a rather neat turn of phrase came almost verbatim from the book jacket. No one else noticed, or if they did, they were too polite to say anything, but it seems better to fix it before officially publishing it.

How humbling. Now I'm terrified that I might have done this before without noticing.

I'm tempted to just burn that review down and salt the earth.