Oh poor dear abandoned Pink Me! I haven't posted here in WEEKS, so let's just throw some random observations into an edit window and you may get some idea how out of control my year-end season gets:
I have been reading a book a day so that I will be able to vote knowledgeably during the meetings of YALSA's Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults committee at ALA Midwinter.
- Observation 1: Going by YA literature, you'd assume that most teenagers with cultural assimilation issues are only children.
- Observation 2: A good way to manufacture angst for a teen character in YA lit is to kill off a sibling.
- Query: Are you going to Midwinter? Look for me! I will be the one with the fading pink hair.
- Personal note: I think I am done dyeing my hair. My natural hair color is blonde, but at my age, probably not for very much longer. Lucky for lazy-ass me, ombre is in.
My god Stephin Merritt can sing me to sleep ANY TIME HE LIKES. By direct and adjacent contrast, if I ever catch Daniel Handler anywhere near any place I am sleeping, I will, as the man wrote, Scream and Run Away.
NEXT!
What else have I been up to? Hey I put together a Middle Grade Playlist for a LEGO afternoon we hosted at the library the other day. It's an eclectic mix, just like any group of middle graders:
- a little Top 40 dance pop
- some recent kid rock cleverness- TMBG, The Gothic Archies, and, like, Ok Go doing the Muppet Show theme
- lots of onomatopoeia (Shoo-be-doo-be-doo-da-day, King Kong Kitchie Kitchie Ki-Me-O, Pata Pata, Oops Upside Your Head, Rubber Biscuit)
- plus a few beat-heavy classics with strongly visual lyrics: Sledgehammer, Tusk, Devil's Haircut, Saturday Night, Werewolves of London, and 3 different versions of 7 Nation Army - for the Ravens fans.
We wind down our program with the inspirational tune Pick it Up by ska band Gogo13 and then So Long Farewell Goodbye by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. Unfortunatley, my iPod dock quit on me so I had to make do with a Dan Zanes CD, but that playlist will live to play another day. I'm a little proud, can you tell?
- Observation: OH MY GOD LEGO INC get your head out of the 1950's. I pulled all our LEGO Beginning Reader books for a display and noticed that ALL the LEGO City books featured exclusively male rescue workers, transportation professionals, and, uh, miners. Check it out:
Seriously, LEGO - blow me. Of the kids who attended our program, almost exactly half of them were girls. And make some brown faces too - did you know that the only brown LEGO heads are Lando Calrissian, a zombie pirate, and a werewolf? UGH UGH UGH.
Mog and I are downright judgemental about it. Look:
That's one of the other things I've been doing - evaluating book apps with an excellent panel of judges for the Cybils Awards. But I already posted about that.
Also, it's been Christmas, which is always a giant pain. And then New Year's, which is marvelous because we roast a giant pig in the street and dance around maniacally. And if you think that's some kind of exaggeration, well... it isn't. In fact, in the last couple weeks, I've been to Cleveland and back - and if you think that's some kind of euphemism, well... it kind of is a little bit.
So then I came back to work and saw this book. It's called "I Have a Sister."
Subtitled "She has a butt on her face." Europeans, I swear. They put butts everywhere.
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