Parenthetical.net

Musings and snark about YA lit, libraries, and geekdom, from an overly opinionated middle school librarian.

Parenthetical.net bookshelf

Entries Tagged as 'Links'

The return of Jessica and Elizabeth

July 6th, 2008 · 1 Comment

My YA lit professor in grad school, Amy Pattee, has an article in the new issue of Horn Book on Sweet Valley High and its triumphant (?) return to print. My favorite bit:
The new Double Love reads like a time-traveled transliteration of the original novel: the girls ride around in a Jeep Wrangler rather [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: Links

“The two men are very good friends”

June 18th, 2008 · No Comments

Via Green Is the New Red, a British picture book about policemen from 1974 is… made hilariously wrong. (They don’t publish the original for comparison, so we can’t see how wrong it was to start with.*)

*Martini-Corona, this is your cue to scan in I Want to Be a Waitress for the viewing pleasure of [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: Links

“Harold forever!”

June 18th, 2008 · 2 Comments

Voting is over, unfortunately, but you should go watch the finalists of the Gale Cengage Librareo video contest. (If for some reason you can’t get enough amateur music videos about books, all of the entries are available on YouTube.)
My two favorites were “Lily’s Purple Plastic Purse” (whose song is written to the [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: Libraries · Links

“Meet a Black Guy” (and an Iraqi)

June 13th, 2008 · 3 Comments

Via Stuff White People Like, more on the subject of “checking people out”:
‘Black Guy’ booth livens up Corvallis Saturday market

Sherry Littlefield of Corvallis said the booth was unnecessary. She and friend Ron Naasko said they have black friends, and would be voting for Barack Obama for president.
Also not to be missed:
“Two Wars”, an episode of [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: Links

When in doubt, plop ‘em on a lawn

June 12th, 2008 · 1 Comment

Alison just started an interesting converstation over at Shelftalker about trends in book covers.
I see the photo-of-girl-lying-on-grass thing way more often than I see the silhouette thing (girls’ school, ya know). It does express a message:
Dear potential readers,
This book is about an introspective teenage girl with dreams for her future. She [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: Links

Ok, I’ll read it already!

May 7th, 2008 · 2 Comments

Dear internet,
Please, please stop hyping Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother. You’re making it sound like you’ve never read YA science fiction before, which seems unlikely since some of you write it. It’s the most inspiring book ever written! I get it! I’ll read it already! But shut up about it before [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: Links

But how do you barcode them?

April 28th, 2008 · 8 Comments

When I first read the title of today’s Library Link of the Day, from The Times Online — “The new library fad: borrow a person” — I assumed it was a clever way to structure knowledge sharing sessions. Want to learn to set up an email account or knit a scarf? Borrow one [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: Libraries · Links

Entertainment

April 27th, 2008 · 1 Comment

The conclusion of Michael Chabon’s essay “Let Me Entertain You”, published today in the L. A. Times:
…[E]ntertainment — as I define it, pleasure and all — remains the only sure means we have of bridging, or at least of feeling as if we have bridged, the gulf of consciousness that separates each of us from [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: Links · Musing

“In a world…”

April 23rd, 2008 · No Comments

From the (Environmental Protection) Agency’s Earth Day history page:
EPA was born in 1970 - a time when rivers caught fire and cities were hidden under dense clouds of smoke. We’ve made remarkable progress since then in protecting human health and safeguarding the natural environment.
Remember 40 years ago, when life was like a science fiction movie? [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: Environment · Links · Politics

Apocalypse how?

April 7th, 2008 · 9 Comments

I wrote recently about the fact that my mental picture of “apocalypse” is stuck in the Cold War — instantaneous disaster, as opposed to the currently more likely slow(-ish) environmental collapse. I mused about what current YA readers of science fiction will picture, which made me wonder: other than Uglies, what’s being written in [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: Book lists · Environment · Links · Musing