What We Talk About When We Talk About Blogs

I thought it would be nice to offer a small roundup of the blog posts and online articles that had us all talking this week. We are pretty much blogosphere addicts here in the Kids Department, and with good reason. Why, it was just this time last year that we were all wrapped up in the Justine Larbalestier Liar cover controversy. Not to be missed (and an example of the power of the book blog community). But what was it this week?

1) Matthew and Laurie Amster-Burton alerted us to this hilarious and also sad (or angry-making?) post by Dan Gutman, author of a whole slew of beginning reader chapter books, on his personal experiences with angry letters. Don't miss the "Hit List" at the bottom, which shows the most frequently challenged books last year and why they were challenged.

2) Checking in on Debbie Reese's blog, I found her post with links to first Ellen Wittlinger's piece in the Horn Book and then Arthur A. Levine's post about her article. Wittlinger writes about the Lambda Literary Foundation's decision to change the parameters of their literary award so that it can only be won by GLBT-identified authors, as opposed to anyone who writes books that the committee feels reflect the GLBT experience (Wittlinger, a straight author who writes lots of books with gay characters, isn't happy). I have to say, reading the comments section of Arthur Levine's post is a fascinating way to spend 15 minutes.

3) And has everyone heard by now (thanks for that link in the last post, Kitri) about the class-action lawsuit against Apple's iPad? Because, to quote the lawsuit:

Indeed, according to the www.apple.com website, "[r]eading on iPad is just like reading a book." However, contrary to this promise, using the iPad is not "just like reading a book" at all since books do not close when the reader is enjoying them in the sunlight or in other normal environmental environments. This promise, like other portions of APPLE's marketing material for the iPad, is false.

Hmmmmm...

Please leave your article/post of the week in comments. We won't read them when we're supposed to be shelving, we promise.

-Anna, Kids Books