Author: Dorothy Meserve Kunhardt

A book review in the Press Herald today discusses the book, The Dreaming Game, A Portrait of a Passionate Life by Philip B., Jr. Kunhardt. Kunhardt's book is a tribute to his mother, Dorothy Meserve Kunhardt who is best known for the best selling children's book, Pat the Bunny. Dorothy was a also a published Lincoln scholar and student of the Civil War. Carl Sandburg was a friend. She was collaborating on a book about Matthew Brady when she passed away in 1979.

Her first book, "Junket Is Nice," was published by Harcourt Brace & Co. in 1933 and delighted reviewers such as Franklin P. Adams of the New York Herald Tribune and Katharine White of The New Yorker. She said it was "exactly what children like."

Five more of Dorothy's books for children were published before the multimedia "Pat the Bunny" became the most sought-after juvenile title of 1940. It was based on eight simple activities her daughter Edith adored and the reader could interact with. There was a bunny to pat, a peak-a-boo cloth, a squeaky ball, a mirror, Daddy's scratchy face, a tiny book, Mummy's ring, and waving "Bye bye."

Hobbit Name Generator

Mental Multivitamin pointed us to the Hobbit Name Generator. I do not know how THIS family of Hobbits missed this site but it is great fun. There is also an Elvish name generator. Two of my daughters are holding out for elf-hood.

Sincerely,
Daisy Sandydowns

Author: Mo Willems

Check out his website. Love the Q&A.

John P. McGovern Stella Link Branch Library

This photo from the article "THE 'WOW' FACTOR" in the Houston Chronicle took my breath away today. The new John P. McGovern Stella Link Branch Library was built with funds from many sources.

Houston officials have far less money to work with, but they've embarked on a plan to create libraries that are more people-friendly and Internet-accessible. Their new Stella Link branch, which incorporates bookstore, cafe and shopping-mall features, is the prototype.

Library officials asked Ray Bailey Architects for an edgy design. The firm responded with a striking modern building whose undulating roof dips in the middle and edges upward to the north. The entire north side is a floor-to-ceiling wall of glass that provides a wonderful view of an adjoining park, allowing natural light to stream into the building.
"We wanted it to feel like the park comes into the library," says project manager Pam Vassalo, a Ray Bailey Architects principal.

The areas for young folks sound wonderful.

The teen center exudes hipness. Computer monitors are scattered throughout (a patron can also check out a laptop from the front desk), and spongy red stools spring up and down. Other cool features: A chain-mesh circular curtain surrounds one bank of computers, and a glass-block igloo provides a private tutoring space.

The children's area is awash with color: Its artificial trees look amazingly real, and wavy yellow and orange panels suspended from the ceiling simulate clouds.

Discussing the badly needed renovation of the downtown central library, writer Clifford Pugh comments, "...compared to the new library gems in other cities, the downtown renovation seems paltry."

He asks the best question of all at the end of the article:

In a city that's built two state-of-the-art downtown stadiums in recent years, wouldn't you think we could put as much effort into first-class library facilities?

ALA's 2005 Notable Children's Recordings

As a relative newcomer to audio books I was pleased to see that Brendan Fraser's reading of Dragon Rider received recognition. As noted here earlier, Funke must have been pleased because she wants Fraser to play Mo in the movie version of Inkheart.

The rest of ALA's picks are here.

Heir Apparent

Heir Apparent by Vivian Vande Velde, 2002

I should have written this book. It is exactly the kind of book I like to read. It is smart funny fantasy and very much in touch with the way MY daughters play video games. For years I have watched them play one game or another, including the best game ever, The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time.

Giannine Bellisario receives a gift certificate from her father for 30 minutes at the Rasussem Enterprises Virtual Reality Arcade. When she arrives the business is being picketed by the Citizens to Protect our Children who are protesting all entertainment that is supernatural, violent or scary. The protesters eventually storm the building and damage the computers while Giannine is "in" the game and she must play her way through in order to survive. Sure this plot sounds like a Star Trek Holodeck malfunction but it is great fun. Like any video game, when she "dies" she gets another life and has to start over again. Her repeated returns to the starting point are hilarious. In between the action and the humor there are some genuinely poignant moments. As she leaves her "virtual" family at the beginning of the game, over and over again, she muses:

Maybe the people at Rasussem need to develop a new game called Happy Family, where there's no gathering treasure or fighting hostile warriors or solving puzzles, just nice people who speak kindly to you and don't make you feel like one of these Christmas trees you see by the curb on December 26. I bet other people, besides me would be interested. Maybe.

This book is on this year's Texas Lonestar Reading list. Good call committee! I hope lots of girls are reading it! It is in the vein of Tamora Pierce's books Pierce describes her heroines as "girls who kick butt."

Black eye for Houston, Texas

The city of Houston achieved a real milestone today. Mayor Bill White has assured us a place on the list of "broadminded" cities that ban or restrict books. The Houston Chronicle reports:

White recently ordered that the library's dozen copies of Jameson's best-selling "How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale" be removed from open shelves.

In making his decision, White sidestepped the committee process that Houston's libraries typically use to evaluate complaints about items in their collections.

I've never seen this book; I know it is on the NYTimes best seller list. I don't know if this is a book that should be in a library or not. By ordering this book to be locked away in the closed stacks, he has insured that we will never have that debate. No committee will have a chance to discuss or review this title.

Council Member Pam Holm has done the city a serious diservice by asking for the book to moved without going through the reevaluation process, although, according to the Chronicle, Holm "did not know there was such a process." Great to know this council member is so well informed.

If a book goes through the reconsideration process, I may not agree with the decision of the committee but I can be confident that the implications of keeping or pulling the book have been weighed.

Their excuse?

"We're trying to take action quickly, and we didn't see a need to go through a long bureaucratic process," said White's spokesman, Frank Michel.

Maybe I don't like the "long bureaucratic process" of having my car $AFEcleared if I have a flat tire on the Katy Freeway.

They have couched their "concerns" about the book in terms of its accessibility to children. Hey guys, let ME monitor my kids' reading ok?

Why not restrict Harry Potter books, or Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, or My Life by Bill Clinton, or... or...there is something deeply offensive in every book to SOMEONE.

The mind of Daniel Handler

Psychology Today has an interview with Daniel Handler.
Best lines of the interview:

You have a 1-year-old named Otto.

It's a palindrome. We want our child to know himself inside and out.

Do people predict that your books will change now that you're a father?

For [years] people have said that, as if not having a child somehow made me completely indifferent to the process of child rearing. I certainly haven't said, "I can't believe I was putting fictional children in dire circumstances. What was I thinking?"

Asteroid Douglasadams

Via SciFi Daily
MSNBC reports:

The week he died, science-fiction humorist Douglas Adams was honored with an asteroid named after one of the characters from his classic "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." Now, almost four years later, Adams has his own name in the heavens as well — thanks to a campaign in which MSNBC.com played a part.

Asteroid Douglasadams was among the 71 newly named celestial objects announced Tuesday by the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass.

The article has an interesting description of the naming process. SciFi Daily wants AsteroidShatner.

It is timely as the movie "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is due May 5, 2005.

The Lost Library of Rome

A carbonized scroll from Herculaneum (from Discovery.com)

Jack Stephens at Conservator points out an amazing article in the Sunday Times: "The search for the lost library of Rome."

When Vesuvius erupted in AD79 it buried "one of the greatest villas in the Roman world."

Although 1,800 papyri were recovered in an excavation of the villa in the 1700s, schlolars believe an additional library exists and must be located soon. Calls for the reopening of the excavation are coming from all corners.

Even in our age of hyperbole it would be hard to exaggerate the significance of what is at stake here: nothing less than the lost intellectual inheritance of western civilisation. We have, for example, a mere seven plays by Sophocles, yet we know that he wrote 120; Euripides wrote 90 plays, of which only 19 survive; Aeschylus wrote between 70 and 90, of which we have just seven.

As a book lover and librarian I agree with Stephens about the poignancy of this line:

It also appears that slaves were in the act of carrying crates of books to safety when they were overwhelmed by the eruption.

More info:
The Philodemus Project
Villa of the Papyri: to dig or to not to dig?
How did the Villa of the Papyri get into this state?
Pompeii: The Last Day