Thank you! Thank you to the two readers who pointed out that my feed is not working right and has changed addresses. If you subscribe or are trying to subscribe to KidsLit via an RSS feed, then please point it to:
this feed and you will be getting updates again.
So sorry!

Unfortunately, when the server went down, so did my Blacklist on Moveable Type. So please be patient with all the spam that you will see. I am hoping they can fix it today. Right now spam is coming in almost as fast as I can delete it.

The lost blogger has returned! The server that my blogs and the library’s website live on went down and it has taken almost a week to get it back up again. Meanwhile, I have been collecting things to post about, including a couple book reviews for wonderful new books. Plus, today I got a large box of preview books from Scholastic that have me drooling, but I will have to do my review book for SLJ first. So lots to look forward to. My pile of books next to my chair never seems to shrink, which is just the way I like it!

OK, so Internet access didn’t really work out for me at ALA. Our hotel offered wireless but for a daily fee, and not per room, but per computer. Sigh.
But I have returned with a nice stack of ARCs, piles of gorgeous catalogs, and great ideas for children’s programming and collections. I will get back to posting tomorrow, probably with lots of links to more children’s book publishers. 🙂
My two boys loved the exhibits, especially the flashy magnets that so many people were handing out. Our trunk was filled with all the “loot” as my 8-year-old calls it.

I am off to ALA for the next few days. Today my family is hitting Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry to see their exhibit on video game history as well as all their other way cool exhibits. Then the main conference starts tomorrow. I don’t think I will be able to get to many children’s programs, but I will be on the lookout for cool things for children and teens in the exhibits. I am blogging for the PLA Blog, so please check me out there, if I don’t have time to blog here.
Please, if you are going to be at ALA too and you see me around, stop and chat! Any time spent talking about children and books is great by me!

Ain’t It Cool News offers several ways for you to see the trailer to the English-language version of Howl’s Moving Castle, an anime film of the book by Diana Wynne-Jones. The film was created by Hayao Miyazaki, who won an Academy Award for Spirited Away.

Teacher Librarian Magazine has a great article about girls and gaming. The article covers six issues: the computer gaming gender rift, negative representations of females in computer games, gaming and academic achievement, the negative effects of violent games, girls’ preferences in computer game content, and girls’ preferences in computer game design. For each issue, there are three sections: what the research says, implications, and practical suggestions. This structure makes the article very readable and useful for librarians.

YALSA has the list of the first batch of Titles Nominated for the 2006 Best Books for Young Adults list.

The CCBC (Cooperative Children’s Book Center) now has a page dedicated to Graphic Novels. It offers a list of journals that review graphic novels, websites for reviews, resources, vendors, publishers and listservs. A great way for librarians to find their way into collecting graphic novels!