There are so many stories of the Holocaust that trail vaporous wisps of regret, “If only” or “What if” flutter from them like so many sad ghosts, and here’s another… the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York, as per this morning’s NPR report, has just found letters from Otto Frank, the father of the famously journaling Anne, where he asks friends and acquaintances and friends-of-friends to help him get his family out of Holland. That hit me right in my heart. Oh, if only that bright girl had survived. They imagine her as a 77-year-old writer living in Boston, still unmasking the world with her dark eyes and finding the goodness in people… Of course, without her diaries, would we have ever known her at all? Would she be completely anonymous, just a fun grandmother who wrote little stories for her children? The world is full of so many alternate endings… it’s like a Choose Your Own Adventure story; in this case, we turned a page that ended in grief, but the story still has so much depth and goodness to give us.

Now that the Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards (Cybils) are finished for 2006, the great idea now is to read all of the books on the list. I’ve been working on that, and you can too. As Jen Robinson suggests, if you find a book you loved, buy it — from the Cybils site, so that the site gets a little commission, and the publishers get the idea that we, as bloggers, can create an impact as the reading public. Even if you normally support independent booksellers, it might be a nice thought to pop over to Amazon and buy a book where book stats are recorded. Thank-you for supporting the Cybils, and thank you Kelly, at Big A, little a, and Anne from Book Buds for the standout idea, all the hours and hours and HOURS of work you must have put in, and inviting the rest of us over to play. Readers ROCK!

Oh, THIS is good. I and many others have been wincing at the truly cringe-worthy trailer for the CGI-laden A Bridge to Terabithia, the latest YA novel-into-film disaster. Meanwhile, Christianity Today, the online evangelical magazine, has a Katherine Paterson interview where she discusses the trailer (“I’m just telling everybody I know, “Don’t see the trailer, don’t see the trailer.” Because it’s exactly what the trailer ends up making you think, is that it’s this glorified fantasy adventure with nothing but special effects, and that’s not what we ended up with in this movie.”), the integrity her son David fought to preserve in the storyline, and more. Thanks to As If! for the heads up; I withdraw my earlier prejudice, and may see the movie after all. Maybe. If someone else sees it first and promises I won’t want to fling popcorn at innocent bystanders…

Meanwhile, coming soon to a theater near you…? MTV’s Shawn Adler helpfully explains which children’s and YA books he thinks should be made into film next. Oh, goody. (Thanks to Big A, little a for the link, and for the suggestion to turn down the music at work!) Okay — I won’t lie. The MTV list shows some real thought. Books like The Westing Game, A Cricket in Times Square, and Artemis Fowl would make great movies, because they are indeed some fabulous books. Just — filmmakers, please – read the books first, and bring what’s already there to life. No need to rewrite the whole thing!