{"id":1060,"date":"2012-01-05T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-05T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=1060"},"modified":"2018-11-20T05:35:05","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T05:35:05","slug":"new-years-link-roundup-and-bright-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=1060","title":{"rendered":"A New Year&#8217;s Link Roundup and A Bright Idea"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While Tanita braces herself against a brisk Scottish wind, and while I wait for my library holds to come in (Cybils graphic novels shortlist; woo hoo!) I&#8217;ve been accumulating a small collection of interesting links and tidbits from around the Kidlitosphere. Hope you enjoy!<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>First, are you ready for the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.motherreader.com\/2012\/01\/comment-challenge-2012.html\" target=\"_blank\">2012 Comment Challenge<\/a>? MotherReader and Lee Wind are once again encouraging all of us to spend a month trying to leave five comments per day on blogs around the kidlitosphere and beyond. The jump-starting of our good blogger habits kicks off tomorrow. I&#8217;m not sure yet whether, or to what extent, I&#8217;ll be able to commit to participating, but I know I&#8217;ve already been trying to poke my head up a bit more than usual, and I do plan to continue that good behavior. \ud83d\ude42 Anyway, if you want to officially sign up, check <a href=\"http:\/\/www.motherreader.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">MotherReader<\/a> tomorrow.<\/li>\n<li> Via Leila at <a href=\"http:\/\/bookshelvesofdoom.blogs.com\/bookshelves_of_doom\/2012\/01\/if-famous-writers-had-written-twilight.html\" target=\"_blank\">Bookshelves of Doom<\/a>, I found a link to Lizzie Stark&#8217;s hilarious post on <a href=\"http:\/\/elizabethrstark.com\/2011\/12\/19\/if-famous-writers-had-written-twilight\/\" target=\"_blank\">If Famous Writers Had Written Twilight<\/a>. For instance, Annie Proulx might&#8217;ve written a story that went something like this: &#8220;<b><\/b>Edward and Jacob defy society\u2019s expectations up in the mountains.&#8221; OODLES more in the comments to the original post.<\/li>\n<li>On Fuse #8, Betsy Bird speculates on which children&#8217;s literary conferences she&#8217;d attend <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.schoollibraryjournal.com\/afuse8production\/2012\/01\/03\/if-i-were-a-rich-girl-the-childrens-literary-conference-and-convention-tour\/\" target=\"_blank\">If She Were a Rich Girl<\/a>, and I sulk, having discovered several more new conferences I won&#8217;t be able to afford to go to.&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>Of course you all know this already, but <a href=\"http:\/\/www.loc.gov\/today\/pr\/2012\/12-001.html\" target=\"_blank\">Walter Dean Myers has been named the next Ambassador for Young People&#8217;s Literature<\/a> and has chosen the platform &#8220;Reading Is Not Optional.&#8221; Not much to say other than bravo!<\/li>\n<li>AbeBooks highlights major <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abebooks.com\/books\/year-end-book-lists-awards\/2011-literary-review.shtml\" target=\"_blank\">literary events of 2011<\/a>, including the death of Ms. Diana Wynne Jones and the demise of Borders. <\/li>\n<li>And, last but not least, a fascinating story from the intersection of literature and science&#8211;after 150 years, a Penn State anthropologist may have deciphered the mysterious <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rdmag.com\/News\/2011\/12\/Life-Sciences-Disease-Mystery-Of-Victorian-Era-Poets-Illness-Deciphered-After-150-Years\/\" target=\"_blank\">cause of death of poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning<\/a>. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Oh, one more thing&#8211;and this is especially for all you Cybils Round 1 folks wondering what to do with the ARCs or review copies you might not have space for: the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reachareader.org\/arcsfloaton.php\" target=\"_blank\">ARCs Float On<\/a> effort is a searchable database that helps match bloggers with teachers looking to augment their classroom libraries. Why not send your post-Cybils stash to a needy teacher? If that doesn&#8217;t work out, ARCs Float On&#8217;s host site <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reachareader.org\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">Reach A Reader <\/a>has a great list of links to other ways to help and places to donate. Think of it as Boxing Day for books! <\/p>\n<p>*Bright Idea Time* In fact, maybe that&#8217;s something the Kidlitosphere should institute&#8230;<b>Book Boxing Day<\/b>, during which bloggers commit to boxing up one average-sized file box of books and donating it to their chosen location&#8211;a library, a teacher, even some lucky reader! Look, we get LOTS of books in the mail, and we BUY lots of books on top of that (c&#8217;mon, you know you do). Filling (or nearly-filling) a file box per year, or even every other year, shouldn&#8217;t be a problem, should it? And it would make a fun blogosphere-wide event. What do you all think? Let me know in the comments. Or let me know if my bright idea is already being implemented somewhere by someone, so I can slink off in embarrassed silence. Thank you kindly!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While Tanita braces herself against a brisk Scottish wind, and while I wait for my library holds to come in (Cybils graphic novels shortlist;&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,7,18,10,86,73],"class_list":["post-1060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-af","tag-author-news","tag-happenings","tag-views","tag-web-wanderings","tag-world-o-blogs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1060"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6905,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060\/revisions\/6905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}