The Chain Letters of Blogdom

I done been memed by Mentor Texts & More.

Is it called a meme because it's all about me me?

Curious.

Irregardless, there are rules to this sort of thing. Observe.

Each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

We are in a contrary mood today, however. I will do the tag, but I talk enough about myself as it is. Now you want to know more? 8 facts? I'm feeling dull at the moment, so I'll instead offer you 8 facts you might not know about my workplace, The Central Children's Room of New York Public Library instead.

1. We have Eric P. Kelly's Trumpeter of Krakow Newbery Medal. No, really! It's in a cute little green velvet case. I've shown it to people who were unaware that the Newbery was an actual honest-to-goodness medal medal. Well, it is, and this is what it looks like.


2. We have a bunch o' original paintings by N.C. Wyeth from an edition of Robin Hood he illustrated.


3. We have a couple cut paper scenes by Hans Christian Andersen. Andersen enjoyed cutting paper into complex little scenes which he would hand out for fun. We have two, I think.
   


4. We have a collection of letters sent to a little girl. As a child she would write to famous authors and illustrators and she saved all their responses. In her later years, these were donated to the Central Children's Room. One by L. Leslie Brooke (I still feel the Caldecott should have been named the Brooke Medal) is a lovely little creation involving unhappy balloons.


5. We have the real Mary Poppins umbrella. Author P.L. Travers donated it to the library. Yet another item Disney will never get its greedy paws on. HA!
   


6. We try to keep every single drawing done in this library by its illustrator. That means that we've a lot of great James Marshall and Jose Aruego pictures done long long ago on butcher paper.


7. We're currently about to digitize our entire collection pre-1923. Then it will be available for free online. We're also sending books off-site to a remote storage facility where they will be available only by request.


8. We've an original woodcut by Wanda Gag from her book Millions of Cats. It's quite lovely.
   

I'd meme 8 more people, but honestly I don't want anyone to feel obligated. If you think it would be fun, however, go wild.

31

Beats working.
Apparently Scholar's Blog (who informs us that Philip Pullman just won the Freedom of Oxford) had a fantasy meme a little while ago of 50 children's books of her own. Many are fantasy, so I did okay.

The regular rules (as described by Big A little a):
Since anyone can make a blog, it's good to fill out memes of this sort, if only to show your kidlit credentials. Mark the selections you have read in bold. If you liked it, add a star [*] in front of the title, if you didn't, give it a minus [-]. Then, put the total number of books you've read in the subject line.

31 for me.

The Chronicles of Prydain - Alexander, Lloyd
*Carrie's War - Bawden, Nina
Death of a Ghost - Butler, Charles
Ender's Game - Card, Orson Scott
Summerland - Chabon, Michael
King of Shadows - Cooper, Susan
The Dark is Rising sequence - Cooper, Susan
Stonestruck - Cresswell, Helen
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Dahl, Roald
Matilda - Dahl, Roald
Ingo - Dunmore, Helen
*The Sea of Trolls - Farmer, Nancy
Madame Doubtfire - Fine, Anne
Corbenic - Fisher, Catherine
Inkheart - Funke, Cornelia
-The Thief Lord - Funke, Cornelia
The Owl Service - Garner, Alan
Happy Kid! - Gauthier, Gail
-Stormbreaker - Horowitz, Anthony
Whale Rider - Ihimaera, Witi
Finn Family Moomintroll - Jansson, Tove
*Fire and Hemlock - Jones, Diana Wynne
The Phantom Tollbooth - Juster, Norton
The Sheep Pig - King Smith, Dick
Stig of the Dump - King, Clive
A Wizard of Earthsea - Le Guin, Ursula
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader - Lewis, C S
The House at Norham Gardens - Lively, Penelope
Goodnight Mister Tom - Magorian, Michelle
*The Changeover - Mahy, Margaret
The Stones are Hatching - McCaughrean, Geraldine
The White Darkness - McCaughrean, Geraldine
*Beauty - McKinley, Robin
Sabriel - Nix, Garth
The Borrowers - Norton, Mary
Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH - O'Brien, Robert
Z for Zachariah - O'Brien, Robert
A Dog So Small - Pearce, Philippa
*Life As We Knew It - Pfeffer, Susan Beth
*A Hat Full of Sky - Pratchett, Terry
*His Dark Materials sequence - Pullman, Philip
-How I Live Now - Rosoff, Meg
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - Rowling, J K
*Holes - Sachar, Louis
The Foreshadowing - Sedgwick, Marcus
Marianne Dreams - Storr, Catherine
When the Siren Wailed - Streatfield, Noel
*The Bartimaeus Trilogy - Stroud, Jonathan
The Hobbit - Tolkien, J R R
Charlotte's Web - White, E B

More Nancy Farmer! More, I say! And more Diana Wynne Jones! Perhaps I should make a list of my 50 favorites. Which, now that I think of it, is like ranking your best friends. Painful and irresistible. Hrm.

Thanks to Big A little a for the link.