WOTD: Spectacle

2038-01-19T03:14:07Z

Today's word of the day is Spectacle, which is something worth viewing, as opposed to spectacles, which are something to view a spectacle through.

With a new baby in the house, I haven't had much chance to read any of the crop of books eligible for this year's ALA Youth Media Awards, so it wouldn't make sense for me to offer award commentary in a blog entry. But I never do the sensible thing, so...

I was psyched that Neil Gaiman won the Newbery Medal for Books About Motherless Protagonists (don't get me started) and that Terry Pratchett and M.T. Anderson both had Printz Honor Books--which makes three award-winning books from three of my all-time favorite authors that I'll need to bump to the top of my "must read" list.

Elizabeth Bunce, a member of the Class of 2k8 group, won a William C. Morris Award for debut authors--exciting because we in the Class of 2k7 have been watching her and the other Class of 2k8ers all year and now the Class of 2k9ers as well.

Here in New England we're proud of New Hampshire's Beth Krommes for winning the Caldecott Medal and Maine's Melissa Sweet for her Caldecott Honor Book. Also Floyd Cooper, who won the illustrator's Coretta Scott King Award, will be a keynote speaker at this year's New England SCBWI conference while Laurie Halse Anderson, who won a lifetime achievement award, was a keynoter at last year's conference--showing the quality of our conference faculty, in case anyone had any doubts.

Aside from the spectacle of the ALA Awards, I've written my first article for the all-new group blog, The Spectacle, featuring authors of speculative fiction for teens and pre-teens. In addition to myself we so far have Parker Peevyhouse (Last Midnight, et al.), P.J. Hoover (The Forgotten Worlds series), and Jo Whittemore (The Silverskin Legacy series). It's exciting to be part of such a great group of blogging authors!

My first entry is "Does Hollywood Hate Authors?" where I get to vent a bit about the ad campaign for Coraline.

I'm hoping Neil Gaiman’s Newbery Medal win will soon be reflected in the advertising for the new Coraline movie. The book was creepy and cool, chock full of idea hooks, fun characters, and plot surprises–just what we’ve come to expect from Gaiman's work. But for some reason the studio’s marketing department thought more viewers would be drawn to "a film directed by Henry Selick" than "a story written by Neil Gaiman."

Attention Hollywood: If an author of Neil Gaiman's caliber is in any way connected to your movie, you will sell more tickets by including his name in your ads!

Okay, I feel better now.

Greg R. Fishbone

WOTD: Spectacle