Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

To run with Mitali Perkins’ analogy of middle school (or junior high school) crush-like feelings and someone on a blog you really admire mentioning your name or your blog (the so-called blog-crush phenomenon), Roger Sutton’s blog is the coolest, hottest guy sweeping past your shoulder in the hallway (okay, we feel weird just having called the blog of the Editor-in-Chief of The Horn Book “hot,” but we’re runnin’ with an analogy here). Just about everyone in that cyberspace realm called kidlitosphere wants to ask Read Roger to the Friday night dance in the school’s gym (you know, with the bad decorations and teachers standing around and girls and boys lined up on opposite sides of the basketball court, shuffling their feet).

Fortunately for us all, Roger and his blog will not — as Susan put it in the comments section of the aforementioned Mitali link — brush past you in the hallway, shoving you into a locker and giving you the ‘ol brush-off. He has agreed to an interview in our fledgling Seven Impossible Interviews Before Breakfast series. Read the rest of this entry �

Hello there. Jules and Eisha here, continuing our interview series . . . There is much blog-crushing going on — in the kidlitosphere and even beyond — for A Fuse #8 Production. Betsy (we’ll call her Fuse) runs the show over there, and she always keeps things quite informative and entertaining. As Roger Sutton put it, she’s intrepid.

So, let’s get to know her a bit, shall we? And we’d like to quickly add again — in the name of Coming Attractions — that upcoming interviews will feature Roger Sutton, the editor-in-chief of The Horn Book (as if we have to tell you kidlitosphere folks his title); author Haven Kimmel (if you haven’t read about our good fortune, read here); and author Emily Jenkins, who has graciously agreed to an interview. Eisha and I are big fans of her work, especially her latest title, co-reviewed here. We are really looking forward to talking to her and bringing her to you, our readers. More blogger interviews to come soon, too. We promise.

Before we get to Fuse, here’s our Perfunctory Curse Word Disclaimer: Remember that we use the Pivot Questionnaire in our interviews. Remember that it includes the what-is-your-favorite-curse-word question. It’s optional for folks to answer, but if they do, we will not edit their responses in any way; yup, we’ll post their responses exactly as they send them to us. Some people might not use “*”s to edit their saucy words. If you’re easily offended, just don’t read that question.

Here’s what we here at 7ITBB love about Betsy at A Fuse #8 Production: Read the rest of this entry �

Hi to all from Jules and Eisha. We regret that we are not participating in Poetry Friday for a second consecutive Friday, but we had it in our heads that we would try to highlight a blogger or author or author/illustrator (yes, we have an author interview coming up that makes us squeal in adoration like Eddy Tulane in front of a mirror) once a week. And here we are sneaking up at the end of another week, so we want to go ahead and feature our first blogger, the always-gracious Liz at A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy.

And in the name of Coming Attractions, we will feature the fearless Fuse #8 in an installment of Seven Impossible Interviews Before Breakfast, coming to a monitor near you in the very near future. Ditto for Roger Sutton, whose blog so many of us have a swoony crush on. Yes, I boldly asked and am pleased to say that Robin Brande cannot call me a wuss. And the respectable Mr. Sutton agreed and even said it sounds like fun. I think I squealed when he agreed, though I’m trying to sound all calm and professional about it now. Many thanks in advance to him, as he’s one busy editor, we’re sure. (And we will get to all our favorites before the twenty-second century. In the meantime, while you wait, you can ruminate upon and formulate your witty and insightful responses . . . “ruminate, formulate” — isn’t that a lost INXS song?).

We are pleased to feature Liz first. She not only generally rocks and, we might add, rocks hard (isn’t that how those young ‘uns talk today?), but she also went out of her way to give us thoughtful feedback on a nerdy blogging question we had recently.

One last thing, and we’ll get right to it: Remember that we use the Pivot Questionnaire in our interviews. Remember that it includes the what-is-your-favorite-curse-word question. It’s optional for folks to answer, but if they do, we will not edit their responses in any way; yup, we’ll post their responses exactly as they send them to us. Some people might not use “*”s to edit their saucy words. If you’re easily offended, just don’t read that question. Now on with the show. Read the rest of this entry �

Check out the January ’07 issue of The Edge of the Forest, edited by Kelly Herold of the ever-informative Big A little a. In addition to this month’s features and book reviews (including features by Allie at Bildungsroman/Slayground, MotherReader, and Franki from A Year of Reading), Eisha and I contributed to this month’s issue by interviewing Alan Gratz, the YA author who penned Samurai Shortstop (reviewed here by Eisha way back in August) and who is working on a new title, which you can read all about at the interview.

Because Eisha and I both knew Alan when we all lived in Knoxville and both worked with him in theatruh endeavors, I am including a picture of him here as a very solemn-looking Badger (with a walking stick at that) in a children’s stage adaptation of Wind in the Willows from ten years ago! Hee hee. Gotta love it. I think Alan has a healthy sense of humor and will laugh, though for all I know he’s now plotting my demise, at the very least attaching a picture of me to the center of a dart board at this very moment. To be fair, that’s me, standing in the center of all the actors — the one with the bizarre mime-like make-up, hand-flapping my way across the outdoor stage as a shadow interpreter in the show. I’m signing “DANGER!” and with a very alarmed look. I don’t remember what exactly Mole was up to at that particular moment, but it couldn’t have been good.

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Eisha and I set a little blog goal for the new year: We wanted to take some time to get to know some of our favorite bloggers out there, especially since we’ve only been blogging since July ’06. For my part, I’ll often stumble upon little tidbits of information about a blog or blogger and find myself rather amazed — such as, so-and-so has only been blogging for about a year? when I assumed they’d been doing it forever. I remember reading somewhere that so-and-so was a professor when I had assumed she was a librarian. Or I’ll see a blogger’s picture and think about how I imagined them looking totally different. You get the picture . . .

So, we thought, why not do some informative and fun interviews? We’re going to start by interviewing ourselves in order to set the tone. But then watch out . . . We’ll be coming after you, begging for an interview if you can stand it. We’ll hit our favorite blogs, and we have quite the list. We promise not to ask things like “chocolate or vanilla ice cream?” or “Disney or Warner Brothers?” {shudder} like in those email forwards you sometimes get. In fact, we’re throwing in the Actors Studio Pivot Questionnaire, ’cause we think it’s so fun.

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