Tubby Cat and Surly Girl on their first big adventure!
For the record I am a fan of Zoos, field trips and the buddy system.
Stay with your buddy. Do not take cats to zoos.
This is truly great.
July 24, 2014
Consider the stakes. The lack of diversity and equity in the publishing industry is not a theoretical issue for us to intellectualize over coffee. It is an injustice. The destruction of libraries and burning of books has historically been used to strip peoples of their history and culture. Those in power continue to limit the ability of those they have subjugated to share their stories. They retain ultimate control of the narrative and their power.
Oh my goodness, yes! Just credit me if anyone asks please and I definitely want to see a picture of the whole thing if that’s cool. Thanks for asking!
I need Intern Maureen to walk up to me and say, “Melissa, it may not be the best time to tell you this, but I can’t come to leakycon.” I will devise some sort of prize for this person.
July 21, 2014
[gallery]
I don’t know where this photo set is from in context, but listen: in my mind, it’s a sitcom/reality show with a possible novelization, and I would watch it forever.
After years of working in a dank cave for beans, our pal Kent Osborne—board artist and writer of scads of your favorite Adventure Time episodes—hits the big time with today’s launch of the six-issue Banana Guard Academy mini-series from BOOM! Studios. Kent’s the writer with Dylan Haggerty on these, and Sakana’sMad Rupert is the artist. Here’s what BOOM! has to say:
Turns out that there is a lot to being a Banana Guard—but being a Banana is not mandatory. This crazy adventure follows Root Beer Guy as he starts his search for new recruits among Ooo’s citizens. Only the best will do in his quest to protect the Candy Kingdom!
So order yours today, or swing by your local comics shop, if only to give your resounding support of Mr Osborne.
Previously Unpublished Harry Potter Illustrations by Mary GrandPre
In honor of Jo Rowling and Harry’s birthdays being today, here are some previously unpublished illustrations by the original American cover and chapter art artist, Mary GrandPre. They’re so beautiful!! There are a few more, which you can see here.
I’m obsessed with these. The artwork on the books did such a great job of setting that very uniquely Harry Potter atmosphere of whimsy and vibrance and… magic!
I’m so mad they’re reissuing the covers, I don’t like the new ones at all! I’m all for change but they’re literally just worse.
I pass no judgement on the new covers other than I think they are nice and aesthetically sensible, and also, just different. Different isn’t bad. I think they have their own positive points.
Yo Dawg, i heard you like quotes on pictures of McDonald’s so i quoted John Green quoting Dom Pérignon, so you can read a quote on a picture of McDonald’s while you’re reading a quote on a picture of McDonald’s.
New Doctor! New Beginning! Offering shocks, surprises, and timestream-shaking revelations, don’t miss your chance to get on board this amazing ongoing series!
Eagle award-winning writer Robbie Morrison (_Drowntown, The Authority,_ > > 2000AD, Nikolai Dante) and New York Times-bestselling artist Dave Taylor (Batman: Death by Design, 2000AD) dive headfirst into the TARDIS console room and spin the new Doctor off to his most challenging destination yet!
As with the Tenth and Eleventh Doctor ranges, Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor #1 comes with a beautiful regular cover painted by Alice X. Zhang, plus five other variants - including a “100% rebel Time Lord” photo cover and Mariano Laclaustra penned picture of Clara.
Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor is available to pre-order from comic stores tomorrow and will hit retailers on October 1. Due to licensing restrictions, fans in the UK and Ireland can only purchase this comic digitally. [x]
the movie would be set entirely in the office of one over-worked insurance agent answering phone calls and in the window behind him we see various Super Heroes destroying things
DIY storage solutions, Better Homes and Gardens, 1977
STEAL THIS LOOK!
1. Walls are great, but so blank. Fix this problem by filling your walls with CREEPY CHILD FACES and ANONYMOUS MUSTACHIOED MEN. Ideally, they should be staring at the side of your head all the time so you can kind of see them but not directly.
2. Same with curtains. No one must see inside.
3. Desk walls are the worst so get an even CREEPIER PICTURE OF A CHILD and put it JUST TO THE LEFT OF YOUR LINE OF VISION. For the right: warthog.
4. Creepy doll above? YES.
5. This is all going to give you the sweats so tape a fan to the wall in front of you.
6. Carpet? Check. Shag? Check. Color? Kind of an orange-vomit? Check.
7. Deeply suggestive seashell? You know it! Put it above your head so you can reach up and touch it.
Now you have a workspace from which you can plan your killing spree.
I just keep staring at the phone, thinking “How do I get this to connect to the Internet?” I feel someone must have done that until they made it happen.
A few weeks ago my japanese class did a gift exchange with our penpal class in japan and their box of stuff came in today. All of the gifts had really cute messages on yellow notes. This one was my favorite..
Laura Aceves photographed in 2009, holding her niece. Berryville, Arkansas — Two days before she died, Laura Aceves stood on the side of the road and frantically dialed the police for the last time. It was early afternoon and the 21-…
One of the most intense and moving articles I’ve ever read on this subject. A hard read, but so very worth it. Please share. This is important, important stuff.
John on how Julie Strauss-Gabel immensely improved Paper Towns. [x]
The history of the post office box is completely fascinating to me. And totally metaphorically resonant! But…yeah.
No joke, because Julie Strauss-Gabel does such magnificent work as an editor, my expectations are always set a little higher when I find out a book I’m reading is edited by her. See: The Disenchantments by Nina Lacour, which is a FANTASTIC BOOK.
This post is relevant to my interests in EVERY WAY.
I have the enormous luxury of being surrounded by rich, complex narratives every day. I made a decision 20 years ago that the kids and YA world was my future, and that seems to have worked out just fine.
I haven’t seen what this is from, but I can tell you I am the same in the way I feel inside- both in the free self-expression, and the confused, regretful judgement of being too self-conscious.
Our design intern Ann is learning some animation with us, and considering she created AND animated this character of herself, we’d say she’s off to an amazing start! Check out her website and other work here. Go Ann!
The people who work and intern at Thought Café have apparently collected every Chocolate Frog Card, and have skills beyond what should be possible.
Ahahah oh man an amazing thing that actually happened???
NO Baby girl you are too young for this life and pain.
Her mom thinks it’s hilarious and gave me permission to make a comic out of it? It’s awesome that she has all the Disney movies at her house, and they didn’t know about Miyazaki before! Now they do and watch it with her!
I let her watch Totoro weeks after that! She got really into it too!
me
OK, so this is awesome, but it also highlights something really important about different types of narrative. Namely:
Disney princess stories are constructed, from the outset, around the idea that the leads end up together. Even as little kids, we know that Eric and Ariel are Meant To Happen, and so when it eventually does, it feels preordained - but not necessarily earned, because their union was never in doubt.
Miyazaki films, on the other hand, are built along different lines. Even when a particular character relationship forms the basis of the narrative, there are no narrative signposts along the way to indicate that the two characters are meant to end up together, nothing to reassure us that they’ll get a happy ending. So when they do, it doesn’t feel preordained in the way that Disney happy endings do - but it does feel earned, because there was doubt about what would happen.
And that difference, I think, is what this little girl here is responding to. She’s grown up learning the narrative cues that Princess And Prince End Up Together, and so she isn’t really surprised when it happens. But when she watched Ponyo, even though she didn’t know what was going to happen, she still formed an opinion about what she wanted to happen - and so when it did, when Ponyo says she loves Sosuke at the end, her emotional investment in their relationship was much higher, because she’d been feeling uncertain about the outcome.
Which is, in a nutshell, why some romance-oriented stories work for me, and some just don’t. If the love feels preordained, like in Disney, then the obviousness of it often means I immediately lose interest and investment, but if there’s some ambiguity - if I’m made to feel that I can’t preempt the ending just by knowing what kind of story it is - then I’m much more likely to have FEELINGS about it. And I just wish that more people understood the distinction, so that they didn’t lapse into writing the Disney version as a default without really understanding what that means to the larger narrative - not because it’s bad, per se, but because it often seems to be used unconsciously rather than to a specific purpose.
I read it in much the same way, but particularly with how the difference in narrative structure lends itself to developing empathy and emotional intelligence.
There was a question on my pathogenesis final today about an innate immune system effector present in mice and not humans, and I couldn’t remember the answer, so I drew a picture of a mouse and wrote “THANK CHEESES IT’S ONLY WORTH TWO POINTS!”
This is why we don’t just need diverse books, but we need people to realize that these diverse books are books for everyone. The above is just one of the many examples I can give of the misguided dismissal of my books. The librarian who was surprised how well my “ethnic” book went over with all the students. The father who was surprised that his son loved “your Oriental dragon book” so much that he (the son) insisted on giving it to all his friends for birthday gifts. I could go on and on…
This is exactly why we need diversity! Because so many people don’t know basic facts about other countries and cultures.
May 1, 2014
[John Green’s] books have been critical darlings as well as commercial successes. He’s a 21st-century Judy Blume by way of Dawson’s Creek, telling stories that connect with teen lives […] The movie puts Green in the position to accomplish something his idol Blume never achieved: crossover from publishing to Hollywood, signifying the shift to true-life stories in YA.
I was reading this Hollywood Reporter article on John Green and his incredible success, but when I got to this paragraph I was like really? Was it necessary to juxtapose his level of achievement in this field around what legendary YA author Judy Blume “has never” achieved? (Also that is awfully definitive sounding of you, Hollywood Reporter!)
Genuine question: what would this article have lost without that juxtaposition? It would have been possible to present Judy Blume as a mainstay of YA and one of his idols outside of that kind of context (and how awesome is it that she IS!). Doing so certainly would not have taken away from everything John’s hard work has made happen for him and how exciting it is to see a YA author reach this level of fame.
But why is it that when a legendary male author follows in a legendary female author’s footsteps, it has to be presented in a way that implies he bested her and not walked a road she helped pave? It’s also a weak juxtaposition because the landscape has changed so drastically in how authors can approach and engage and grow their reader bases (Twitter and vlogging = relatively new things). Also maybe a legendary female YA author “never” achieving that kind of crossover success from publishing to Hollywood is more a commentary on Hollywood? And finally and perhaps most importantly, it was pointed out to me on Twitter that Judy Blume made the choice not to sell her books to Hollywood. If that’s the case, you can’t measure their achievements against each other because apples and oranges.
I am ALL for celebrating a male author’s hard work and his unprecedented level of success in this genre. John has done some incredible things and as a YA author, I am so pleased that YA is gaining more visibility because of his contributions. His commitment to decreasing world suck is laudable. I just wish so much that mainstream media—because mainstream media is the problem here, none of this is an indictment on John, nor is it his responsibility to fix—realized featuring an author’s success in this genre also presents a great opportunity to highlight how many wonderful stories and authors make up YA.
You might not think this example is that bad but it’s one of many. Discrediting and undermining the female contribution to and the female interest in YA is not a new thing. How it’s done can be super insidious, offhand, very blatant—the point is, it’s not okay. I have talked before about systems of privilege within industry, so I’m not going to unpack that here again. This is just your regular reminder that a male writer’s success doesn’t mean other writers, particularly female writers, have failed. And It’s possible to talk about a male writer’s very commendable level of success without throwing female authors or genres embraced by women and girls—like, say _Twilight—_under the bus.
tl;dr: get it together when you talk about YA, mainstream media.
Also worth noting that the article, while mentioning all of John’s other novels, leaves out LET IT SNOW, which he co-wrote with two fabulous female authors, Lauren Myracle and Maureen Johnson. Where’s our movie deal, Hollywood?
