End-o'-the-Week Kid-Lit Roundup

Quick links from around the kid-lit blogosphere:

Scholastic Summer Challenge. Scholastic kicked off its Summer Challenge last week with a live webcast game show, hosted by Jon Scieszka. The Summer Challenge encourages kids to “be part of a team quest to eat, sleep, and dream books all summer!”

(via Cynopsis Kids)

Percy Jackson’s “last hurrah.” The final Percy Jackson book–The Last Olympian–comes out on Tuesday, and Publishers Weekly had nice round-up of all the hoopla, including contests, the book tour, and an already-sold-out Percy Jackson-themed summer camp, “for demigods ages 9–13.” (The series was also featured in the Wall Street Journal.)

Harry Potter: The Exhibition. A huge Harry Potter exhibition just debuted at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. You can see many costumes and artifacts from the movies, including Harry’s original wand and glasses, and you can apparently even throw a Quaffle.

(more good stuff from Cynopsis Kids)

Battle of the Kids’ Books update. The Battle of the Kids’ Books is nearing the finish line…. It’s Tea Cozy with the commentary, as Anderson’s Book About Slavery Wins! (and, of course, loses!) and Abraham & Mary Don’t Survive the Games.

New kid-lit recommendation site: Twenty by Jenny. Jennifer Brown, children’s editor of Shelf Awareness, just started a new site and newsletter that can help you pick out good books for your kids. You just go to Twenty by Jenny, choose the age range of your child (0-3, 4-7, 8-12, or teen), and browse through a list of 20 classic books, along with a new book for each age group added every month.

Catching up with 30 Poets/30 Days. Did you miss any of the entries in 30 Poets/30 Days, GottaBook’s month-long kid-lit poetry celebration? They just posted a list of all the poets and poems, from every day in April.

Top picks from UK Children’s Laureates. Each of the five UK Children’s Laureates–Quentin Blake, Anne Fine, Michael Morpurgo, Jacqueline Wilson, and Michael Rosen–just announced their seven favorite kids’ books of all time. It makes for an impressive listing, 35 books mostly skewed toward the classics, including quite a few 19th-century titles (and, perhaps notably, no Potter).

Booklights: a new PBS kid-lit blog. From the Department of Funny Announcements: MotherReader marks up an announcement from Jen Robinson, and in the process describes their latest endeavor: a children’s book blog for PBS Parents.

US vs. UK kid-lit. An on-the-ground compare-and-contrast report on how kid-lit differs across the pond, from literary agent blogger Pub Rants. (via Original Content)

Incoming! The Top 10 Picture Books *ever*. I can’t help it: I even have the Europe song stuck in my head. Fuse #8 is zeroing on the final 10 titles in her Top 100 Picture Books Poll. If you missed reading the bottom half of the Top 20 last week, at least make sure you check out her writeup of #11, Ferdinand. She even uncovered this Oscar-winning Ferdinand Disney short:

–Paul