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

In this week's roundup, we find some help for first-time school-goers, visit the intersection of kid lit and tattoos, and get some free Daniel Pinkwater:

"Back to school, for the first time." How do you help new preschoolers and kindergartners prepare for their first big day of capital-S School? The latest Horn Book newsletter has some great tips, including several recommendations for books that will help kids know what to expect--like Wow! School! and Kindergarten Rocks!. Read the newsletter for even more titles and ideas.

Tattoos, kids, tattoos involving kids' books, kids' books involving tattoos, etc. Can we all agree that tattoos have finally, irrevocably, resoundingly become mainstream? 100 Scope Notes compiles the "colliding worlds" story of tattoos and kid lit, with links to a kids' book about parental tattoos, cool librarian temp tattoos (e.g., "Literate 4 Life" and "Read or Die"), a beautiful Matilda tat, and more. I think this full-color Giving Tree tattoo was my favorite, just for sheer commitment to the bit:

Daniel Pinkwater's Yggyssey, serialized free online. If you followed the zany journey of Nedworth Wentworthstein in the Neddiad, you won't want to miss the Yggyssey--the Neddiad told from the point of view of Ned's friend, Iggy. Pinkwater is putting the Yggyssey online in serial form, with a new chapter every Monday. You can already read all the way up to Chapter 17 (how did I miss this?), and you can even download an mp3 of him reading the first chapter. (Found via Bookshelves of Doom.)

Science-fiction roundup for kids and teens. Amanda Craig of the London Times just pulled together an excellent roundup of the "dazzling results" of relatively recent SF efforts for children and teenagers--including the particularly creepy-sounding Unwind:

Unwind imagines a society in which parents who get fed up with their children can sign them up, secretly, to be “unwound” at 13: that is, taken away to have every part of them, from eyes to skin, donated to others. The decision to “abort retrospectively” is irrevocable, and when the clever, rebellious Connor discovers his fate, he plots his escape.

This is the kind of rare book that makes the hairs on your neck rise up. It is written with a sense of drama that should get it instantly snapped up for film, and it's satisfyingly unpredictable in that its characters change and realise things about each other in a credible way. Enforced organ donation isn't a new idea, but Unwind has the kind of anger that will appeal to teenagers.

(Found via Achockablog.)

New Fuse #8 podcast. Elizabeth Bird procrastinates funnily in another "children's literary" podcast, talking about the Bloodhound Gang's secret Newbery-winning writer, the Twilight backlash (and the Twilight backlash backlash), and the "WORLD PODCAST PREMIER" of The Effin G's song "Randolph Caldecott." She also has two fun "booktalks," on King George: What Was His Problem? and The Cabinet of Wonders (Book 1 of the Kronos Chronicles). --Paul