Updating My Blogroll

Computer Guy added some new blogs to my blogroll this morning. These are not brand spanking new blogs by any means. They're blogs I've been watching, blogs from my personal list of favorites that I visit every day. After I watch a blog for a while, I decide whether or not I want to recommend it to others.

Originally I recommended blogs that did three things:

Dealt specifically with children's and/or YA literature.

Updated regularly.

Limited the majority of their posts to professional vs. personal material. (Yes, I have one link on my roll that gets very personal, but she refers to her site as a journal, not a blog, and one link of that nature is quite enough for me.)

Now I'm also interested in kidlit blogs that specialize in some way.

For instance, I've been watching Wands and Worlds, as well as another blog, which shall remain nameless, because they both dealt with fantasy and science fiction. The nameless blog hasn't been updated in ages, so Wands and Worlds made the cut. Sheila at Wands and Worlds tends to business. The fact that she is also the chairperson of my panel for the Cybils is totally irrelevant.

I don't know if Michele at A Scholar's Blog is a member of some of my listservs, or what, but I've been seeing her around the Internet for a long time. She also writes about fantasy and has the added bonus of being English. Why, you may ask, does that matter? Because America isn't the only country that publishes children's literature. We're not the center of the universe. Well, yes, we are, but we ought to be at least aware of what's going on in the rest of the world.

Oz and Ends is a relatively new blog focusing on both history and fantasy literature for children. A twofer! I haven't been watching him as long as the others, but J.L. Bell, the person behind Oz and Ends is all over the listservs, so I think he'll be around for a while. He gets kind of academic now and then. I like academic now and then, though the amount of stuff I've downloaded from Bell's links so I can read it later is going to take a substantial chunk out of my vacation in January.

Oh, dear. I just realize I've been assuming J.L. Bell is a man. I don't know why. Sorry if I'm wrong.

Note: I like that both A Scholar's Blog and Oz and Ends post about older books and don't just focus on this season's big thing. I think bringing attention to worthy titles that are no longer getting press elsewhere should be an important part of our mission.

Finally, I was surprised to see that bookshelves of doom wasn't already on my blogroll. I just assumed. Leila also makes a point of bringing up older books. For instance, she's personally responsible for making sure we don't forget the best of the Nancy Drew covers.