To wish this blog a “Happy 2nd Birthday,” I’ve added a “Popular Posts” section — you’ll see a link, above.

Commemorating the blog’s first birthday, I posted a list of “Greatest Hits” from the first year.  This year, I would instead like to offer a glimpse into the future.  I have many more ideas for blog posts than I have time to write those posts.  So,… here are a few I’d like to write in the blog’s third year.

• The Purple Crayon’s Legacy, Part II: Picture Books.  I posted Part I well nearly two years ago.  Part II is long overdue….
• Mix for the Biography of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss.  In celebration of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children’s Literature (to be published Sept. 1st!).
• Fear of Flying.  A post that will not include the word “zipless,” but will address how to manage anxiety at 18,000 feet.
• Gollies, Scriptive Things, and Childhood Play.  Inspired by both Robin Bernstein’s Racial Innocence and my own childhood, this post will serve as a rough draft of the introduction (or, really, part of the introduction) to a book I’m writing.
• Who Is the Dr. Seuss of Today?  I often get asked this question.  I have some answers.
• Barbara Lehman, master of the wordless picture book.  I love her work, and have been meaning to write about her since this blog began.
• The newspaper PM.  I want to scan in and post an entire issue of this paper, which was published in New York from 1940 to 1948. (I have a few copies of it.) It’s a beautifully laid out, Popular Front newspaper that ran Crockett Johnson’s Barnaby and the political cartoons of Dr. Seuss.  This project may sound unmanageable, but the paper was printed in tabloid format, and each issue wasn’t that long.  (It’s not like scanning in a copy of The New York Times).

And there are several more for which I don’t have titles yet.

Thanks to all (both?) of you for continuing to read the blog.  I’ll continue to try to make it worth your time.

There’s a new blog that children’s lit readers & Curious George fans will want to explore.  Titled All Things Rey (an homage to the great All Things Thurl website, perhaps?), it features posts devoted to H.A. and Margret Rey.  It launched on Nov. 2 2011 with a post on H.A., at a New Hampshire swimming pool, doing pitch-perfect imitations of animals.  Other posts have focused on the original spelling of “Rey,” the Reys’ arrival in New York in 1940, and their Greenwich Village apartment.  Ann Mulloy Ashmore, the blog’s creator, promises more “fascinating anecdotes and details about” the Reys, derived from her work on them both now and as a staff member of the de Grummond Collection who helped catalog the Reys’ papers when they arrived in 1999.

Not incidentally, Ashmore also has published a really good piece on the Reys: “From Elizabite to Spotty: The Reys, Race and Consciousness Raising,” in Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 35.4 (Winter 2010), pp.357-372.  If you or your university library subscribes to ProjectMuse, you can read the article gratis.

Here’s hoping these blog posts become a book!

Nine Kinds of Pie made its debut in July of 2010.  Looking back on the 158 posts I’ve done since then, here are nine of many subjects covered.

1. Children’s Literature. Since the blog takes its title from Crockett Johnson’s Harold and the Purple Crayon, of course much has been devoted to stories for younger readers.  There have been pieces devoted to the works of Tim Egan, Lane Smith, Dr. Seuss, J.K. Rowling, Mark Newgarden and Megan Montague Cash, among others.

2. Comics. Unsurprisingly, many of these posts concern Crockett Johnson’s Barnaby.  But Richard Thompson’s Cul de Sac, and political cartoons by Syd Hoff and William Gropper have also made appearances.

3. Music.  I thought I would post more mixes than I have done, but… I have posted a few — mostly themed ones.  There’s been a “Halloween Box Set,” a “Rapture Box Set,” a “Summer Box Set,” and a few Christmas mixes, among others.

4. Biography.  Chronicling the revisions of The Purple Crayon and a Hole to Dig: The Lives of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss (forthcoming 2012), I’ve shared far more than is likely to interest readers.

5. Advice.  Most of this advice has been geared towards academe (such as How to Publish Your Article or Prograstigrading), but some of the publishing advice (such as How to Publish Your Book) would be useful to non-academics.

6. Academia.  The most popular of these was What Do Professors Do All Week?, a week-long series in which I chronicled just how a professor spends his or her workday… by chronicling exactly how I spent each day of February 19-25.

7. Brief Essays. Some of these will form part of longer works — for example, “Can Censoring a Children’s Book Remove Its Prejudices?”  Others will not, such as the brief opinion pieces like:

• “Humanities Majors Learn More,”
• “The Picture Book Is Dead; Long Live the Picture Book,”
• “Speaking Out,”
• “Martin Amis, Brain Damage, and Children’s Literature,” and
• “Those Who Can, Teach. Those Who Cannot, Pass Laws About Teaching.”

I’ve also posted a couple of reviews, such as those on Chris Van Allsburg’s Queen of the Falls, and Catherynne M. Valente’s The Girl Who Circumnavigated the Falls in a Ship of Her Own Making.

8. Humor. Items in this category overlap with items in other categories (cartoons, children’s books), but since there are 14 posts tagged humor, this appears to be developing as a theme.  Highlights: Remy Charlip’s It Looks Like Snow and How to Talk Nonsense (on a pedagogical experiment using nonsense).

9. Autobiography.  Inasmuch as bits of my life may be instructive to others, I’ve written a few pieces about me — many (possibly all) of these might be cross-listed with advice.  Some such posts include “Introvert Impersonates Extrovert” (on overcoming shyness), “My Book About Me” (on my first book), a pair of posts on moving from adjuncthood to professorland, and the blog’s inaugural post.

Are there any subjects that readers would like to see more of?  Since I don’t have a counter on this blog, comments are my only way of gauging a subject’s popularity.  (And, yes, I know I should install a counter.  Any suggestions?)