David Maybury | Blog

The Christmas cheer has been well and truly knocked out of me. I’ve been placed in quarantine by a team of quirky but brilliant Nasa bio-chemistry experts after finding myself down with an undisclosed illness. I’m still under house arrest - but luckily they haven’t removed the interweb connection. So, excuses out of the way, on with the catching up:

• John Maguire, all round movie guru, has his best and worst of 2008. He neglected to include Iron Man - tut tut - but otherwise it is a great list!

• Mary Leland appears in the Irish Times with the best of bed time stories.

• The Newbury Award in the US is coming under some very heavy fire. More here and here.

• The Readertotz blog is very much online.

• Digital books are coming to the Nintendo DS - over on Boing Boing.

• Bookphilia mourns the books not read as a kid, including Tom’s Midnight Garden.

• Jen Robinson has news about a new book blog for PBS in the US.

• Julia Donaldson is in the Guardian talking about family. Jan Pienkowski is in there too - showing his house.

• Staying in the Guardian - Mary Hoffman reviews Sarah Prineas’ The Magic Thief.

• Marianne Gunn O’Connor chooses her book of the year in the Irish Independent: Shaun Tan’s The Arrival.

• The Times UK speculates on the next Doctor - David Tennant only has four episodes left…

• Carol Ann Duffy has a festive poem in the Guardian - illustrated by Posy Simmonds.

• Frank Miller is working on a Buck Rogers revival - this could go either way…

• Nicholas Tucker considers the next children’s book success story.

• And the sad news that Margery Gill has died - the Guardian has a gallery of her work as well as more about her.