After much deliberation, we came up with a winner in the Thanksgiving nursery rhyme contest.

Thanks so much to all of your for playing. It really added some fun to our Thanksgiving this year.

It was tough picking a winner. I have to admit I added a few of my own gems into the readings without telling the judges who the author was. One was booed out of the race before I even finished it. I felt like Lucy eavesdropping in Voyage of the Dawn Treader–no one should have to hear what people really think of them. But one of mine was a contender for a few minutes until another shiny poem caught the judges’ fickle eyes.

We had five finalists and then looked for ways to eliminate them. I’ll spare you the details. It wasn’t pretty. It involved opening websites and laughing at author pictures.

I’m kidding. We didn’t look at any author photos. You’re all gorgeous, anyway, don’t you know that?

We finally whittled our favorites down to two, a funny one and a serious one. The funny one, written in feechie fashion, by Donna Shepherd, was original and had not plagiarized any lines, but in the end the serious one stole the hearts of the judges and won by unanimous vote (with some arm twisting and name calling swaying the vote, to be sure, but it ended up unanimous all the same. Some of the judges thought the winning poem had an advantage because I sang it instead of reading it like I did the others, but I pointed out the my singing was actually a handicap for the author. And besides I added a southern accent to Donna’s poem and did everything I could to present all the poems in the best light. Some simply couldn’t be helped, I’m afraid. The three tech stock one…well… I sang that one, too, until it turned into a demented rant.)

So in the end after a very unscientific judging session and unsavory shouting match it was determined that Noel was our winner with her Twinkle Thanksgiving praise song. Noel, you may expect your books in the mail in a couple of days. Look for the Amazon box.

Stay tuned to for more fun poetry contests in the future, I love them, and come back on Monday for the opening day of the Raucous Royals blog tour. This is a fun history book written by Carlyn Beccia.

More on the Houghton Mifflin deal from Kristin at Pub Rants.

Also, while digging around Kristin’s blog I came across a series on queries and pitches. It starts with this post. Give it a gander.

I’ve heard through the grapevine that the moratorium on buying new work I posted about Monday doesn’t extend to children’s books. So that’s nice to know.

And then I read Karen Ball who guest blogged at Novel Journey Today. She told a story to get her point across.

Gotta love it. Stories rule!

I hate to pass this one on, but I think that I must. Houghton Mifflin has told editors to stop buying books for now.

Well, I’m glad that there are still thousands upon thousands of good children’s books in the world that I’ve not read yet.

And then there are always blogs. Plenty of blogs to read.

Hey, I wonder how a children’s book blog would do. I mean a serialized novel blog. A chapter a day. But who could write that fast? Not I, said the cow. What if we had 12 bloggers with 12 unpubbed books and we blogged one book a month. We could all write one book a year and just post it free. One a month.

Wow, what a blast that would be. Anyone want to play? I have a novel I could put up. I have no intention of ever publishing it so why not share it with blog readers. I wonder if kids would come and read or if they would think if it’s free it must not be worth anything.

I wonder if you could sell e-books to people who wanted it early. It could even be illustrated. It could be fun. OK who has tried this already. What did they do right and what did the do wrong. I’m going to study this out. Because if any more publishers quit buying books we might as well have some fun with our writing. The fan fic people do it and seem to have a good time with it. Why not?

I got a little kick out of this article on the Wasilla Library and how the librarian had to justify not shelving the two original gay picture books aimed at introducing tykes to families with same-sex parents.

I mean, there was this group that started a Librarians Against Palin site and I thought that was just silly since the woman never did ban books. But I guess librarians are not immune to the same disease that plagues Evangelical Christians: Fringe hysterics that make the whole body look bad.

Oh, and the fellow who sent Heather Has Two Mommies and Daddy’s Roommate to the Wasilla Library, also, apparently sent condoms to Wasilla High School. What is that about?