My favorite site of the moment: Curious Pages, a newly launched blog about obscure but outstanding children’s books from the 1800s all the way up through today. The brief descriptions of the books are often quite funny, and the selection is eclectic, such as this Czech version of The Wizard of Oz painted in a Paul Klee style or the Art Deco-ish etching of A Head for Happy, which is about a headless doll. There are even a couple of animation-related items, like Mel Crawford’s adaptation of UPA’s Gerald McBoing Boing (picture above). The impeccable curation can be attributed to the blog owners, who are two talented children’s book authors and illustrators in their own right, Lane Smith and Bob Shea.

Yowp: Stuff about Early Hanna-Barbera Cartoons is a blog that’ll tell you more about Hanna-Barbera cartoons than you probably cared to know. The blog creator, who is anonymous, knows his stuff, and gives us insidery opinions of this sort: “Here’s where you wish someone like Foster or Maltese was guiding the dialogue because Shows’ lines come off as trite and obvious.” His obsessiveness (I can only assume a guy does this blog because no girl would ever obsess over early H-B like this) is not entirely without merit. He also highlights pieces of animation that serve as fine lessons for anybody creating limited animation, such as this lovely two-drawing cycle of Doggie Daddy driving a car.

Shokus Internet Radio is beginning a three-week arc saluting the animation industry starting today with two of the best voiceover artists in the business: Gregg Berger (Garfield, The Angry Beavers, Batman Beyond, Duckman, Transformers, etc.) and Michael Bell (Rugrats, Voltron, Superfriends, Jonny Quest, et al). Stu’s Show airs live on Wednesday and repeated each subsequent day at the same time 7-9pm Eastern / 4-6pm Pacific.

On November 4th, Bob Bergen (Porky Pig, Tweety, Lupin III) will be the guest, and on November 11th, yours truly (Jerry Beck) will be there to answer questions on the burning issues of the day. Turn on, Toon In, Click Here.

Podcast du jour: Jason Anders and “some creepy fan girl” do a very enjoyable phone interview with Tom Kenny at Fulle Circle Productions blog.

Charles Schulz’ son, Monte Schulz, will be the guest all this week on Stu’s Show, the internet radio show you can listen to each day at 4pm.

Monte will discuss his new novel, This Side of Jordan, then talk about what it was really like growing up in the Schulz household in Sebastapol. Monte is very grateful to Cartoon Brew because, as you’ll hear on the show, he owes his novel being published to the fact that the owner of Fantagraphics Books reads this site. When Monte was posting comments about the Michaelis book two years ago, the publisher saw his posts and contacted him. Monte sent him his manuscript and Fantagraphics bought it and four other novels almost immediately.

Tune in to hear right here!

Chris Dan and Celia have been collecting interviews with animation people like Lou Romano, Victor Navone, Nate Wragg, Armand Serrano, Aurore Damant (that’s her art above), Carlos Grangel and many others over on their Arte y Animacion Blog. New one posted each month. Worth a bookmark.

Joe Murray is in the planning stages of a new site called KaBoing TV, which he envisions as “an all cartoon, all animation channel, not only with my content, but bringing in other content providers as well.” Murray, who has a long history in TV animation with series like Rocko’s Modern Life and Camp Lazlo, wrote on his blog about his desire to “make a home for animation that is cool, creator driven, and fair business wise to the people who make the entertainment, as well as being responsible in the advertising we choose to run.”

To date, most of the major online cartoon channels and animation video sharing sites have been started by corporations looking for ways to exploit creators. There hasn’t been any attempt on the part of sites like Aniboom or Channel Frederator to find sustainable and fair models that encourage online animation production. Murray’s track record as an artist responsible for successful shows on both Nick and CN gives him a unique edge as an entrant into the field of online animation distribution. It’ll be interesting to watch what he does.

(Charles Brubaker via Cartoon Brew’s Facebook page)

Shokus Internet Radio, where I occasionally appear on Stu’s Show (my next appearence there is scheduled for November 11th), now has a new regular daily show for classic animation buffs. Cartoon Carnival with Joe Bevilacqua is broadcast online everyday at 3pm (PDT), 5pm (CT) and 6pm (ET). This week, for example, host Bevilacqua (co-author of the biography Daws Butler, Characters Actor) will present part one of a tribute to Bob Clampett’s Time for Beany; an interview with Stan Freberg; and a live performance of Dudley Doo-Right featuring June Foray. For more information on previous shows and upcoming episodes, check JoeBev.com.