Sunday, February 03, 2008

Odd stats note

This morning I was looking at the StatCounter account for this blog and noted over a dozen unique hits from five different locations (four states and another country) with the same google search landing on the same blog post within an hour.

Coincidence? Who knows?
Weird? Well, to me, yes.
I found it interesting that each search used kiddie lit and not children's literature. I don't know if they found what they were looking for here, especially since the occurence of "kiddie lit" in that particular post directed people to other blogs and 1931 was simply in reference to Hugo, but it was fodder for a quick Sunday morning post.

Update, later that same day...

Ask and you shall receive; thanks to a comment from Puzzler I now know that one of the crossword clues in today's Washington Post was "Kiddie lit creation of 1931." I looked around a bit and found that the children's literature character Babar the Elephant was first published in 1931. It's probably too late in the day to be of any help, plus I have no clue if it is correct, but just in case:

"Babar made his debut in "The Story of Babar" published in 1931 by Jean de Brunhoff. Jean created and illustrated seven Babar titles before dying in 1937. Laurent de Brunhoff, son of Jean, continues his father's work and is still writing Babar books." - Treehouse TV

"The complexity of King Babar's world, and some of its contradictions, are partly the result of the fact that his long life has been chronicled by two different biographers. Babar's history began in Paris in 1931, when the pianist Cecile de Brunhoff invented a bedtime story about a baby elephant for her sons, who were then five and six years old. The next day the boys repeated the tale to their father, the artist Jean de Brunhoff, who was inspired to write it down, expand it, illustrate it, and publish it in 1931 as The Story of Babar." - by Alison Lurie, 12/16/2004, NYT Book Review of The Royal Family.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The crossword in today's Washington Post has "Kiddie lit creation of 1931" as one of the clues. I stumbled here also looking for an answer =)

-Puzzler