Carnival of Children's Lit & Akkordeonspieler

I'm new to blogging, and carnivals are one aspect of the culture I'm still puzzling out. It's not that I imagine blog carnivals to be as raucous as, say, a German kid playing an accordion in a tent.

I get the idea of aggregations of above-average blog entries. I enjoy exploring the links in the carnival entries I've seen, and am very glad someone's gone to the trouble.

I just don't get the process yet. Who is that someone? What are the criteria for links? What defines each carnival's theme? Why does hosting circulate? Such sites as Blog Carnival have been designed to fill a perceived need, but they don't answer those questions. Perhaps there are as many different combinations of answers as there are carnivals. Perhaps part of the appeal of blog communities, like other communities, is insider status: like finding your way here in greater Boston, if you don't already know where you are, you don't belong there.

In any event, the past Carnivals of Children's Literature are swell. Big A little a will host a new one on 23 July. Entry deadline is 15 July. And what happens in between those dates? I really don't know.

So I've decided to institute the Oz and Ends blog carnival of German kids playing accordions in tents to find out. It's open for entries through the end of July.