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Many of the books in this issue of Notes implicitly enjoin us to look up from the page and head out into nature (or, as my mother would say, “put down that book and go out and play!”). As I write this, we’re just coming off of Screen-Free Week, an annual effort in which young people and adults alike are encouraged to turn off their TVs, computers, and game consoles in favor of non-virtual recreation. “Read a book instead!” has always been at the top of the list of approved alternatives — but what if your book is on a screen? As digital editions take an increasing piece of the publishing pie, we are all being challenged to rethink what we mean by “book” and “reading.” I can now go outside and take an entire library along with me in my pocket. I wonder what Screen-Free Week — not to mention my mother — would think about that?

Roger Sutton
Editor in Chief

The post From the editor — May 2013 appeared first on The Horn Book.

Jim Giblin has had two long and fruitful careers in children’s books, first as an editor, retiring as publisher of Clarion Books in 1989, and continuing to flourish as an author, most recently of The Rise and Fall of Senator Joe McCarthy (Clarion, 2009). He is currently working on a joint biography of movie pioneers Lillian Gish and D.W. Griffith. In honor of Jim’s work and his many years of mentoring new writers, The Highlights Foundation has established the James Cross Giblin Scholarship Fund to enable writers to attend the writing workshops and conferences held at Highlights’ beautiful campus in the Poconos. The Highlights Foundation, who asked me to help spread the word about the scholarship and the illustrious and lovely Mr. Giblin, sponsors this edition of Talks with Roger.

RS: In my conversation with Mary Downing Hahn (Mary Downing Hahn Talks with Roger, June 2012), she talked about how you helped and guided her, how you brought her into the world, sort of. Who brought you in? Who helped you?

James Cross Giblin: There were a variety of people, and some of them had nothing to do with publishing. One was my college drama teacher — I majored in dramatic arts in undergraduate — a woman named Nadine Miles, a fascinating person and a good director. She wasn’t the type to say, “Enter upstage left, take three steps downstage, say your line as you cross to the sofa…” Miss Miles let us fumble around through the blocking. But once you got that right moment, she would direct it very closely. You’d have an insight into the whole performance. I played, when I was nineteen years old, an aged Russian sage in Gorky’s play The Lower Depths. It was mainly set in the basement of a rundown apartment house in Moscow. Miss Miles didn’t stop me until I rose from a bench, and she said, “Wait a minute. How old are you?” Thinking in those days, when I was nineteen, that sixty-five was ancient, I said that, and she said, “All right. Don’t you think his bones might be a little creaky? After all, he’s trudged all across northern Russia before getting to Moscow with his strange religious vision. Would he jump up from the bench, or would it be hard for him to stand up? Why don’t you try it again?” We tried it a couple of times more until she was satisfied. I edit that way. I’ve never been the type who would mark up the author’s manuscript with a lot of changes or suggestions. I always felt that it would freeze up the writer just as it froze up me.

Early in my career, I was fortunate to work as an assistant editor with Beatrice Creighton at Lothrop, Lee & Shepherd, long gone now as a separate imprint. Bea Creighton had a real knack for picking out a picture book manuscript, of seeing the core of an effective text and paring it down. She published Alvin Tresselt’s Caldecott-winning White Snow, Bright Snow (Lothrop, 1947), illustrated by Roger Duvoisin, and Tresselt and Duvoisin’s Hide and Seek Fog (Lothrop, 1965). I well remember the day when the associate art director came rushing in with final proofs just before Hide and Seek Fog was going on press. Patsy, the art assistant, said, “Miss Creighton, Miss Creighton, look at this spread.” Bea didn’t see anything wrong with it and said, “Well, it seems to read smoothly to me.” Patsy replied, “But don’t you realize, they left off the whole text on page twelve?” So Bea looked at it again, and she said, “You know, this text always needed cutting.” It was published that way and it won a Caldecott Honor. Bea saw what authors were trying to do and helped them do it. That’s what an editor’s job is.

RS: Do you find, working with authors, that Author A has a consistent tendency to write too much or too little? Do you know, coming into a manuscript by someone you’ve worked with for a long time, what you need to watch out for?

JCG: Mary Downing Hahn, in her earlier days, had a tendency to underwrite. But the wonderful thing about Mary — and it’s certainly not true of every writer — is that she would learn from her mistakes. If she made a set of revisions after my saying, “Let the character go more. Let her really explode in the scene. Let her go at it with her mother,” the wonderful thing about Mary was she always took the suggestion in her own direction, ending up in a much better place than I would ever have imagined.

RS: It’s interesting to me that the metaphors you use to talk about what you thought Mary needed to do are very stagecrafty. Do you think there’s a connection with your drama background?

JCG: Very much so, yes. I’ll even say to an author, “Give her a stronger entrance.” How does she bring up the mail to her aged grandfather? Is there any way she makes it seem like it might be interesting or exciting news? The character, I mean.

RS: Is there anything you see in publishing today that you envy?

JCG: I’ll say a good word for marketing. Certain books that they see potential in — and I don’t always agree with them about just which ones — they work hard to promote. Once I had been in the field for a decade or so, I often felt that nobody knew what they were really doing in terms of marketing. It was easier then, of course, because the key markets for trade publishers then were schools and libraries. Clarion was fortunate, too, because we had Marjorie Naughton. I hired Marjorie in 1962, and she retired at the end of 2010.

RS: The field seems more cutthroat today.

JCG: Oh, it’s much more cutthroat. I was once quoted as having said, and I don’t even remember this but I guess I did, that in the adult field it’s dog-eat-dog, and in children’s books it’s bunny-nibble-bunny. It isn’t that way anymore.

RS: What is the most important lesson that your editing career brought to your writing career?

JCG: Well, for one thing, I hope it taught me how not to be a demanding son-of-a-bitch with my editor.

RS: “Here comes Jim again.”

JCG: Yes, exactly. You know, a lot of authors have very unrealistic expectations about what their books are going to do. They can make themselves obnoxious by wondering why nobody invites them to be on television or why they’re not mentioned in People magazine. At writers’ conferences, there’s so much emphasis on marketing. Current wisdom states that the marketing people only have time to concentrate on their star people, so you have to self-publicize, and if that means being aggressive, you have to learn how to be aggressive. I don’t know how that’s working out, but I don’t advise it as a course of action. Of course publishers spend more money on proven commodities, because they want to follow up a success with another success. And until you prove that you can deliver a successful book to the house, they’re not going to give you as much attention as they give their star people. I think that should be understandable to anybody.

RS: Even the star people are being pressured to do a new book that’s as much like their last successful book as possible. Sequels, companions, things like that.

JCG: I’ve never thought that really good books come from that approach. But who am I to say, because one of our bestselling author-illustrators at Clarion is someone I still work with, and love working with, because she’s so imaginative and intelligent, and that’s Eileen Christelow and her five little monkeys.

RS: People love those five little monkeys.

JCG: They do, and Eileen will ask me plaintively sometimes, “Can I take a break and do some other kind of story?”

RS: And what do you say?

JCG: I say yes. Two of her best books are What Do Authors Do? (Clarion, 1995) and What Do Illustrators Do? (Clarion, 1999).

RS: Have you found a difference in publishing your own books?

JCG: I published my first book, The Scarecrow Book (Crown Publishers) in 1980. It’s been over thirty years now. There is more nonfiction publishing for the younger set now, and there’s much more use of color, especially color photographs, in series like Houghton’s Scientists in the Field.

RS: I love that series.

JCG: It’s a fine series. It fills a real need, I think, that nobody’s tapped before. Of course, nonfiction has gone through so many different phases.

RS: Kind of like books for boys, you know? It seems about every, oh, eight years or so, people say, “Oh my God, we’ve got to do something about nonfiction.” Or, “We’ve got to do something about boy readers.” One or the other. Then you see more attention for a while, and then it slowly recedes, and then it cycles back.

JCG: Yes, exactly. My friend Russell Freedman lucked out, I think, with Lincoln: A Photobiography (Clarion, 1987), because it came at the peak of a trend for recognizing nonfiction, including several nonfiction Newbery Honor Books: Rhoda Blumberg’s Commodore Perry in the Land of the Shogun (Lothrop, 1985); Patricia Lauber’s Volcano: The Eruption and Healing of Mount Saint Helens (Bradbury, 1986).

RS: I remember your own early books as being concerned with social history.

JCG: Yes, that was what I devoted my books to in the eighties.

RS: And now we see more biography from you.

JCG: Yes, there was a definite shift. I, for better or worse, have always followed my own inclinations in the subjects I chose to explore, and editors have gone along with me. I don’t think if I were starting out today I would have as easy a time getting contracts for those earlier titles. I had a lot of fun writing those social history books, especially one called From Hand to Mouth, or, How We Invented Knives, Forks, Spoons, and Chopsticks, & the Table Manners to Go with Them (Crowell, 1987), which is, I think, my funniest book.

RS: Let There Be Light: A Book About Windows (Crowell, 1988), that’s my favorite.

JCG: That one was the most demanding to write. And I think probably one of the more creative of them, because it was an unusual idea, and I had a lot of fun researching it and writing it. Those were books I could do comfortably while heading Clarion as editor-in-chief and publisher, because they’re what I call beads-on-a-string books. There’d be a theme, like in From Hand to Mouth, and I could research a segment, or a “bead,” of the story and write it. There was not a driving thrust through from beginning to end. With the biographies I started writing later I had to go deeper and be more concentrated.

RS: Biography demands more attention to the string. You can’t cherry-pick.

JCG: No, and you can’t link up a few stray facts with a few more stray facts. When Plague Strikes: The Black Death, Smallpox, AIDS (HarperCollins, 1995) was a pivotal book in my career, and one of the most popular. It’s not a biography of a person, but in a way it’s a biography of three epidemics. I pushed individuals to the front of the story because I felt it made it livelier, and so that you could feel the personal effects of the particular plague. But among my biographies is my own favorite, a 2005 Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book, Good Brother, Bad Brother: The Story of Edwin Booth and John Wilkes Booth (Clarion, 2005). I think I did a pretty good job with Hitler, too (The Life and Death of Adolph Hitler, Clarion, 2002).

RS: Are you attracted to bad boys, Jim?

JCG: Not in life, necessarily, but certainly in my writing. I think bad characters are just more fun to write about or watch in a movie. I’m paraphrasing Bette Davis, I guess.

More on James Cross Giblin from The Horn Book

More Than Just the Facts: A Hundred Years of Children’s Nonfiction by James Cross Giblin
Not-So-Trivial Pursuits: The Wrong Plot by James Cross Giblin

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Not here. While I’m firmly in favor of the right of people of any age to read up, down, or sideways as they choose, here at the Horn Book we like to think there is a bright line between publishing for adults and publishing for kids, defined as people of an age between birth and high school graduation. In no small part, we like to think this because it makes our work easier. But, like Jeanne Birdsall, I believe the line has value, too.

I came into librarianship more than thirty years ago as a YA librarian. Young adult literature was an almost completely different animal then. The books were shorter, the protagonists younger; sex might be happening, but it was off the page. (Judy Blume’s Forever is the big exception, but Forever was published, nominally, as an adult book.) You might have seen some four-letter words, but you’d never find a fuck on the first pages as you do at the beginning of Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor & Park, a YA novel that gets a starred review this month. Thirty years ago, YA books were labeled “12 and up,” and, as these things usually go, they were mostly being read by ten- to thirteen-year-olds. The first “14 and up” I can remember seeing was Margaret Mahy’s The Catalogue of the Universe, and now that age range is the rule.

Do you ever wonder if 14 and up, sometimes way up, should still be our job? Martha Parravano, the other day, was going through a book cart of new ARCs when she literally threw up her hands in submission to the lineup of fat, glossy YA novels. Their size, their number, their…perfectly respectable selves. I say “perfectly respectable” because the professionalism of these books is not in question, from jacket design on in to the catchy stories, fluid writing, and vivid characters (see Katrina Hedeen and Rachel L. Smith’s “What Makes a Good YA Love Story?” for a consideration of a baker’s dozen of excellent books showing just one slice of YA lit). But the fact that there is so much of it presents a question for everybody in the business of books for young people. Has contemporary YA lit outgrown our caretaking? And forget their staggering numbers: why are novels for people old enough to vote even our business? Bowker’s recent “Understanding the Children’s Book Consumer in the Digital Age” report revealed that it is adults, not teens, who buy most YA books, and those adults are buying them for their own reading pleasure. By and large, however, YA books are published by the children’s divisions of their publishers. Eleanor & Park is published by St. Martin’s Griffin, one of the very few cases I can think of where YA, labeled as such, comes from an adult trade division. I wonder if more of the grownups should be taking on their share.

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to Be a Teenager appeared first on The Horn Book.

Kitty Flynn, Lolly Robinson, and Martha Parravano discuss what works–and what doesn’t–in picture books for preschoolers.

From Dr. Robert Needlman explaining the difference between babies falling asleep and learning how to go to asleep, through Cambridge librarians Julie Roach and Beth McIntyre coaching us through selecting books for preschool story time to Anna Dewdney using photographs to demonstrate how to transform unpleasant expressions on family members faces into picture book gold, our Fostering Lifelong Learners event yesterday with Reach Out and Read and the Cambridge Public Library was a great success. The day was a little long but I learned a ton, and several attendees told us they got lots of good, practical ideas to use in their libraries and classrooms right away. We’ll be sharing some of the day with you next week, including Anna Dewdney’s inspirational speech, which she is graciously allowing us to publish on hbook.com. Julie Roach and I are already talking about what to do next year.

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I met Elaine several times, first when she gave a dynamite speech about censorship at the University of Chicago when I was a student, and last when she gave another dynamite speech upon receiving the University of Southern Mississippi Medallion in 1998. An acute critic, she was one of the few writers for children  who I thought could do an equally good job on our side of the fence. She had a big Carol Burnett smile and was always the most stylishly dressed person in the room. That goes for her prose, too.

Elissa has collected some of Konigsburg’s Horn Book moments.

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I’ve been getting emails from people wondering if our Fostering Lifelong Learners conference is still happening this Thursday. Of course it is; hasn’t the media been telling you over and over what a hardy city we are? And transportation is unimpeded: the Cambridge Public Library is a five-minute walk from Harvard Square, miles from the still-roped-off  Copley Square. If you’re coming via train or inter-city bus, you can catch the Red Line subway from South Station right to Harvard Square. Locals, travel as usual; here’s the Library’s map of its location. See you soon!

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Copley Square, the heart of Boston’s Back Bay, is still off-limits (as is Boston Public Library’s Central Library). I think it’s the most beautiful spot in the city and I hope it can reopen soon. The picture to the left is of Marathon Sports, the running store near the finish line whose employees went to the rescue after the first blast. I’ve been buying my running shoes there since 1996 and while the employees have always been exceptionally helpful, now they’re my heroes.

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Llama Llama…

1.What did your own children teach you about creating books for preschoolers?

My own children taught me several things about the reality of picture books.  First, that a book has to have compelling relevance to a child’s inner world to get picked up more than once or twice.  Second, that a picture book should be fun for everyone in the room (if it isn’t fun for the parent, then it is likely not fun for the child).  And third, that sometimes kids like seemingly unappealing books simply because those kinds of books address some developmental need; in other words, sometimes a parent will have to read Disney’s version of Cinderella every night for weeks…no matter how painful that is.  Most importantly, reading with my children taught me that “reading time” is often the most intimate moment of the day, and that its power in a child’s (or caregiver’s) world cannot be underestimated.

2.I enjoyed playing the Llama Llama game on your website. What are your thoughts about toddlers and iPhones?

I think that iPhones, iPads, Nooks, Droids, and all those gizmos are simply toys.  Whether or not a caregiver chooses to give that type of toy to a child is a personal decision.  As a parent, I can understand the use of a toy that has educational and entertainment value…after all, there are only so many car games a person can play on a six hour trip to Grandma’s house, and sometimes everyone (including a parent) needs down time.  I can also see value in a child learning some autonomous play skills, if they have a toy that teaches manual dexterity and/or reading.  However, if the toy is constantly being used as a substitute for the important stuff (creative play, interpersonal relationships, reading, and a sense of living on the real planet with living, breathing creatures), then I think it is no longer a toy for a child – it is a crutch for a parent, much like driving through McDonald’s instead of cooking real food.  I like a Big Mac as much as the next person, but I know it isn’t giving me real nourishment.

3.Why do you think young children accept the concept of animals dressed in clothing so easily?

What?  Are you implying that animals DON’T wear clothes? You haven’t met my bulldog!  (Just kidding.)

That’s a great question.  I think the answer may be that children can relate to animals.  Children know that animals are “people” too…they live, breathe, and exist on the planet, just as we do.  I don’t think children give a hoot about clothes until they start to see clothes as costumes that define them, and those costumes tend to be just that: costumes.  Why can’t dogs and cats (and llamas) wear costumes, too?  To children, animals aren’t the “other.”  After all, it is easier for a toddler to look right into the face of a lab than an adult; they can be eye to eye.

I think children are far more like animals than they are like adults.  In other words, I think that what differentiates an adult from a child is that an adult is often motivated from and controlled by things outside themselves, or by what Freud would call a strong ego and super-ego.  Small children are “unadulterated” beings.  They experience and recognize feelings in themselves and others much like animals do, without all that other stuff on top.

4.How does a picture book keep the reader-aloud and the read-to equally engaged?

A good picture book has to be engaging to the reader as well as the read-to, as I mentioned before.   It should allow the reader to become part of the action, to make the book a performance piece.   The reading of a picture book should be a special moment of mutual understanding that the reader, readee, and author all share.

5.Do kids ever ask you why llama has two ls?

Never.

Join us on Thursday, April 25, 2013, for a big day focused on the littlest people.

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 Linda Sue Park is delivering the 2013 Zena Sutherland Lecture on May 3rd at the Harold Washington Center, Chicago Public Library. Admission is free but reservations are required; go to zenasutherland.eventbrite.com to sign up. I’ll be there and hope you will be too!

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