As Manderley burns . . .

photo by Duncan Todd

Actually, that's not Mrs. Danvers, it's Horn Book publisher Anne Quirk keeping an eagle eye on the Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards this past Friday night. Look for more photos later today.

November/December 08 stars

The following books will receive starred reviews in the November/December issue of the Horn Book Magazine.

The Pencil written by Allan Ahlberg, illustrated by Bruce Ingman (Candlewick).

Old Bear written and illustrated by Kevin Henkes (Greenwillow).

Who Made This Cake? written by Chihiro Nakagawa, illustrated by Junji Koyose (Front Street).

The Graveyard Book written by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Dave McKean (HarperCollins).

Rapunzel’s Revenge written by Shannon Hale and Dean Hale, illustrated by Nathan Hale (Bloomsbury).

Here Lies Arthur by Philip Reeve (Scholastic).

There’s A Wolf at the Door written by Zoë B. Alley, illustrated by R. W. Alley (Porter/Roaring Brook).

The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary by Candace Fleming (Schwartz & Wade/Random).

Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out (Candlewick).

After all, the dictionary offers plenty of scope.

Deborah Stevenson sent me this useful chart.

She's got her eye on you.

Legendary huntress Rachel Smith again stalks the series of tubes to bring you some web content that goes down great with the latest issue of the Horn Book Magazine.

Going for the Gold

Horn Book veteran Anita Silvey puts herself in the hot seat this month over at School Library Journal, where, to sum up, she complains about the lack of broad appeal of the last four winners of the Newbery Medal. Anita has been around for a long time and she knows just how stirred the dragons get when their precious gold and silver is disturbed. This could be very entertaining.

But--to quote one former SLJ editor speaking of another former HB editor--I think she is all wet. The main problem with Silvey's argument is that she's comparing the popular appeal (which is in any case not part of the Newbery's criteria) of current winners with that of winners from earlier decades. But the question before each committee is not "how does this book stack up with the great books of the past?" but "how does this book stack up with the others published in the same year?" It's easy to compare, say, Kira-Kira with The Giver and find the first book wanting in terms of wide resonance, but what book published in 2004 should have won instead? To make this argument work, Silvey needs to name names, and not those cherry-picked from the Newbery's long and (sometimes) illustrious past.

Silvey writes:

In the humble beginnings of the Newbery Award, its founders clearly sought a book that would have broad appeal. As children’s book historian Leonard Marcus reminds us in Minders of Make Believe (Houghton, 2008), back in 1922, when the first Newbery was awarded, ALA allowed any librarian who worked with kids—even part-time librarians—to nominate one title. The Story of Mankind (Liveright, 1921), nominated on 163 of the 212 ballots, won that year. Obviously, the founders cared deeply about the opinions and needs of those who worked directly with children.

But librarians are still allowed--encouraged--to nominate books for the Newbery, and the awarding committees still largely comprise librarians working with children. What has changed? One thing that hasn't: complaining about the winners.

Cast your vote for the future

over at Nina Lindsay and SLJ's new mock-Newbery blog, "Heavy Medal." Lots of titles are being suggested, including the two BGHB Honor Books Savvy and Shooting the Moon. I'll be meeting authors Ingrid Law and Frances O'Roark Dowell this Friday at the BGHB Awards, held as usual in the swank confines of the Boston Athenaeum. I hope to see some of you there, too.

Philip Gets His Groove Back

After his unusual demureness in face of the star-making machinery, I'm pleased to see Philip Pullman recovering his characteristic pugnacity to defend his dark materials from the interference of the interfering Faithful: "Religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good."

James Joyce wins BGHB?

You know, I was there and it was nothing like this.

[Update--the link was to a German blog titled "Boston Globe Horn Book Awards" filled with English words and sentences strung together in a way that occasionally made sense but more often were simply madly stream-of-consciousness insanity. Apparently now it takes you to another site. This is the kind of spamming I don't understand. I mean, the gold-farm people want your money but this didn't have anything like that.]

"Well, here's one thing in the mail that is not a bill."

Said Beverly Cleary in her Newbery acceptance speech, quoting from a letter written to her by a young reader. Cleary went on to bemoan the cookie-cutter class-assignment letters she received by the thousands, and who can blame her?

But who can top her? Lisi Harrison (The Clique), that's who, caught by Chasing Ray in a delicious quote that, with any justice, will come back to haunt her:

"I don't mean to brag -- but I get literally thousands and thousands of letters, thousands and thousands of e-mails from these girls, and I do read them and not one of them has accused me of perpetuating poison into their world and their society," she said. "Every one of them says, 'I suddenly realize that it's not so important to be popular anymore. I used to be like this with our friends, but we've all changed. Truly. I really, really mean it.'"

Which would you rather read thousands and thousands of times? I suddenly realize that it's not so important to be popular anymore or Where do you get your ideas?

Palin/McCain for peace and quiet

Patrick Ness's The Knife of Never Letting Go has won the Guardian's children's fiction prize. The book was published this month in the U.S. by Candlewick and will be reviewed in the November issue of the Horn Book Magazine. It's an SF novel about a society where people can hear each other think. Like that dude on Heroes!

Star bar

My favorite curmudgeonly critic Norman Lebrecht offers his point of view about the ever-increasing trend toward using stars as critical shorthand:

Of all the devices that devalue the function of criticism, the bar of stars is among the most pernicious. It suggests that artistic creation can be ticked off like a school essay and subjected to a set of SATs, in which the individual, expert guidance of teachers and examiners is set aside for the one-rule-fits-all solution of 21st century politicians.