Five Questions for . . .

You might know our monthly Notes from the Horn Book feature, "Five questions for . . ." in which I ask an author or illustrator of the moment questions both pertinent and inane. At ALA next week (yikes) in Chicago, this feature is going live at the Junior Library Guild booth (#2256) right across from ours (#2259) in the convention center. Here's the lineup:

Saturday 10:00 Candace Fleming, who has just won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for The Lincolns.

Saturday 12:00 Neil Gaiman, Newbery Medalist.

Saturday 2:00 Ashley Bryan, Wilder Medalist.

Sunday 11:00 Brian Selznick, for one last walk down the runway before he surrenders his Caldecott crown.

Monday 10:00 Laurie Halse Anderson, this year's winner of the Scott O'Dell Award for Chains and author of the much talked-about Wintergirls.

Monday 11:30 Beth Krommes, Caldecott Medalist, and she will be accompanied by Susan Marie Swanson, who has promised to read their House in the Night aloud.

Do come! And do here, in the comments, suggest some questions I might ask any or all of them.

More information about our conference activities--dancing boys! beautiful women!--can be found here.

School of the Air

I totally wanted to go to one of those. But here's your chance, if you feel like playing along with the class I'm teaching at the Simmons College Center for the Study of Children's Literature. The class begins today and is called Crimes and Misdemeanors, and it is something of a lead up to the Center's biannual Institute, which you can attend, and which will take place at Simmons July 24-26.

But if you're lonely in the outback, here's the reading list to keep you warm. Asterisks by the title indicate that the author will be appearing at the Institute.

Anderson, Laurie Halse, Chains, Simon and Schuster, 2008
*Anderson, M.T. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party
*Avi, Nothing but the Truth, pub? 1991
*Babbitt, Natalie, The Devil’s Storybook, Farrar, 1974`
*Balliett, Blue, Chasing Vermeer, Scholastic, 2004
Bannerman, Helen, The Story of Little Black Sambo, HarperCollins
*Brooks, Martha, Mistik Lake, Kroupa/FSG, 2007
*Cashore, Kristin, Graceling, Houghton, 2008
Cormier, Robert, The Chocolate War, Pantheon, 1974
Forbes, Esther, Johnny Tremain, Houghton, 1943
*Gantos, Jack, Hole in My Life, Farrar, 2002
*Gantos, Jack, Rotten Ralph books, Houghton and Farrar, various (read a few)
Harris, Robie, It’s Perfectly Normal, Candlewick, 19994, 2004
*Henkes, Kevin, Lilly’s Big Day, Greenwillow, 2006
*Henkes, Kevin, Olive’s Ocean, Greenwillow, 2003
*Hinds, Gareth, The Merchant of Venice, Candlewick, 2008
Lamb, Charles and Mary, “The Merchant of Venice” in Tales from Shakespeare
*Lawson, JonArno, Black Stars in a White Night Sky, Boyds Mills, 2008
*Levine, Ellen, Freedom’s Children: Young Civil Rights Activists Tell Their Own Stories, Putnam, 2000
*Look, Lenore, Ruby Lu, Empress of Everything, Atheneum/Schwartz, 2006
Myers, Walter Dean, Monster, HarperCollins, 1999
*Nelson, Marilyn, The Freedom Business, Boyds Mills, 2008
Parnall, Peter, And Tango Makes Three, Simon and Schuster, 2005
Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Levine/Scholastic, 1998
*Silvey, Anita. “Has the Newbery Lost Its Way?” School Library Journal, October, 2008
Von Ziegesar, Cecily, Gossip Girl, Little, Brown, 2002

Can I borrow your notes?

When writers attack!

I wonder what you call the Twitter equivalent to drunk dialing?

And if you're going to whine about how you used to be reviewed (and how that must hurt) by Anne Tyler, it might be politic to spell her name right.

[Update 11:45 AM. It looks like Alice Hoffman wisely thought to retreat from the field and suspended or cancelled her account. But for those who missed it, Hoffman had taken issue, via several Twitter messages, with a review by Roberta Silman of her latest book in the Boston Globe. Along with publishing the reviewer's phone number and encouraging readers to call and give her hell, Hoffman complained, "Now any idiot can be a critic. Writers used to review writers. My second novel was reviewed by Ann Tyler. So who is Roberta Silman?"]

Always Lots of Heinies at the Zoo and 652 more

Elissa, Kitty and Chelsey have achieved their first step toward world domination with the release of the latest quarterly update to the Guide Online. We have a very nice new page designed by Lolly, and you'll notice that you can now access lists of the authors and titles of the 653 books newly reviewed. We hope, of course, you will subscribe.

And, per the post title, butts are big in this update. HUGE.

Judging a Book By Its Title

I wonder if the legendary Making It With Mademoiselle (a crafts book from that magazine) will be joined by Janet Evanovich's latest in the annals of books banned by mistake.

Who's reading YA?

A tweet from Chair, Fireplace, etc. led me to this article questioning the link between the health of YA as a publishing category and the assumption that it means teen reading is flourishing. Every time I see The Book Thief on bestseller charts I wonder about this correlation, and I also think the question speaks to the thriving (thanks, all) conversation we've been having about blog reviewing and how it differs from print. Save for the odd review in VOYA, all major print reviews of YA are written by adults for an audience of other adults selecting books for teens. Blog reviewers include both teens and adults, and more often than not YA blog reviews don't speak from or to a gatekeeper perspective--the reviewer treats the book as one she has (or, more rarely, has not) enjoyed and recommends (or not) to those reading the blog, with no "for your kids" implied. This may be why meta-discussions of blog-reviewing get so heated: it's personal.

I don't wring my hands about adults reading YA as much as I used to, but before you go thinking I've become more generous of spirit take a look at the article linked above--maybe YA books are simply adult books with more appealing covers!

I guess it wasn't all candlelight and butter churns

Or maybe it was, and that was the trouble.

Here's our grandson!

Miles Henkels Asch, born to Julie and Dorian Asch on June 20th at 12:44PM PST, 7 lbs. 6 oz., 19" long.