How to fix BBYA

Liz Burns and Marc Aronson have been keeping an eye on the Best Books for Young Adults drama. That list is going to become strictly YA fiction; the Alex Awards (adult books of potential interest and value to teens) and) list will get bigger, thus picking up the adult book slack; and the new YALSA nonfiction award will publicize its list of nominations, thus theoretically increasing the visibility of nonfiction.

The reason given for the change is that too many books get nominated for BBYA and committee members feel overburdened by the reading. But if I have this right, only one committee member (or YALSA member) needs to nominate a book to get it onto that big list. When I was on BBYA back in dinosaur times, this nomination process produced some true stinkers, books that were only nominated because someone felt bad about not doing something for a book he or she got free in the mail. (Let's hope the nonfiction award contenders are going to be nominated with a bit more rigor if they are going to be publicized as recommended books.) Why not simply increase the number of nominations needed to, say, three? A book that has only one nomination for a choice made by a committee of fifteen is not going to make the list, so why waste everyone's time?

I also worry that the decision is shortsighted. The money in children's publishing right now is in YA fiction, aided by a now-passing boom in the teen population and an adult crossover readership, which will also pass once adult publishing figures out how to make even more money from these readers. At its best, the BBYA list displays the intersection at which YA librarianship is supposed to live: fiction and nonfiction, adult and juvenile, words and pictures (graphic novels are also banished from the new list and relegated to their own.) I think what the new system gives us is a bunch of bitty lists whose individual and collective power will be considerably diminished. It's similar to what happens when you have give out too many awards--whoops, that's another post.

Pictures from an exhibition

First up Kristin Cashore, sore but happy about her previous day, spent learning the TRAPEZE.











Mitali Perkins is convinced that social networking can sell books. She sure is good at it, too. (photo credit Judith Jango-Cohen)










Lois was really happy when I told her that the third Stieg Larsson book was available from amazon u.k.









M.T. Anderson doesn't eat broccoli because he likes it but because it is good for his writing. Plus--pass it on--he likes chick flicks.

Awards page

Kitty, Lolly and intern Shara have worked indefatigably to bring you the ALA Awards page, which lists all the winners announced on Monday and includes links to our reviews where available.

One more award

I was a member of the ALSC Distinguished Service Award committee this year, along with Cynthia Richey (chair, and a new friend), Joan Atkinson (an old YASD--yes, that old--buddy with whom it was great fun to work again), Peggy Sullivan (who I've known since library school), and Terry Borzumato-Greenberg (from Holiday House; the youngest person in the room but who I also feel I've known forever), and with great pleasure we selected Margaret (Maggie) Bush, professor emerita at the GSLIS of Simmons College, as the winner. I knew Maggie slightly before I came to the Horn Book in 1996, but once I was in Boston I realized she was the Zena of New England, sending generations of children's librarians out into the world to continue her good work. Congrats, Maggie!

Dancing boys and beautiful women

Just a reminder--if you are at the ALA conference this weekend do stop by the Horn Book booth, #1564. I'll be there on Saturday, pretty much all day, and Sunday afternoon. We are giving away copies of the January-February issue of the Magazine, and on Saturday I'll be conducting the following "Five Questions for . . ." interviews:

11:00 a.m. Kristin Cashore
12:00 p.m. Mitali Perkins
2:00 p.m. Lois Lowry
3:00 p.m. M.T. Anderson


Hope to see you there!

Five questions for . . .

Click the link for the interview schedule at ALA Midwinter. And if you have any questions for Kristin Cashore, Mitali Perkins, Lois Lowry or M. T. Anderson, leave 'em in the comments. (But, no, I will not ask Lois if she's sorry to have won the Newbery for The Giver.)

Field Trip!

If you're here for ALA next week and are looking for something to do on the 17th while awaiting the News on Monday morning, I highly recommend this field trip to the Carle Museum in Amherst.

January-February Horn Book Magazine

The new Magazine is out but I haven't seen a copy yet--here's hoping the color looks as good as we wanted! Fanfare, Boston Globe-Horn Book Award speeches, and other selected content can all be linked to from the table of contents posted on the website.

I hope everybody had good holidays. Mine were a blur of movies (I see on child_lit that everyone is offended by Avatar but the one I'm fuming at is It's Complicated), colds, candy and presents, including a highly entertaining dvd set of Wagner's Ring cycle, which has Brunnhilde wandering existentially through the whole thing and a naked guy swimming in an aquarium as the Rheingold itself.




But now it's back to work. I'll be sunning myself in tropical Minnesota next weekend, speaking to the children's lit students at Hamline University (which for some reason is employing similar imagery to my Rheingold dvd) and then you all are coming to Boston for ALA. On that Saturday, I'll again be at the Horn Book booth asking "Five Questions for . . ." of M.T. Anderson, Kristin Cashore, Lois Lowry, and Mitali Perkins. I'll post the schedule this week.

ALA aftermath

At a birthday party in the Catskills this past Saturday night, not only did the conversation--among civilians, no less--turn to the pleasures of The Graveyard Book, the waitress chimed in as well: "that book is so awesome." So I was proud to be able to brag about my interview with Neil Himself at ALA last week. I was a little taken aback when I saw him, black-clad and sunglassed, coming down the aisle accompanied by a bevy of slender young women also dressed in black--jeez, a freaking entourage, I thought, but the conversation was good. The highlight, I thought, was Neil's response to my favorite question: "have you ever seen a ghost?" While Naomi Shihab Nye, hands down, had the best response I ever got to this one, Neil had a good story too, involving a dark country night, solitary streetlight, and a gypsy. His storytelling skills are as impressive off the cuff as they are on the page. [Update: Naomi's ghost story is posted in the comments.]

Although we had a little trouble perfecting the sound system (but kudos to my roadies Andrew and Randy for keeping at it) the five interviews I did were all swell. (Six were scheduled but Laurie Halse Anderson had a family emergency and had to go home.) Highlights from the others:

--I asked Candy Fleming if she had ever had to give up on a biography because she got bored with her subject. She said no, but that in her work on a forthcoming book about Amelia Earhart, she had definitely found her admiration for the aviator tempered. I hope the book will tell us why.

--Brian Selznick said that becoming an artist means accepting the fact that you will live in a state of terror. (I think he's been hanging out with Sendak too much.) He also said that he's working on a book that, at this point, is twice as long as Hugo Cabret.

--Ashley Bryan gave us a preview of his call-and-response Caldecott speech, getting us to roar along with Eloise Greenfield's "Things." The crowd also serenaded him with "Happy birthday," whereupon he invited us all to his party the next night. I wish I could have gone but, honestly, at eighty-six that man wears me out.

--We had a triple threat Monday morning with Caldecott medalist Beth Krommes (pictured), her author Susan Marie Swanson, and their editor, Ann Rider. Beth explained scratchboard technique and knowing when to stop; Susan read their book aloud; Ann talked about how an editor envisions a picture book with only a brief manuscript in hand. They all got bemusingly embarrassed when I asked Beth an innocent question about what reading antique furniture magazines at bedtime did to her dreams.

I hope we can do it again next year--hey, Midwinter is in Boston, maybe I can get some of my favorite homies to submit to interrogation.

Some enchanted evening . . .

"Once you have found him, never let him go. Once you have found him . . . "

Not to mention the flaming cheese. Opa!

Back from ALA but barely. Returned to Boston Tuesday evening then spent Wednesday on the phone for a Horn Book board meeting; faced today with two hundred pages of Guide editing and my Simmons class coming over to talk about reviewing in situ. It was a great conference--the author interviews went very well despite some problems with the sound system and Katrina was a selling demonette. Saw lots of old friends (including one I hadn't seen in thirty years, only at ALA via her library-architect girlfriend) and made plenty of new ones, too. Nikki Grimes's Horn Book article started kicking up a fuss on Monday when we published the new issue, and I hope the conversation continues. More later, with photos.

July Notes

The latest Notes from the Horn Book is out, with an interview with Rebecca Stead; four more great books about New York City; summer reading for middle-schoolers; picture books about food; and a tip of the hat to the Coretta Scott King Awards, celebrating their fortieth birthday this year.

In a first, you will find the CSK acceptance speeches in the July issue of the Magazine but DON'T LOOK YET, as it cannot be published until Monday, after the Newbery and Caldecott speeches are given at ALA in Chicago. I'm told you can get a copy hot off the presses at our booth (#2259) that day if you sign over your first-born or sign up for a subscription.

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.

Presto, change-o

Collecting Children's Books has had a couple of interesting posts about books such as They Were Strong and Good and The Rooster Crows, which have been bowdlerized to reflect changing standards of "appropriateness" in regard to depictions of nonwhite characters. Those are two among several if not many; Mary Poppins, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Dr. Doolittle are some of the others. What I hadn't realized until Peter pointed it out was that changes like these are sometimes made without any acknowledgment of the fact within the new edition; kind of Orwellian, yes?

Many years ago I was on YALSA's (then YASD) Intellectual Freedom committee, and we had a bit of a tussle with Scholastic, which was asking authors to make "word changes" (read: remove obscenities) from their books before Scholastic would reprint them for its lucrative book clubs. Two things were at issue: Scholastic did not want to acknowledge, in the paperbacks, that changes had been made, and, in the cases of books that had been named to the Best Books for Young Adults List, the publisher wanted to be allowed to say that the expurgated editions were BBYA winners. No and no, although we only really had the power to enforce the second.

To me, the weirdest part of Scholastic's argument was that since it was the author making the change, an affected book was still a BBYA choice. And some committee members bought this argument, as well as buying into Scholastic's emotional blackmail that we were "punishing the authors" by disallowing the BBYA designation. Well, tough: why would we want to reward authors for caving to commercial pressure? The money would have to be enough.

ALA Awards

All hail designer Lolly, Twitter-tracker Claire, copy editor Jen and fact-checker Martha, who bring you our webpage on the ALA awards in record time.

I'm still no Tim Gunn, but . . .

Here is ALA Runway!

ALA: the Long and Short of It

The long pants: with Linda Sue Park at the N/C banquet; photo by Tracie Vaughn Zimmer













The short pants: with Elizabeth Law and Doug Pocock at Disneyland; photo by lassoed stranger.

July/August Horn Book Magazine

Get your collector's edition now! While the limitations of technology (and the absence of a thrilling soundtrack and a screaming crowd) means that the tour de force with which Brian Selznick opened his Caldecott speech won't have quite the same effect on paper, those same images can still be yours for as long as the acid-free paper holds out. Likewise, you won't get the same dramatic impact of Laura Amy Schlitz's bravura performance, but you will get every single word she rather breathtakingly memorized for a notes- or paper-free delivery. (As I've noticed about prior speeches, the thing on the page can be astoundingly different from the thing as written--what drew laughs in Schlitz's speech Sunday night often provokes a more meditative response in print.)

You will only find the speeches in the printed Magazine, (which can be ordered from khedeen at hbookdotcom) but we have uploaded a selection of other articles, including profiles of Selznick and Schlitz by their editors, Simmons prof Amy Pattee on Sweet Valley High (and reflections by several authors on their own adolescent "guilty pleasure" reading) and my editorial on just why Newbery girls and the swingin' teens of Sweet Valley are sisters under the skin.

I have watched Tim Gunn, and I, sir, am no Tim Gunn.

. . . so what do I tell the lovely Rachel Smith, who will be making her Newbery-Caldecott banquet debut this Sunday and wants to know What to Wear?

Caldecott shout-out

Relive the excitement and hear the applause-o-meter for yourself on our Press Conference Podcast.

It's Following Me!

I'm home from ALA and the Caldecott considerations only to bump back into the Newbery: Gary Schmidt and a gaggle of his Calvin College students are currently navigating their way to our offices. They are all in town this month for a course on "The New England Saints," (Hawthorne, Dickinson, etc.) so I'm guessing this afternoon's visit must be a very extracurricular activity. Or maybe Gary sees us as his lucky charm--the last time he did this was the day his Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy was named a Newbery Honor.

I did a little bit of podcast reporting from the awards press conference we hope to have up for you by the end of the week.

The Winners

Here's a link to our website with information about all the 2008 ALA winners, including in many cases their reviews in The Horn Book Magazine or The Horn Book Guide.

Happy New Year!

Ah, Provincetown, where the Gays meet the Fisherfolk:



photo by Richard Asch

And where Buster met two of Santa's minions:


photo by Richard Asch

But vacation is O-ver. Now I'm busy getting ready for ALA (any late Caldecott hopes, dreams, and fears you care to share?) and hustling up copy for the premier issue of our new publication, Notes from the Horn Book, an e-newsletter for parents and other adults at the consumer end of children's books debuting in March. If you're interested in being a charter subscriber (relax, it's free) write to Sarah Scriver, sscriver, at hbookdotcom.

Yes, I do want fries with that.

Galleycat links to a thoughtfully cranky piece about booksellers who pat themselves on the back for selling "banned" books such as Huckleberry Finn while simultaneously refusing to sell Tintin in the Congo:

Providing unencumbered access to the literary works created under the auspices of free speech (all of 'em -- not just the ones we agree with or approve of) is our business. Bookstores shouldn't have to rally around themselves once a year to proclaim that they hate censorship and the banning of books.

While I agree with the scorn directed at the sometimes unseemly preening that accompanies Banned Books Week, I've never thought that booksellers should have to stock anything they didn't want to. What I would really, really, like to know is how many of the 546 challenges recorded by the OIF in 2006 resulted in restrictions or banning, a hardly-irrelevant statistic that seems absent from ALA's press materials. "Banned Books Week" is certainly a catchy slogan, but are they selling sizzle or steak?

See how much fun we were having?

I don't know who was holding who up at this point, but Martha P. makes for a great booth partner. Photo courtesy of our exhibit floor neighbor Brian Enslow.

Romper Stomper Bomper Boo

Yes, I saw lots of my friends at work and play over the weekend at ALA, although my own presence felt circumscribed: mornings in the booth, afternoons at the Caldecott meetings, dinner with a friend, Newbery-Caldecott-Wilder banquet, over and out.

I met a lot of you at the Horn Book booth, and I thank you for stopping by. The exhibit hall traffic seemed less busy than usual, at least in our neck of the woods, but not so quiet that I could wander the floor for candy and swag. The only juicy thing I heard was that Jailbird Hilton had successfully shopped a children's book proposal to HarperCollins, a rumored denied by one Harper editor who stopped by. Otherwise, all was peace. I did sign up a few more boys, including Leonard Marcus, Bob Lipsyte, and Ken Roberts, to write for our upcoming special issue on Boys and Girls; my job this week is to remind them of their perhaps rash promises.

I'd tell you all about the Caldecott meetings, but then I'd have to kill you.

Seeing the Big Banquet from the other side of the lights was fun. The food is exactly the same, with the only perk being that the waiters are more wont to refresh your coffee, perhaps anticipating the ripple effect of a sleepy speaker. As the Wilder winner was not on the dais, Susan Patron had to graciously divide her attention between me and Newbery Chair Jerri Kladder. It was fun--Susan and I went to the same college, albeit in different years, so we got to reminisce a bit. Susan is a native Los Angeleno, something that became apparent when the dais began unaccountably shaking during her speech, and she said something like, "oh, earthquake" and continued unperturbed with her prepared remarks. Both she and David Wiesner spoke well: he's an old pro at this now, of course, while Susan has the storyteller's gift of being able to make eye contact with two thousand people. Me, not so much--as I was awarding the Wilder Medal to James Marshall, my attempts to look between my speech and the audience were continually being interrupted by a photographer at my feet, who raised his lens every time I looked up until I finally told him to stop. It worked, less because of my commanding presence than because he got the giggles.

The thing I didn't know about being an award committee chair was that at the reception following the banquet you have to stand in a receiving line, shaking hands with everyone who had not had the good sense to run for the cab line. I don't care if I do live in Massachusetts, never, never will I marry if this is part of the deal.

ALA

D.C. in the summer at least isn't Orlando in the summer, but when can ALA get back to San Francisco? (Not in the foreseeable future, but we do get to go to Las Vegas in 2014.) But I'll be there and would be pleased if anyone would like to drop by the Horn Book booth, #3154. You can find me there from 9-12, Saturday through Monday. And I'll be the boy with the purple socks at the Newbery-Caldecott-Wilder banquet.