Infer this.

Magazine reviewer Jonathan Hunt offers his picks for the five best YA works of fiction this year over at NPR. I will nitpick that one of the choices is not fiction and another not YA but all five are good books. Three of them appear on our Fanfare list, which will be whizzing its way to your inbox in just one week.

To link this morning's post with yesterday's, Jonathan and Debbie Reese are arguing over at Heavy Medal about Albert Marrin.

And apropos of nothing but still burned in my mind is this sentence from Amy Sohn's Prospect Park West, which I heard this morning on my iPod and which caused me to wonder if, when they came, they first came for the copyeditors: "Not once had Rebecca heard a mother infer even obliquely that she was hard up [for sexual gratification]." (I'm listening to this because PW gave it a starred review while over at Audible.com all the Prospect Park parents are leaving bitter comments about how bad it makes them look.)

Lions are . . .

The New York Times Best Illustrated Books list is out, along with my review of The Lion & the Mouse. What a great book--I wish they had given me twice the space. When I sat down with it and my two young neighbors, the two year old boy announced, looking uncertainly at the cover, "lions are scary." His more intrepid four-year-old sister took over the narration from there ("Look out for the bird!") until the end, whereupon the two-year-old said, "lions are NOT scary." Now it's his favorite book, so we gave him a copy for his birthday, along with a little plastic lion he can carry around in his hand. What's your talisman?

Paging the Ambassador . . .

The most interesting statistic of this teen reading survey concerns who responded to it: "while we purposely marketed the survey to attract male readers, females are the vast majority (96%) of responders."

It would be really good to know if book reading breaks down in similarly dramatic proportions. We know that girls and women read more books than do boys and men, but how much eek! many more?

Can we grow the number of readers?

Zetta Elliott makes some great points re people of color in books and as authors.

Without in any way diminishing the very real problem of the white worldview of children's book publishing, I am struck by how often and widely charges of non-representation ("why aren't there more _____ in children's books?" "where are the books for ____ children?") are made of children's and YA literature. Books for and about boys. Books that show children in non-traditional families. Books that show children in traditional families, attending church. Middle-class black people. Girls who don't like pink.

The thinking goes that if there were more books about and for _____, more kids who are the same _____ would read. I wonder. Although I do believe that readers, at least in part, read for "the shock of recognition" Richard Peck talks about, I'm not sure that translates to wanting to read books "about people like me." It's more about being able to see yourself in circumstances unlike your own. To take the argument to its absurd conclusion, the belief that books should reflect their readers' circumstances means we could all give up reading and just look in the mirror.

But the concern here isn't so much with readers but with nonreaders. Do you remember the scandal of a few years ago with those Freakonomics guys, claiming that an enjoyment of reading was genetic? That kids didn't read because their parents read to them twenty minutes a day, they did so because their parents, as readers, were more likely to read to them twenty minutes a day? This is a little too mechanistic for me but I don't discount it completely. The pursuit of a more varied literary universe is an unalloyed wonderful thing--for readers. But I don't know that it will swell the ranks.

Man Without a Face redux

Or Batman and Robin, or maybe it's simply Twilight for little gay guys, but Tan Twan Eng's The Gift of Rain is quite the adolescent epic of doomed, yet eternal, love. Philip, the half-Chinese son of a wealthy colonialist, is sixteen when he meets Endo-san, an older Japanese man who has rented the small island owned by Philip's family, offshore their palatial home on the Malayan island of Penang. It's 1939, so you know this isn't going anywhere good, but the boy and man become inseparable, Philip introducing Endo-san to the nooks and crannies of Penang; Endo-san teaching Philip the martial arts and Zen philosophy of his homeland. On the page, there's nothing sexual between the two, and readers can decide for themselves just whether all the kisses and embraces and intense soul-searching gazes exchanged by the two constitute a romantic liaison or simply a very close friendship, one that, Endo claims, the two have had in previous lives and will go on to have in the future. The writing is just naive enough to make me wonder whether the author fully knew what he was implying but regardless, The Gift of Rain is a Boy Book writ large--tons of action, explosions, hand-to-hand combat, swordplay (heh), Eastern philosophy, spies, betrayals, secret caves, oaths, seppuku, and hardly a girl to be seen (except for Philip's plucky older sister and an old Japanese lady--also a martial artist--who encourages the now-elderly Philip to relate the story of his youth). I do hope boys can get past the flashback structure and the Oprah-looking cover for the grandly idealistic war story and safely sublimated romance.

Reading Fun with Goofus and Gallant

Okay, handed an easy walk, I politely stepped around the bases, shaking hands with each player as I made my way home.

Goofus, on the other hand . . . .

More weeding wisdom

From Work with Children in Public Libraries by Effie L. Power (ALA, 1943):

"Nationality and race influence mode and type of reading and therefore library selection. Jewish boys and girls are inclined to read serious books on mature subjects, and Italian children who live most naturally out-of-doors under sunny skies read reluctantly but enjoy picture books, poetry, and fairy tales. German American children make wide use of books on handicrafts which Jewish children largely ignore and from which Italian children choose few except those related to arts, such as wood carving, metal designing, and painting. The Czech children read history and biography. Probably the greatest readers of fiction are found among native American children."

I do like this:

"Girls, like boys, are seeking life, but in a different way. They need some so-called boys' books with moving plots and an adventurous hero to take them out of themselves and to keep them from becoming too introspective; for the opposite reason boys need some of the so-called girls' books, for their suggestions of self-analysis and wholesome sentiment."

The most arcane thing I've found thus far is a small LP from 1963 called "A Message from Lois Lenski: The Making of a Picture Book." Who's got a record player?

Somebody really didn't think this through.

The name of Toni and Slade Morrison's forthcoming picture book from Wiseman/Simon & Schuster is Peeny-Butter Fudge. I can't be the only adult who has the sense of humor of a nine-year-old.

Sitting at the grownups table

Over at Nonfiction Matters, Marc Aronson cautions us to think about the larger context in which debates about social responsibility and the Newbery take place: "What I'd like is a set of comments on the Newbery that is not drawn from a survey of four winners, or the latest demographic chart, but a wider sense of art and culture in our time."

I'm again reminded of the infamous editorial-page fight between Horn Book editor Ethel Heins and SLJ editor Lillian Gerhardt. Rejecting the line (promulgated by the Horn Book among others) that children's books were all of a piece with other contemporary literature, Lillian wrote that "from where we sit, books for children are more accurately described as: the last bastion of yesterday's literary methods and standards." Ethel then said that modern adult fiction had gone to hell and children's books were the last refuge of Story; Lillian subsequently threatened to take the train up to Boston and hit Ethel over the head with a chair.

Because we view both children and children's literature as protected species, it's true that in our field we have debates that would seem peculiar if applied to adult books and readers. We don't worry, for example, about grown men not reading, except insofar as it might "send the wrong message" to their sons. But worries about "representation" of various ethnicities, gender, and sexual orientations do have a precedent in the social change movements of the 60s and 70s, with such critics as Kate Millett warning us about how destructive Henry Miller was to women. I'm guessing that Marc would tell me that someone got there before Kate, too!

[Title of Post]

I review John Green's Paper Towns and Kevin Brooks's Black Rabbit Summer in the Times today. I had originally called the piece "Cherchez la Femme," as both books are mysteries about boys looking for missing girls, but the Times in their wisdom retitled it. I like mine better but titles have to be the editor's prerogative--witness my discussion years ago with the author who did not understand why I wouldn't let him call his article, "The Lead in My Pencil."

Yes, boys, but when no one is looking?

Katie Couric apparently asked McCain and Obama about their favorite books and got pretty convincing answers: McCain chose For Whom the Bell Tolls and Obama Song of Solomon.

As I said in the comments on yesterday's post re Palin's reading choices, "What are you reading?" and "What is your favorite book?" aren't as easy to answer as they look. Both the presidential candidates give clearly deliberated answers (so would I), meant to convey Who They Are. I'm more interested in knowing what they read off the clock--beach, bedtime, bathroom.

Just how old IS Ellie Berger?

As quoted in the Wall Street Journal:

"There has been a real revolution" in books that "have more kid appeal," especially when it comes to boys, says Ellie Berger, who oversees Scholastic's trade division. "It's a shift away from the drier books we all grew up with."

And I would love to know whose ass this statistic was pulled out of:

Last year, U.S. publishers released 261 new works of juvenile fiction aimed at boys, more than twice the number put out in 2003, according to Bowker's Books in Print database. There were 20 nonfiction entries for boys, compared with just four in 2003.

We guys do love our schematics

I'm so happy when a picture book for adults is published as just that. Like this one.

I like timetables, too.

Marc Aronson and I have been talking about Boys Books a lot, and about how boys can be confounded by adult definitions of what constitutes worthwhile reading: usually it means a book, often it means fiction, and when it does include nonfiction, it had better look a lot like a novel.

But I am loving this:


Transit Maps of the World: The World's First Collection of Every Urban Train Map on Earth, by Mark Ovenden (Penguin). Unless you are a boy, you might not think that a collection of subway maps would make for such compulsive reading. It's a kind of reading that often gets dismissed as "browsing," because you don't start at the beginning and work your way patiently through, and because most of the text works as caption, not exposition: "Barcelona's current Metro map (4) is a successful hybrid. While it shows some topographic detail, it manages to retain all the attributes of a schematic." Yeah, baby, talk dirty! But what you're mostly interested in reading is the maps themselves. There are four of the Barcelona system, ranging from 1966 to the present, showing not only the growth of the system but the refinements in graphic design, creating and reflecting changes in how we look at abstract information. The current map is an organized glory of lines and colors and informative dots. Berlin gets fifteen maps, from 1910 to the present, including spooky ones from the 1960s that show the "ghost" stations of East Berlin that the West Berlin trains would shoot right by.

If I were a boy today, I don't know if a collection of subway maps would do it for me, but I bet that I would appreciate the way this book celebrates Facts, especially facts united by a theme but untied to any story save the one they allow me to tell myself.

Play Ball!

Claire has a roster of A-team sports books for you, so batter up before I run out of metaphors.

It's better than the hanky code!

These are brilliant. Hey, Leila: does this come in H-E-N-R-Y and R-I-B-S-Y?

A Great Choice

Jon Scieszka (rhymes with n'est-ce pas) has been named the first "national ambassador for young people's literature."

I talked to Jon last summer about boys and reading; hear all about it in our podcast (scroll down).

Hear Us Roar

The inaugural Horn Book Podcast is up for your listening pleasure. Lolly is setting it up with iTunes so you'll be able to subscribe; for now, go to the podcast page on our site to hear my interview with Jon Scieszka.

I interviewed Jon for our special September issue, Boys and Girls. That too is now just out and you can see the table of contents here and web extras here. I think this is one of the best issues we've done.

Oops! I did it again

Via a colleague, I was recently warned by someone "just trying to be helpful" to refrain from political commentary on this blog. The thinking was that making fun of Republicans was not good for children's books, the one place, apparently, where we all get along.

And children's books have certainly been good to the Republicans. Just ask Mrs. Voldemort. And now Laura Bush is getting into the act. But I have just a small friendly suggestion. Really. Kids who don't like to read hate books that tell them "books can be a lot of fun." (Kids who do like to read hate them, too.) To them, it's just another instance of grownups telling them how wrong they are. As my "helpful" correspondent pointed out, nobody likes to hear that.

"We Are All Winners"

opined Karen Hesse in her Newbery-Medal acceptance speech (yeah, I know, easy for her to say) but I am stoked, not to mention contractually obligated, to announce the winners of Mother Reader's 48 Hour Book Challenge. The Most Books Read Prize goes to the Midwestern Lodestar blog, and the Most Time Spent Reading Prize to the blog Finding Wonderland.

Congratulations to you both. I remain unsure about why my mentioning these winners is supposed to be some kind of prize and have a sneaking suspicion MR is expecting me to make fun of their reading choices or something, but I would never do a thing like that where you could see me. Now shoo, earnest readers. Go outside and play.

East Side, West Side,

Brooklyn and Harlem, too. But I began my New York Time (an obscure but funny adult novel by Richard Peck, btw) with a view, from Elizabeth's living room, of the East River and ended it in Viking publisher Regina Hayes' office, which overlooks the Hudson. And had a grand time in between, too.

The memorial service for Janet McDonald was held at NYPL's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, up on Lenox Ave. in Harlem. It was great to meet so many of the people, family and friends, Janet had described in her emails. It was great to "see" Janet as well: we had never met and never spoke, so a couple of videos filled out the picture for me. (You can see her infamous Condi Rice "tribute" here.) Friends from Vassar and Paris spoke, as did Janet's editor Frances Foster, making everybody cry. Afterward we repaired around the corner to what I was told was Janet's favorite NY restaurant, Miss Maude's Spoonbread Too. Yummy. Afterward, Janet's agent Charlotte Sheedy skillfully strong-armed me a cab.

Virgin to all boroughs save Manhattan, I took my first trip to Brooklyn the next morning to meet Bruce Brooks. I totally should have rearranged my schedule to meet Jon Scieszka there, as he lives just two blocks away from Bruce. But Bruce and I had a fine time without him, reminiscing over the past twenty years of our friendship and wandering around Prospect Park in vain hopes of finding Bruce's baby son Drake, who had gone there with the sitter. We caught up with Drake (as well as Bruce's grown son Alex) back at the apartment, though, where, in an incident that would provide great fodder for my later discussion about boys and reading with Jon, one-year-old Drake became fascinated with my watch. I thought he was enjoying the sparkly blue and chrome-ness of the thing, but no, he kept twisting my hand so that he could inspect the workings of the clasp, less interested in how the thing looked than how it was put together. Score one for gendered behavior!

Then, carefully ushered via excellent directions from Atheneum editor Jordan Brown (a colleague of Bruce's wife Ginee Seo), I subwayed myself over to Penguin's offices to meet Jon, who, for the record, totally got the Big Monkey-Little Monkey thing. We spent a lively hour or so talking about boys and books and reading, and Jon showed me the first page proofs of his upcoming Truck Town empire over at Simon and Schuster. (Let me hasten to add, o Penguin potentates, that we also talked about Jon and Lane Smith's forthcoming Viking title Cowboy and Octopus.) Look for the interview in the September Horn Book special issue, Boys and Girls.

Thanks, boys, for a great trip, and girls, too: along with my best pal Elizabeth (with whom I didn't get nearly enough talk, but thanks for the hospitality!) I got some time (and choice gossip) from Regina and Sharyn November and Lara Phan at Penguin. I guess we get to do it all over again at ALA in--yikes!--two weeks.

One for the boys

Sorry, you all; I know the last week on this blog has been like sitting in class and getting hand-outs from Teacher. I've been quite busy with BGHB stuff and proofreading the Guide.

Whereupon. Whereupon I had one of those old-fashioned, Jane O'Reilly "clicks!" of recognition, although in my case it was not a housewife's moment of truth; it was the realization that I do indeed work in a female-intensive profession, one wherein no one but a man would even blink at proofreading the following passage:

Mischievous Little Monkey causes trouble while Big Monkey tries to work. When it's finally playtime, Big Monkey explains that he might not always like Little Monkey's behavior, but he always loves Little Monkey. (from a review of I Love You, Little Monkey.)

That men think about sex every seven seconds is apparently not true, but with a world intent on throwing it in our faces even in books for the young it can be very difficult to focus.

Speaking of boys, I'm off to New York tomorrow to interview Jon "Big Monkey" Scieszka for our upcoming special issue, "Boys and Girls." I will also be attending a memorial service for my friend Janet McDonald, and seeing another bold monkey, Bruce Brooks. Back Friday.

If They Could Turn Back Time

The Boston Globe's David Mehegan takes a look today at the evergreen topic of boys and reading, focusing on a pair of Houghton Mifflin veterans who are repackaging, for Sterling Publishing, the old Random House nonfiction Landmark Books series for a new generation of boys. We'll see. Leonard Marcus is quoted as being a little doubtful; thinking back to my parents' attempts to interest me in the Tom Swift books of their childhood, rather than the Danny Dunn books of my own makes me wonder, too. Times change. So do boys.

And who says that boys don't read? How soon they forget the wizard knob.