"The Harry Potter Look"

The post about judging people--I mean, getting to know people--by the books they read on the subway and keep upon their shelves sent me back to the books-by-the-foot mavens, who this month are offering a special for would-be wizards.

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.

March/April 08 Horn Book

The new issue of the Horn Book is out; online articles include Lolly Robinson's guide to alphabet books and Madelyn Travis's profile of Michael Rosen (the British one), including a gorgeous poem of his about reading:

. . . Some of these things
you may have never seen before.
But now you know them.
Some are as familiar to you as potatoes.
But these potatoes are different.

There's much more in the print edition, including a fascinating oral-history portrait of Ursula Nordstom compiled by Leonard S. Marcus from interviews he did with Nordstrom's writers and colleagues. As a companion (although she would probably sniff to see what company we're putting her in), we've resurrected the equally legendary Edna Albertson and the rejection letters that made generations of authors shake in their shoes. Save yourself from Edna's scorn and read all the web extras.

Paper or Plastic?

Claire has a new list of concept books up for your edification.