Count 'em, 669

Previewing the Spring 2010 print edition of The Horn Book Guide, that's the number of new reviews just added to the Horn Book Guide Online. Check it out.

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.

The breadth of children's literature

It's a wide world, all right. I'm editing Guide reviews this week and got conceptual whiplash when I hit these two picture book reviews in a row:

Harriet Dancing, by Ruth Symes and Caroline Jayne Church. "A hedgehog's feelings are hurt when the dancing butterflies won't let her join in."

Giant Meatball, by Robert Weinstock. "A reckless, oblivious jumbo-sized meatball bounds into a small town, unintentionally terrorizing its residents."

Really--between those two, what more could you need?

February Web Watch

Zoe has been poking around again.

White man speaks

Debbie Reese revisits one of the more interesting events of my years here. In another recent entry she talks about author John Smelcer's aspirations to Indian-ness. Our review of The Trap didn't mention it, but the jacket flap does claim that the author is "of Ahtna Athabaskan descent," which apparently he isn't, although his adoptive parents are Indian.

Debbie asks if publishers or reviewers might vet an author's claims to Indian-ness. If I were a publisher, I would want to, but I would also want to trust the writers I published. As a reviewer, I don't think I'd know how to go about it. As Debbie acknowledges, it would be ethically dubious to do this for Indian claims but not for others, but forget the workload issue, who would you ask? What would constitute an acceptable answer? And as with all questions involving "authentic representation," who gets to decide?

I'm pondering the parallels and differences between Smelcer's claims (and he's certainly not the first white guy to "play Indian") and those of people who passed themselves off as white and/or male to get what they wanted, be it publication or remuneration or freedom. Your thoughts?

News from the Guide proofreading room

Fall 2007 trends? Pirates, unlikely fantasy heroes, African American historical fiction, kids who killed their friends.

For the cool kids only

Guide and Magazine subscribers can now access the Horn Book Guide Spring 08 preview, more than 600 reviews, on our website. Email Agent Zoe for the password.

Do the Math

Jennifer Weiner knows why the New York Times doesn't review her books and she's not afraid to share. Her rant might have been more effective had she not spent so much of it bragging about being rich and popular. I'm reminded of the time I was collared at BEA by a joke-book author who complained that he had never been reviewed in the Horn Book Magazine even though his books had sold several hundred thousands of copies. "Why do you care?" I asked him.

I recently fielded a call from a publisher whose books have never (at least as far as either of us could tell) been reviewed in the Magazine, although they have received some good (and bad) reviews in the Guide. It was not a phone call that could end happily, as our premises (his that the HB deliberately snubbed his books, mine that we didn't) were unmovable and mutually exclusive.

The long answer as to why any particular book was not reviewed is that the Magazine is extremely selective, reviewing fewer than five hundred of the several thousand books we receive. (That's the long answer because it invariably provokes a response that the not-reviewed book in question should have been among the five hundred.) If the book is in hardcover, there's a very good chance the book was reviewed in the Horn Book Guide, thus often providing a print source for the short answer: sorry, we didn't like it all that much. But, on top of the five hundred books recommended by the Magazine are around 1600 more that get wholly positive reviews in the Guide each year. Frequently, those are your Jennifer Weiners: perfectly respectable books that no one needs to be ashamed of reading (or writing) but that don't command extended review attention, at least not from us. Have we ever simply missed something? Sure--I would rashly estimate that a dozen of those 1600 might have been reviewed in the Magazine had the weather or something been different. That, of course, cuts both ways, as in the case of a starred review of a book that no one can remember a year later.

Pirate ships have lowered their flags.

In case you've been wondering where I've been, we're proofreading the next issue of the Horn Book Guide, and the Intermediate Fiction section is crawling with Greek gods. The pirates seem in retreat. As are the faEEries.

I wonder when publishers find out that they're all doing the same thing, and how they feel about that?