Too damned long

I see that PW has followed up on Betsy Bird's thoughts on the Amazon Vine program; their speculation that membership in Vine might be a perk for good customers is intriguing if not substantiated. What seems oddest to me is that this program--for which publishers and other producers pay for the privilege of having their products evaluated--is being criticized for eliciting cluelessly negative reviews, which does not seem to serve the purposes of either publishers or Amazon. It's not like the books don't otherwise get customer reviews, but perhaps the Vine reviews post early enough so that any early buzz they provide outweighs what they actually say?

Vine reviews, customer reviews, and, sorry, blog reviews--they are all too damned long. That's the problem I have with 'em. Just because the technology allows one to prattle on forever should by no means encourage one to do so. The one Amazon review I remember appreciating was a negative review of a recording I adore, Adam Guettel's musical Floyd Collins. It read, in its entirety, "Too much yodeling."

Not quite the Myracle it seems

While Scholastic has gotten a lot of press these last couple of weeks about censoring its book club selections, this is not new; the company has been cleaning up its club editions ever since dirty words started appearing in children's books. Six Boxes of Books has the best analysis of the controversy I've seen yet.

Props to SLJ for getting this story out in the first place, but I have to note one thing that skeeved me out about the lede in the original article: "Don't expect to see Lauren Myracle's new book Luv Ya Bunches (Abrams/Amulet, 2009) at Scholastic school book fairs this year. It’s been censored—at least for now—due to its language and homosexual content." Calling the presence in a children's book of a couple of lesbian mothers "homosexual content" is gross unless the two of them are totally going at it.

The science museum had lost its charm

I twittered my on-the-spot reactions to the Harry Potter exhibit at the Boston Museum of Science, mainly, as a way to kill time because this show was definitely So Not My Thing. While I knew it was going to be about the films (which I've only seen out of the corner of my eye on TV) rather than the books, I dragged my companions along to the preview with the promise that there might be some cool stuff about moviemaking and special effects. Instead, it was an admittedly dazzling faux-Hogwarts gallery of costumes and props, a couple of minimally interactive pit stops (skee-ball like Quidditch tossing; plastic plants that made a noise when you touched them) and a big fat $ouvenir emporium. No ideas of any kind about science or magic or movies were offered. True fans will not be deterred, I'm sure, but I was a little embarrassed for the Museum, whose role, I think, is limited to giving the exhibit space (I wonder how the profits get sliced up). It could have been great, though, with opportunities to look at the science behind alchemy, say, or how CGI really works. But this was all "celebrate the magic," complete with English-accented guides and guards recruited from Craigslist. Why, so you feel like you're in an English museum? I dunno.

Happy to help!

M.T. Anderson tipped me to this thoughtful NYT piece about the state of trade books in the classroom (wow, that phrase sounds as antiquated as whole language) and the fact that the Horn Book gets a shout out on the third page. We are of course always gratified when teachers find us helpful in their work, but the fact that a student found us so . . . well, there are no words.

I didn't see this coming.

Round 2 of the BoB has begun, with Tim Wynne Jones choosing Kingdom on the Waves over Trouble Begins at Eight. The judges do not have all appeared to get my memo: in this round it was supposed to be Kingdom v. Graveyard Book, Chains v. Tender Morsels, Frankie Landau-Banks v. Hunger Games and Graceling v. Nation.

Everybody except jester-under-the-table Jonathan Hunt is being soooo polite. This makes the competition look a lot less random than it actually is. Think about it: the winner will be chosen via a sequence of fifteen decisions that operate under no common principle, leading in the end to a choice that means nothing. (Go, Lois.) While I'm enjoying the judges' explanations, we each employed criteria exclusive to us and to the two books we were comparing. The winning book will be one that four people liked better, for different reasons, than one other book. A few commenters here and elsewhere have sniped that the BoB is really "all about the judges." As far as I can tell, it's not really about anything else.

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 . . . .

Aargh?

Do we think that the Somalian pirate drama is going to dampen the enthusiasm for "fun" pirates in children's books? Or for--oh Lord, please--National Talk Like a Pirate Day?

Elizabeth thinks not. We just talked and she opined that the pirate thing had already run its course anyway. But there was a sturdy tradition of jolly pirates in children's books before the current craze, all more or less dependent on the assumption that pirates were far enough removed from a reading child's reality to be practically folklore. Will the current situation, terrible but absorbing and updated in real time, put Captain Abdul (already unfortunately named) out of business?

"Oh yes, the new Lowry. Haven't quite got to it yet, but the woman's a genius."

While I can think of plenty of children's books that are actually coffee table books for adults (I know Wabi Sabi was a popular book in the blogosphere but to me it's a perfect example of this) I'm wondering if there is such a thing among children themselves. Like, is there a Fatal Shore for ten-year-olds? Are there books kids intend (perpetually) to read, pretend to have read or otherwise have a social or internal stake in? We know from Harry Potter that books can be status-bearing among kids, but do they provide enough social va-va-voom to inspire youthful poseurs?

Complete with pop-up nuns but no Nazis

"Maria always said that 'girls in white dresses' were among her favorite things, but she never thought she would be one of them!"--from The Sound of Music: A Classic Collectible Pop-Up, forthcoming in August from S&S.

Still, it's not like a book can give you polio.

From the would-be author who insists to his would-be editor that "my grandkids love this story" to the award committee member who says "my ten-year-old thought this book was boooorrrring," the children's book world is replete with those who use their own children as test subjects. Expanding the notion of "my kids" to those children with whom we have professional contact (as teachers or librarians) gives us an even bigger pool of lab rats even while the scientific validity of the test population remains questionable.

I'm all for writers, award committee members, reviewers, teachers, and librarians "trying out" books with kids, but I think we need to be watchful of what they tell us. My colleague Anne Quirk talks about the "Steve and Daphne Show" she witnessed one year at a Best Books for Young Adults committee, where, as dutifully supplied by a committee member, opinions from these two teens from a single high school library seemed to be providing the pivotal swing vote. I myself like to use the fact that the two-year-old from downstairs loves to scream "ROAR ROAR ROAR" as evidence that Bob Shea's Dinosaur Vs. Bedtime should win the Caldecott Medal.

But talk about experimenter effect! Zena Sutherland used to quote Ursula Nordstrom as saying that kids will enjoy the telephone book if it means they're getting their mother's attention, just as politicians know not to say that Harold Robbins is their favorite writer. Everybody wants to make somebody happy. And just because your kids like or don't like something doesn't mean that other kids will feel the same way. Proximity does not an expert witness make.

Support your local superstore!

A. Bitterman has some tips!

He does bring up a moral question that vexes me, though. If I want a copy of, say, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (which Betsy Hearne says I do), am I morally required to go out of my way to purchase it at an independent bookseller? There are two small independents in my neighborhood, but I can't go into either with the assurance they will have any given book I am seeking--one is mostly remainders (Jamaicaway Books and Gifts) and the other is too random (Rhythm and Muse). I can go to the Harvard Bookstore in Cambridge on my way home from work if I take an extra bus and train, but both Borders and Barnes & Noble are on my subway line. I always drop a hefty wad of cash at the Brookline Booksmith when we go over to Coolidge Corner for a movie, but that trip requires a car (and, thus, driver, thus Richard). As far as I can tell, Boston supports no full-service independents. What's an enthusiastic non-driving reader to do? On the one hand, shopping at an independent is, in the particulars, more fun, and I invariably buy more books than I had intended to. And in general, the existence of independents, with their handselling and appeal to big readers, allows more kinds of good books to flourish. But it has been my experience that immediate gratification wins out over virtue when shopping or reading (this is why I don't shop online). It says something great about reading when you just can't wait to get your mitts on a book--but it also makes it unlikely that you will wait until you can plan a day around its purchase.

I think what I miss most about Chicago is living a five-minute walk from Unabridged Bookstore. That place is heaven.

When the Joke's On You

I'm having some trouble with PW editor Sara Nelson's hand-wringing over the use of King & King by advocates of California's Proposition 8, which this past Tuesday overturned the right of gay couples to get married in that state. Nelson was upset by a TV ad produced by the Yes on 8 campaign that featured a Massachusetts couple, Robb and Robin Wirthlin, who objected to King & King being read in their kid's school. (The Wirthlins were in the news here when they filed a lawsuit attempting to stop their school district from using the book.)

Like Nelson, I'm no-on-8 and ok-with-King & King. But while I can buy her assessment of the situation ("a book made of socially liberal intentions is being used to defeat those intentions--against the wishes of its publisher and, perhaps, its creators, who are Dutch and, so far, silent on the matter") I can't share in her dismay. If a book can be used to speak to public policy (which King & King surely does), why can't it be used to protest it? It's not as if the book is being misrepresented, and it's certainly not as if anyone needs to secure the blessings of the creators or publisher in order to use a book to make a point.

I think this is what happens when you forget you've chosen sides. Republicans were horrified when Tina Fey and Saturday Night Live used Sarah Palin's own words to make her look foolish, while those of us who were against Palin found it all an example of karma writ hilariously. Freedom of speech and freedom to publish will always include the risk that someone will turn your own words against you.

The perils, once again, of the passive voice

The headline led me to believe this was another old-school Chicago scandal but it's apparently just shameless bribery at work.

Well, that's one way around it.

Jezebel has a post up about the recent challenge to Of Mice and Men at a Kansas City high school for use of the word nigger. I liked this comment from "Miss Scarlet in the hall with a . . .":

In middle school I knew a girl who "objected" to Huckleberry Finn because of the racism and her mother said something and she read something else. In private she told me she tried to read it and it was so boring she just told her mother she had a problem with it so she could read something else. I was 12 and knew that was wrong (and slightly jealous because it was boring).

There's a thousand library trustees just like her.

I wouldn't elect Sarah Palin to anything, but this old censorship charge is really reaching. As far as we know, as mayor of Wasilla she asked the public library director three times about the possibility of removing "objectionable" books from the collection. Three times the director said no. (Positively biblical!) Then Palin tried to fire the director but changed her mind. Unless that former director (who is not talking) tells us otherwise, we have no reason to believe that Palin's request went beyond the hypothetical.

This is actually pretty typical of people who get power--and three-year-olds, come to think of it. They want to see how far they can push it. Mayors, school superintendents and library trustees alike are often surprised to discover that they don't get to personally decide on library purchases or discards. It's the librarian's job to explain to them why this is a bad idea and arguably illegal.

I'm reminded of the time when Chicago aldermen removed--at gunpoint--a satiric portrait of the late Harold Washington from an exhibition at the School of the Art Institute. THAT was censorship. But just asking? Nope.

How Green Are Its Pocketses

PW's Rick Simonson has some uncomfortable questions for Chelsea Green, the publisher who is wrapping itself in virtue and giving Amazon first dibs on its new Obama book at the same time. Fuse #8 has been hosting a serendipitous discussion on the propensity of book blogs to link to you-know who.

I'm so old I remember when Amazon was cool.

Fans and readers

We didn't receive a review copy of Stephenie Meyer's Breaking Dawn, so you won't find any spoilers here. What I've been finding fascinating in a train-wreck kind of way are the vox populi debates over at Amazon.com, particularly a discussion thread attempting to start a RETURN THIS BOOK campaign in protest of Meyer's "betrayal" of her readers: "I agree totally. I saw about 20 returned copies at Target tonight. Returning them is the right thing to do. Burn them and she will still have the money. Don't let that happen." And these are fans talking.

I'm interested in the ethical propriety of returning a book because you didn't like it. Can't imagine doing that myself--the reader is paying for consuming the intellectual content, not just for the physical item. I'm equally interested in the whole question of the difference between readers and fans, if there is one. One distinction the Meyer debates seem to bring to the fore is the way fans personalize the object of their affection--the ones who hate Breaking Dawn feel that Meyer has betrayed them and must suffer; the ones who like the book feel they need to be "loyal" to the author: "You do realize Stephenie Meyer reads these don't you? How disgustingly mean can you get? Stephenie Meyer wrote this for us, the twilighters. Her fans."

What makes people behave this way? I'm aware, of course, that the Amazon posters are probably a distinct subgroup of Meyer's readers, or do her books inspire this kind of Ayn Randy cultishness?

Somebody owes Lisa Yee a Mac

(Thanks to Lolly Robinson for the tip.)

In lieu of a gift

I'm guessing they're too busy to read this but maybe you're not.

Double-dipping

It's not just George.

Opera Chic led me to Gramophone's (my second-favorite magazine in the world) plan to sell CDs and downloads on their site. Gramophone is primarily in the business of reviewing classical music CDs; if they (to employ the British usage!) are also selling them, it raises the question of editorial independence--presumably, a glowing review in the magazine could lead someone to buy the CD under review, which Gramophone will also sell to you for its own profit. See the problem?

I understand the temptation, though--we could probably pick up some change if our online reviews linked to, say, Amazon, but the perception that we were trying to profit from two contradictory impulses wouldn't be worth it. Plus, I really wouldn't want to piss off the Children's Book Shop's Terri Schmitz. (Neither would you.) The fact that the Horn Book, like all the review journals, solicits ads from publishers is already tricky enough.

Felt So Nice I Did It Twice

Galleycat has a piece on a Las Vegas writer doing two different--very different--reviews of a book about his city, one for USA Today and the other for Las Vegas Weekly. I did that a couple of times, reviewing the same book for The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books and the New York Times (the Times didn't care so long as its review was published first) on the grounds that the audiences were so different, but it's really not fair. It's not fair to the book if you hated it, it's not fair to competing books if you liked it, and it's not fair to the reader if you contradict yourself. Plus, reviewing the same book twice is hell.

Art on the wall

This is Lolly Robinson, Horn Book designer, posting at Roger's invitation. (Thanks, Rog.)

First a confession: My attention has been divided lately and I might have left my heart in Santa Barbara. Not romantically like Judy G., but I've been moonlighting on an exhibition that turned into one of those magical collaborative work experiences in which each person involved has improved the final results. Of course, I am also in love with the weather, the smell of the air, the plants, and the pace.

The exhibition in question, "Over Rainbows and Down Rabbit Holes: The Art of Children's Books" represents a sampling of Zora Charles's art collection. She and her husband Les are former teachers and perpetual book lovers, and the exhibit (at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art until June 15; moving to the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art on November 11) spans 100 years of illustration but concentrates on picture book art of the past 50 years.

In my catalog essay, I got to hold forth on the problems of taking picture book art out of context, offering my PB101 mini-course about art and text working together, page design, sequence, pacing, and bookmaking. Of course, everyone won't actually BUY the catalog, or even read the essay if they do... For myself, I have come around to believing that showing this kind of art in a museum is not a sacrilege against picture books but can in fact open people's eyes to the quality and complexity of a seemingly-simple, well-crafted picture book. What do you think? Have I gone over to the dark side?

Rather than going on and on about the exhibition itself, I will leave you with a few photos.

Librarians and booksellers were out in force during the posh Saturday night opening.

The installation design by Scott Flax includes a circular reading area made of 6-foot hedge benches. The Seussian flower arrangements were just there for the opening.

Left to right: Les, Zora, Lolly, and Bruce Robertson (my partner in curatorial crime). The masks were made by SBMA's wonderful education department to instigate a hunt for animals found in the art.

Top photo: Lolly Robinson. Other photos courtesy of Santa Barbara Museum of Art.

I Blame America

For yet another made-up memoir. As a culture we've become convinced that only real stories are true stories, or do I have that the wrong way around?

Tangentially, does anyone else think it's hilarious that the book tour for an addiction memoir is sponsored by Starbucks?

For reals?

I'd like to take a moment to thank HarperCollins for putting a nail into the coffin of a word that's long outlived its usefulness. Explaining their plans to publish a series that will provide opportunities for product placement, Harper children's boss Susan Katz explains:

“If you look at Web sites, general media or television, corporate sponsorship or some sort of advertising is totally embedded in the world that tweens live in. It gives us another opportunity for authenticity.”

So that's what we're calling it now.

Money

In the February issue of Harper's, Ursula K. LeGuin has some interesting things to say about reading ("reading is active, an act of attention, of absorbed alertness--not all that different from hunting, in fact, or from gathering") and publishing ("What's in this dismal scene for you, Mr. Corporate Executive? Why don't you just get out of it, dump the ungrateful little pikers, and get on with the real business of business, ruling the world?").

But until you get your hands on Harper's, take a look at what Groundwood's Patsy Aldana had to say in our pages a few years back: "I would posit that the greatest, most defining boundary in our cozy little world of children’s books is money."

Wasn't that the short one that Robin McKinley loathed?

How the heck do you wring two movies out of The Hobbit?

A different movie

Claire is going to be reviewing The Golden Compass for you all, so let me skip my opinions on that for the moment to recommend what we saw as the first half of our Saturday night double-feature: Enchanted. Pretty hilarious if insidious, too, wrapping a Disney-princess-power theme in so many layers of parody and sincerity that your head spins. Blacks and gays provide comic relief.

But enough about you

This idea of the internet as a solipsistic wonderland--oh wow! You're reading my blog!--really gained ground this weekend with two of our leading internet magazines--Salon and Slate--each using the premier of The Golden Compass as a springboard for people to talk about themselves while pretending to do otherwise.

I have a lot of respect for Donna Freitas's work on His Dark Materials, but on Salon she unconscionably sets up Catholic Leaguer Bill Donahue as the Grand Inquisitor and herself as Galileo: "Allow me to plead my case, for I think I am innocent. (Though I fear I might be on trial, or even be found guilty without a trial.)" Stop, Donna, we need the wood.

And I would really like to see some documentation for "Catholic principals, librarians and teachers all across the United States and Canada are being told by their diocese to remove "His Dark Materials" from their shelves and classroom curricula." I can find three instances of The Golden Compass being removed from Catholic schools (two in Canada and in Oshkosh, Wisconsin), and in none of them was the diocese involved: trustees, principals and one benighted librarian pulled the book without orders from above. Of course there are probably other, quieter instances of the book being removed (as that's how it's usually done, in public and parochial libraries alike) but the point is that the Catholic Church is engaged in no war with Philip Pullman and no one is being threatened with excommunication. It's just weenie Bill Donahue calling attention to himself via his self-administered interviews, and Freitas falling right into his trap by making him seem more important than he is.

But Freitas, at least, does have a point to make, and it's an eloquent and important one, about the feast of religious inquiry in Pullman's trilogy. Emily Bazelon writing for Slate, on the other hand, explains that she's not going to encourage her sons to read Pullman's trilogy because she really dug Flowers in the Attic even though her mother said it was dreck. (Thanks to Kelly Herold for the link.) Did I mention that I'm going to see The Golden Compass tonight and Nobody Listens to Andrew used to be my favorite book?

As Claire originally began her review, WTF?

So keep that in mind when you read her review of The Seeker.

I used to spend a lot of money

at the Coop bookstore in Harvard Square. I knew it was a Barnes and Noble, but I liked the selection and the clerks are nice and I knew where it was (I still find Harvard Square hard to navigate). But now that I have heard, via Bookshelves of Doom, that the Coop considers freakin' ISBNs to be their "intellectual property," I'm done.

Throw the book at her?

Librarian Kristin Peto of Maine sent me the story about the woman, JoAnn Karkos, who checked out two copies of It's Perfectly Normal (a 1995 Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor awardee, so you know where we stand) from Maine libraries and is declining to return them, sending checks for $20.95 (I'm guessing the price on the jacket) to the libraries instead.

This instance of civil disobedience doesn't seem to have been all that well thought out. Both libraries involved have already ordered replacement copies (one bought two, citing the demand engendered by the theft), so access to the book has been at most temporarily impeded. Neither library will accept her check (which would make them parties to the crime), so some other books will now go unbought at the same time It's Perfectly Normal sells three more copies.

Here's the most eccentric detail: the woman who says It's Perfectly Normal is "a predator's dream" now has two copies. Mind your children . . . .

Kathy Griffin Isn't the Only One to Drag Jesus into It

And at least she was funny. Last month, we got a letter from a woman who decided she wanted to cancel her subscription to the Magazine because of Patty Campbell's report on the word fuck, Susan Patron's account of the little scrotum that could (and did) and our then upcoming special issue on gender, the one you, ahrmmm, should be holding in your hands. Fine. Let her go join those subscribers who left when I presumed to give some advice to the First Lady. (Incidentally, young Jenna's book has some good things going for it; see my review in our November issue.)

But then. But. Then. We sent this disgruntled former subscriber a refund for the balance of her subscription, and apparently we mistakenly mailed her two checks or something, and Margaret, our business manager, asked her to send one back. All she had to do was stick it in an envelope or, hell, say "Suck it, Horn Book," and cash it but NOOOOOO. "I received your message on Wednesday and am happy to return the check that was written in error. As a follower of Jesus Christ, I cannot take from Horn Book what is not due me. It would not be honoring to my savior, and so here is the check."

I think I'll use it to buy her a Mass.

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.

Uh-oh

So Baby Einstein is actually bad for babies? While this study will probably only provoke more rounds of the coffee-hurts-you-coffee-helps-you kinds of further studies, I'd love to let the Freakonomics guys loose on this one. There are so many other correlations: if the Baby Einstein videos don't do what they promise, it could be because the parents don't use them as instructed (be warned, that link plays plastic classical music over and over again, trying to make you as smart as El Divo) or because dumb parents who think TV is good for babies pass their dumb genes on to their children (harsh, but that's Freakonomics for ya). Always nice to see Disney get a little grief, though.

He Knows When You're Asleep at the Wheel, Too

Yep, it's 96 degrees out there but we've started pulling together our "Holiday Books" review section for the November issue. We will have some good books to tell you about there, I promise, but meanwhile I thought I would mention three concepts that might need to go back to Santa's workshop for some retooling:

--celebrating Hanukkah with a dreidel piñata

--giving the crippled kid magical legs while the rest of the family gets real presents

--a Santa who can't stop farting

The elves are waiting for your call.

Ten Cents a Dance

. . . or, in this case a dollar a word. My enterprising friend Mike Ford--we met when I heard a man yelling "Roger! Roger!" in the park, and it turned out to be Mike calling his dog--is writing a pay-as-you-go novel online, where he will add another word for each dollar somebody gives him.

Although he talks a good game--

The point is to get people thinking about what having art in their lives is worth to them. Artists can only keep producing art if they get paid for it. What would happen if all the writers stopped writing because they couldn't afford to do it anymore? What if writers only wrote the words that people were willing to pay for? That’s what I want people to think about.

--I'm not buying it. We don't pay writers for writing, we pay them for having written, that is, we pay for the product not the process. And, as readers, we rely on such considerations as recommendations from friends, reviews, cover design and flap copy, etc. in deciding which books we're going to buy. Mike's novel could start out well and then fall apart. Or it could be going along swimmingly but end mid-stream if the donations dry up.

Still, it's better than helpmybabylive.com., a since proven spurious website demanding cash from visitors else a couple would abort their unborn child.

And how!

I was happy to see Debbie Reese confirm my impression of American Girl World as hostile territory. Why people continue to see this empire as good for children is beyond me. If you want to educate your children into the joys of brand loyalty and conspicuous consumption, at least Disney is more affordable. And the catalog? Yup, still porn.

Make it Stop!

SLJ, I love you. I happily worked with Lillian Gerhardt and Trev Jones for years, and I did some of my best writing in your pages. And Little, Brown, too, where I published my sole book for young people and whose upcoming offerings include the extremely terrific The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. Smooches to you both.

So my decision to no longer visit or link to anything on your websites is not personal. It's because of that fucking ad for some LB fantasy novel bouncing all over the SLJ site and ravaging my nerves. It will not be gotten rid of. It follows you as you try to scroll down the page. The whole page quivers with its movement. I am not at all opposed to nice, polite blog ads that stay in the margins where they belong. But advertising via animated stalking is really beneath both of you. I suppose valiant VOYA, whose name is the most persistent image in the ad (not exactly what LB had in mind, I'm sure, and it can't make SLJ happy, either) is the real winner here, but it's hard not to include them in my resentment, too. VOYA, however, is worth a link, and the only thing that bounces over there is the prose.

The New Laureate

Sometime Horn Book contributor Madelyn Travis interviews Britain's new children's laureate Michael Rosen, he of the funny verse and the very sad book. We love Madelyn here because it was her since-third-grade friendship with our Jennifer Brabander that brought Bridget Jones's Diary to the Horn Book long before the rest of you had heard of it.

And if the CBC, LC and Mrs. Cheney et al are listening, I'd love that new "national ambassador for children's literature" gig. Sure, I'm not a famous writer, but I'd know what I was talking about, and I'm a good talker. Plus you wouldn't have that little Jack Prelutsky problem, whose assumption of the Poetry Foundation's "Children's Poet Laureate" position seems to have more effect on his jacket designs than on anything else. Besides, who died and left them God? Oh, that's right.

Sometimes the Jokes Just Write Themselves

Like here.

But Sammy the Snot Who Lives in Your Nose? Sure!

Publishers Weekly alerts us to the latest buy-an-agent scam; I love e-literary agent's sage analysis of the publishing market: "because this is a highly competitive business, we recommend that you take the time to run your manuscript through a spell check." If they wanted to tip us off that they were wolves after sheep, well, they just did.

But mind their strict guidelines: "Sorry, we don’t accept poetry or pornography." And whose pride, poets' or pornographers', do you think that hurts more?

So now will I have to read it? It's not like they did.

A fifth-grade class in Pittsfield, MA has joined in a legislator's effort to name Moby-Dick the Commonwealth's official State Book. Melville wrote the book while living in Pittsfield, but that's about as much as the kids know--none of them have read it. And we wonder why lobbyists get a reputation for cynicism.

Besides, I remember attending a ceremony at the State House, in tow with Elizabeth Law, where I thought we were naming Make Way for Ducklings the State Book or something. Oh, wait, I just checked and that was the Official Children's Book. Jeez, this field is getting more crowded than the Grammys.

Getting the Shakes

Child_Lit is currently enjoying one of those pearl-clutching reports about the abysmal state of American education, this one taking on colleges that do not require English majors to take a course in Shakespeare but allow them to study such horrors as queer theory and children's literature.

Let's start with the sheer--and shrill--irrationality of comparing required courses to elective ones. The report doesn't claim that Shakespeare isn't being taught, only that courses devoted to him are elective, signalling a dumbing-down in English education that has occurred since . . . well, since when, exactly? The report states but provides no evidence that required classes in Shakespeare used to be the order of the day. It also specifically excludes from the discussion courses that include Shakespeare among others, so a course devoted to English writing of the Elizabethan era, for example, does not count.

The attack on children's literature, critical theory, etc. is completely predictable: it's the same card the Music Man played when warning the good people of River City of the dangers of "Captain Billy's Whiz-bang Book." But even old-school English majors inclined to go along with the sympathies of the report must be embarrassed that nowhere does it ever say why English majors need a mandatory course called Shakespeare. It wants us to take his authority on their word. That's education?

What the report is really trying to do is to use "Shakespeare" as a word to bully people. The report knows that most people pay Shakespeare the same lip service they do to Mozart, PBS, art museums and public libraries: people know they are supposed to consider these things "cultural" and important even if in real life they wouldn't be caught dead actually giving these institutions any genuine attention. The report isn't worried that Shakespeare isn't been taught (it concedes that he is), just that students aren't being forced to read him. What the American Council of Trustees and Alumni really wants is that students be taught obedience and unquestioning respect for authority. It wants people to do as they're told.

With apologies to Velma

Varner, who played no part in the story I was vaguely remembering on yesterday's blog comments. Varner succeeded May Massee as the children's book editor at Viking, and did many good things, not least of which was suggesting to the young Susie Hinton that she go with the initials S. E. for her first book, The Outsiders.

Here's the story, which is from an interview Leonard Marcus conducted for the January/February 1995 issue of the Horn Book. Leonard was interviewing HarperCollins's library marketing wizard Bill Morris, who was clearly in the mood to spill:

I don't know that this is true, though I've been told it is, that during the years when Miss [Anne Carroll] Moore was chair of the Newbery-Caldecott committee, the committee would never actually meet. The other members would just send in their ballots to her, and she and Miss Massee would get together to count them! If you look at the list of medal winners, there was a period when Viking won something almost every year! It's a marvelous story, whether or not it's true.

That, my friends, is gossip (for those of you who opined that children's book blogs did not traffic in same).

Thanks to all of you who participated in yesterday's ferocious discussion. I learned a lot--mostly that what I was looking for in blog book-reviews was perhaps a case of missing the oranges for the apples. Someone has just asked in the comments there that I address the question "why do you [meaning me] write book reviews?" to which I have a long answer and will try to address after I've gotten a virtuous amount done on the book I am allegedly here at home writing. So it might be tomorrow.

This is why I don't have a blogroll. Or friends.

In the face of a cranky attack on blogging that appeared in the resolutely print journal n+1 (and which is excerpted here), Fuse #8 this morning offers a defense of review-blogging that, I think, misses a big part of the point. I agree with her about the general cluelessness about the argument, but I don't think the biggest problem the online reviewing of children's books faces is its "out-and-out unapologetic fire and verve." Would that it were. It's more a problem of, to take a leaf from the old Spy magazine, "[b]logrolling in our time." The fact that librarians, teachers, enthusiasts, reviewers, parents, publishers and authors are conversing in the same corner of cyberspace has created a community of interested parties heretofore unknown in the children's book world. (Children themselves are still among the missing). In the old days, public librarians and school librarians barely spoke and both groups complained about teachers. All three groups interacted with authors via publishers and usually discretely.

That the brave new world has all-of-the-above kind of people in't, communicating as peers rather than through hierarchy and intermediation, is in most ways cause for celebration. But I'm not sure it has lead to better reviewing: can we truly "all be in this together" at the same time some of us are judging the work of others? Authors active in the blogosphere get treated differently there from their out-of-the-loop compatriots: they get more and kinder attention. It's hard not to be nice to someone, author or editor, whose own site may appear on your blogroll, or who regularly drops by your place to comment.

I recognize that I speak as someone invested in the system of book reviewers as putatively disinterested experts. But authors: reviewers are not your friends. This is not to say that we are out to get you, either--merely that we don't have your interests at heart. I watch with a sinking heart the "blog tours" of writers; recalling my favorite Law & Order mantra, any subsequent review from any of these blogs becomes "fruit from the poisoned tree." (Likewise, Fuse, with that Little, Brown promotion.) It isn't a bad thing at all that publishers are doing their best to use blogs as marketing tools. That's their job. But it's a reviewer's job to ignore the publisher and the author, and to instead focus on the book and its potential audience. Coziness has its price.

Cheap Thrills on the Moral High Ground

We were discussing Holocaust education on child_lit, and a member forwarded an outline of her temple's planned seventh-grade Holocaust unit, which included a showing of Schindler's List. The outline noted, parenthetically, that "sexual content will be edited out." I thought of that this weekend when Richard and I saw The Black Book, a racy thriller from the director of Basic Instinct about a Dutch Jewess who gets involved in the Resistance after she sees her family shot by Nazis. When the Resistance head insinuatingly asks our heroine how far she's prepared to go in pursuit of bringing down a powerful German commander, I fully expected her to answer "at least as far as Sharon Stone did," and sure enough, we see her bottle-blonding her pubes as well as her head. It's an awfully dumb (R and I are divided on whether this was intentional) movie, with improbable escapes, melodramatic music, and lots of shots of the heroine stealthily, perkily, cutting her eyes from side to side as she enters yet another forbidden room or darkened alley. Very Alias meets Perils of Pauline. And very teen-friendly with its surfeit of sex and flesh, furious brain-spattering gun battles and double-crossing action-packed plot--there's even a nod to teen movie classic Carrie in one of the heroine's more disgusting humiliations.

It's certainly not a learn-about-the-Holocaust movie in the way that Schindler's List was. But the flaw of that movie was the way it wore its virtue on its sleeve, and the way it seemed to applaud its viewers for watching it: I felt like I was being congratulated for being a Morally Serious Person Made Even Better for watching it. This heavy handedness is also what makes it a high-school required-viewing staple, because there's no chance kids will miss the message. Black Book offers the same message but, daringly or dumbly, packages it in an entertainment; Schindler's List feels more like going to church (irony acknowledged). Compare and contrast--there's a high school term paper I would have loved to write!

"Green" or just l-a-z-y?

I discovered this loathsome new invention in some anti-Canadian snarking on Gawker. Atwood et al are pretty nervy promoting this higher-tech autopen as anything more than an excuse to multitask watching Canadian Idol and promoting your book at the same time.

I'm not an autograph collector, so I'm not sure I understand the appeal, but isn't part of getting a book signed the commemoration of meeting an author you like? That whole Patricia Polacco "hand that touched the hand that touched the hand" connection? I don't care how Long your LongPen(tm) is, Ms. Atwood, I'm not letting it near me.

Cheryl? It's Not Just the Manuscripts.

Levine/Scholastic editor Cheryl Klein has a funny post up of a picture-book manuscript she created as an intentionally bad example of a submission that had "no child appeal." "Cheering up Cheryl," a model of its kind, is a chicklit novel (more about them later today) in picture-book form, but it does everything a bad picture book does except rhyme.

But here's the thing. While Cheryl and other editors I know often share the rules of picture-book writing with hopeful authors at SCBWI conferences and the like, why, oh Lord, why, do we keep seeing published picture books that positively revel in breaking these very same rules. No, revel's not the right word, because there are great, great picture books that break the rules in service to a Higher Good (that would be Literature); what I mean are books that indulge in stupid rhyming couplets, age or format inappropriateness, preachiness, and lists, lists, lists (Cheryl's parody is hilarious here) that serve only to give the illustrator time and space to indulge him or herself in a series of pretty paintings. These are books that presumably have been accepted by some editor somewhere (and it's not just the MorningWood HappyBear small presses; it's the big guys), thus rendering your "show-don't-tell" workshops a mockery. If you don't want people to submit crap, stop publishing it.

Maybe they do things differently down under

A childlit reference today to a blog post last year on Michael Thorn's Achockablog revealed a semi-juicy scandal heretofore unknown to me involving the excellent Australian writer Alyssa Brugman, who complained to her publisher that Thorn was selling an ARC of her book Being Bindy on eBay. The publisher, Faber, dutifully if thickheadedly wrote Thorn to tell him to cease and desist, or they would stop sending him advance copies for review. Apparently the blogosphere was thick with reproof, because Brugman wrote a rather stern note about the matter on the home page of her website, saying that ARCs are the property of the publisher, not the reviewer, and therefore Thorn had no right to sell them.

Personally, I think Brugman might better torture herself by contemplating the fact that Thorn had no desire to keep his copy of her book, but the fact remains that the book was his to sell; at least it works that way on this side and end of the pond. Publishers don't lend books to reviewers, they simply hand them over. Thorn very carefully made the point that he does not sell ARCs as new books (which would be fraud) or indeed before their publication dates. The publisher is certainly within its rights not to send Thorn (or anyone) review copies if they don't want to, but this would rather defeat the purpose of review copies. (And, contrary to what one irate publisher told me, no one needs permission from the publisher to review a book.) I imagine that Faber knows this, too, and is banging its corporate head repeatedly on the table for being caught between author and reviewer on this one.

For the record: after the Horn Book has finished with its reviews, and the publishing season has passed, we cherry-pick titles to keep in our collection (everything reviewed in the Magazine and a culling from the Guide), give some away, make "creative art" projects out of others, consign some to a Wall of Shame, and sell the rest as a lot to a used-book wholesaler.

But if anyone knows: is this standard operating procedure among our fellow nations?

Six million what?

Lois Lowry recently posted on her blog a letter from a teacher who was having his students collect and tie together six million centimeters of shoe lace to "represent the 6,000,000 Jews who were killed in the Holocaust."

Lois seems all for this idea ("It is always such a pleasure to hear of and from imaginative teachers like Doug Greener in Maple Grove who do more than just assign a book, and whose students will always remember what they have learned in his class") but I have my doubts.

Oh, okay, I'm flat-out scandalized. What bothers me the most about this project is its profound anti-intellectualism. Through repetitive tasks (collecting shoelaces and tying them together) and the sheer accumulation of material objects, the point of the exercise is--what, exactly? That six million is a whole lot? Sixth-graders don't know this? What will the participants understand about the Holocaust that truly challenging assignments--in history, literature, and the arts--could not teach them, better and with more nuance? I assume since the teacher was writing to Lowry, author of the frequently taught Number the Stars, that this shoelace-tying is but part of a larger curriculum on the Holocaust, but when it comes to "students remembering what they have learned in class," I fear that what these students are going to remember is "sixth-grade, the year we tied together six million centimeters of shoelaces."

What bothers me most about this project is that it fools kids think they have learned something about the Holocaust; hell, it fools them into thinking they have done something about the Holocaust. But what such a project does--at best--is makes kids feel something about the Holocaust. But that feeling is unearned; worse, it seems earned, because the kids have devoted so much (useless) labor to it.

But just tell me, please, that it's not a curricular tie-in (heh) with a math lesson.

. . . or we will shoot this dog.

Note to book publicists: don't put stickers like this on ARCs. Reviewers don't want to know how you're going to spend the money.

Did you really think that invitation was because they liked you?

I really like Gail Gauthier's take on Jenna Bush's book deal. Let's wait to see the book (which will be about a Panamanian teen single mother with HIV) before we trash it. I for one am grateful it isn't a picture book about self-esteem (the inexplicable praise given Jamie Lee Curtis notwithstanding), and in fact, sounds like something that teens might find both interesting and valuable.

I can't even get worked up about the rumored six-figure advance. Anyone who believes that had HarperCollins not given a lot of money to Bush for her book, they would be putting it into more (equally unproven) "real" writers, hasn't looked at the HarperCollins catalog lately, nor at that of any other large publicly-held publisher. They are giving that money to Jenna Bush in hopes that it will return threefold, in some form or another (whether from sales or other business opportunities the book and/or author may generate or suggest).

Any librarian or bookseller or reviewer who has ever accepted free food from a publisher should really think first about his or her own place in the publishing economy.