But Where in the World Is Nina Garcia?

It's getting very difficult to muddle on without her, but we have nevertheless appointed our judges for the 2010 Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards. They are Horn Book Magazine executive editor Martha V. Parravano, NYT children's books editor Julie Just, and novelist (and long-time-ago Horn Book columnist) Gregory Maguire. Information about the awards and guidelines for submissions can be found on our website.

Would you care?

The legal wrangling over Project Runway has prompted the jilted network Bravo to start another fashion show:

Last week Bravo completed a four-city casting tour for a new series tentatively titled “The Fashion Show,” whose winner will be chosen by viewers rather than a panel of fashion experts, as it is on “Project Runway.”

Color me not excited. While it's true that American Idol similarly involves its audience in choosing a winner, I don't think anyone would tune in were it not for the hijinks of Randy, Paula and Simon, whose cutups and comments prompt as much of the voting as do the contestants themselves.

This is why no one gets as excited about children's choice book awards as they do about those chosen by "experts." There's no arguing with popularity--something is or it isn't. But when a committee of alleged authorities does its bestowing, a conversation is started, even if the opening salvo is What Were They Thinking?

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

Here is ALA Runway!

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?

A role model in better clothes

When I got an email from Robin Smith with the subject line "Someone we both love," I thought, oh God, I really cannot handle another death right now. But I perked right up when I opened it and saw that rather than an obituary, it was a link to a New York Times article about My Secret Boyfriend.

But I've decided to promote Tim Gunn from Secret Boyfriend to Middle-Aged Role Model because he's an example of how someone can make a big career shift in the autumn of one's life, moving from the academic slog of deaning to the high-stakes glamor of brand management. Of course, he had a television show to help him do it, whereas I only have you, dear readers. On the other hand, I have a boyfriend, so ha ha ha ha ha ha Mr.-I'm-So-Alone-Gunn.

Wouldn't that be a great job, though? I mean in publishing? Gunn's new job at Liz Claiborne is to "to bring a sense of excitement about fashion to a corporate culture known for blandness and to effect a change in the perception of its brands, from outdated to fashionable." The difference in publishing--a considerable one, I think--is that it's a business where fashionable has become what it's all about, so my job would be instead to get them to straighten up and fly right. To paraphrase Paul Hazard, give them books, give them wings. Let Tim Gunn be the fashion spinmeister; I'll go out and prove you don't have to stick fleurchons all over a book to make kids like it.