Served by a window with an ocean view

Heading out tomorrow to spend a few days at the Cape Cod Writers Center talking about children's book publishing. I'll be giving a keynote speech and moderating a mega-panel with Debbie Kovacs, Alison Morris, Nancy Werlin, Mary Lee Donovan and Martin Sandler. My main goal, though, is to meet Mitali Perkins, who is one of my best blog pals and lives not five miles from me but who has thus far eluded me in person.

Talking to writers--especially unpublished writers--is a dicey thing for a critic to do. Mostly, they are looking to get published, and I can't help them there. Or they want to know trends, and I can't help them there, either, because if I told them to get started right now writing a picture book about animal derrieres (the big trend revealed in proofing the forthcoming Guide), it would be too late, because we will have all Moved On by the time any such book could be published. Plus, it's not really in my best interest if everyone who wanted to be published were published. I guess that is my keynote speech in a nutshell!

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.

My new secret boyfriend

Like Leila, I'm in something of a reading slump, or in my case listening, as none of the several audiobooks I read on my commute seem to be doing it for me. The new Anna Pigeon mystery reminds me of why I gave up on Nevada Barr years ago (lurid and incoherent); Elizabeth and Mary is repetitive and overfond of the first queen at the expense of the second; the new Dennis Lehane is too hairy-chested; and those New Yorkers pile up as readily on my iPod as they do on the bathroom scales.

Let's just say I've been in a mood. But what hand of Providence brought me to download At Home in Mitford, the first of Jan Karon's novels about the mild-mannered Episcopalian Father Tim and his flock in a cozy Blue Ridge Mountains hamlet? Oh my goodness (as F.T. might say) I am loving it. And the hero has already made me a better person. Last night I came home to see Richard folding the t-shirts I had left in the dryer last weekend. To cover my own embarrassment at falling down on the job, my left-handed Scorpio instinct was to say something caustic about it being high time someone got around to the laundry but I thought, what would Father Tim do?, and instead said "I'm sorry I left the t-shirts in the dryer."

The pleasure of the book is its comfortable, steady-paced, dullness--right now, Father Tim is trying to settle on the menu for a dinner party he wants to have for his friends. He's just gone jogging for the first time. His irrepressible (by Mitford standards) dog Barnabas will only sit when Father Tim orates Scripture. The village vet and his wife, in their middle age, are expecting a baby. I am completely engrossed. Martha says if I like this sort of thing I should try Miss Read's books, too.

I've been editing a lot of Guide and Magazine book reviews this week, and the contrast to my new reading crush could not be greater. Once you get above chapter book level, it seems like almost all new fiction for kids is (or wants to be) thrilling, exciting, harum-scarum, suspenseful, non-stop, etc. Don't kids ever read to relax?

What did your 1970s look like?

I'm weeding the Horn Book's collection of professional, scholarly, and other adult books about children's literature, and damned if I didn't find a strange little trend. Along with the many out-of-date bibliographies and childhood reading memoirs by the foremothers (don't worry, I'm keeping those) are lots of coffee table books devoted to the work of Rackham, Nielsen and Dulac, all published in the 70's and designed with the same disco-deco look of this here Bette Midler record. You used to see these books on remainder tables in bookstores all over; if anyone is feeling nostalgic just come and grab 'em from the discards shelves outside my office.

When I was a lad,

Boston Latin was where the smart kids went. No more.

[Update] The Boston.com story has been updated and now makes a lot more sense.

News from the Guide proofreading room

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

Milk, milk, lemonade

I brought back from Vermont a pound each of chocolate and penuche fudge for office sharing and have been industriously monitoring which is going faster. The results are surprising: although the chocolate is maintaining a consistent edge, the penuche is holding its own. Perhaps the Horn Book is even more New-England-parochial than we had all thought.

I share this thought with you because Kitty told me that I should reserve comment for another day on the amazing number of picture books we've recently received about pooping.

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?