Don't call me "Baby."

Elizabeth Bluemle has a great lament up about not trusting--and feeding--children's imaginations. The saddest line: "It used to be that naming your new stuffed animal was practically a sacred rite of passage in plush parenting; now, if the tag on the creature doesn't provide a pre-fab name, we're seeing kids at a loss, calling their new dog 'Puppy' and their new cat 'Kitty.'"

(Of course, my little brother did call his blankie "Tag," cause that's where he clutched it.)

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.

But enough about you. Or me.

As we did late last year, Child_Lit has been discussing the U.K.'s age-banding proposal with some ferocity the past few days. While I am firmly in the camp of those who oppose the scheme, a speech Philip Pullman gave on the subject is working my nerves. It's very much a speech to the choir (which it was, being delivered at a conference of the Society of Authors), and at the beginning quotes from the research report that allegedly boosts the proposal: "A recent trade survey has shown a general preference to move to age ranging, although with some strongly held contrary views, but now what’s needed is a piece of research that delivers some definitive answers from the people who matter most – book customers and readers."

Pullman then clutches his rhetorical pearls for this response:

The people who matter most?

Whoever wrote that – whoever read that and believed it – needs to be reminded that without us, without our work, our talent, our willingness to put up with almost anything in the way of reduced royalties, humiliating treatment over jacket design, endless travels to this bookshop, that school, that library, anything to help our books reach the readers – without us there would be no editors, no designers, no marketing teams, no publicity people, no secretaries, no helpful personal assistants, no senior executives, no expense account lunches, no pension schemes, no company cars, no sales conferences in attractive places, no publishing industry whatsoever. Any of the people who do those other things could be replaced with very little difference. Take us away, and you’ve lost everything. The people who matter most? Authors and illustrators are the people who matter most, and no publisher with any sense of what’s right and true would have allowed that sentence, and that attitude, to stand.

While I agree it would have been both politic and useful to ask writers what they thought of the idea of printing suggested reading levels on book covers, jeez, Philip, get over your bad self. I ask, with similarly high-camp drama but equal sincerity, isn't anyone thinking about the children? They are the people who matter most in this question. They are the ones who will have to suffer walking around with a book they want to read but are officially too mature for; they are the ones who will be told "you aren't ready" for a book deemed Too Hard. The problem with the age-banding proposal is not that it ignores authors, it's that it ignores young readers.

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.

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.

Tugging on the leash

Unless there's an abandoned chicken bone at stake, Buster has never been one for much straining at the leash. But where he used to not mind being thus tethered, I'm finding that he, at sixteen or so (we'll never know for sure), seems to welcome the security. He now blinks and stumbles in the morning sun, for example, and walks with more confidence when he's leashed. He trusts me and he likes being with me.

Why the dog story? Because I'm experimenting with my new Kindle, where Amazon.com is very much at the other end of the leash. The stuff I thought I wouldn't like--the design, the digital ink and lack of a backlight--is in fact fine, although all the plastic-button-pushing is noisy and feels very last century. What's bugging me instead is the feeling of an ever-present tether to Amazon.com, a master I neither like nor completely trust. I don't like browsing the Amazon site, and I don't trust the company's effect on the American character. Amazon is all over the Kindle. The Kindle is designed to get you to visit and spend more money at Amazon, pushing you to the same high-volume bestsellers that the main website does. (Kindle Store selections seem split among popular titles, copyright-free classics and scary e-book originals, the same mix which has long been available from such sites as ereader.com.) And with the Kindle so pricey in the first place ($399), I guess I might resent throwing yet more money at Amazon for the privilege of using it.

But I'll take it with me to Chicago (don't forget, Sutherland Lecture Friday night) and see if it has the potential to become habit-forming. If not--well, I've kept the packaging.

It's not a word to throw around lightly

Poets are supposed to choose their words very carefully. This one doesn't.

But a poet standing up to a bookstore does demonstrate chutzpah, I'll give her that. Thanks to Shelf Awareness for the link.

"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.

The E.B. White Readaloud Award

has been announced today by the Association of Booksellers for Children: for picture books, the winner is When Dinosaurs Came with Everything by Elise Broach and David Small (Simon & Schuster) and for older readers, The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart (Little, Brown). Congrats to all.

I would personally like to give a reading-aloud award to Kate Reading for her superbly inflected performance of Middlemarch for Tantor Media. I'm a bit more than halfway through and have finally come across the first definitive evidence of someone making whoopie: Rosamond is expecting!

Code Pink

Scanning the multitudes of new books throughout the office, I am struck--again--by the endurance of pink covers on light teen girl fiction. I know this is nothing new; what interests me is the fact that I wrote about this four years ago, and I'm surprised it still works--not the chicklit formula, which is eternal, but that pink remains the go-to color. When does this kind of genre marker stop signaling "Here I am! The kind of book you like!" and start saying "I've got your number"? Do girls who like this sort of thing appreciate the code, or do they roll their eyes and read despite it? There was a story in PW some years ago about two African American women in a bookstore laughing about the omnipresence of the word "Sister" in the titles of books marketed to black women, suggesting that the ploy had run its course. Will pink? Ever?

Some people still wear a hat.

Former Horn Book editor Anita Silvey received the Education Publishing Association's Ludington Award "for an individual who has made a significant contribution to the paperback book business." Her confrerees at the award banquet sported the singular Silvey accessory in her honor:


(Anita is second from the left.)


Let us join in the salute. Congrats, A.S.!


Photo by Duncan Todd

Chickens and Eggs

Galleycat's post re the First Book project reminds me of the argument advanced by Freakonomics that while the presence of lots of books in the home correlates with children being proficient readers, such literary wealth does not cause that proficiency, it simply means that reading parents tend to have reading children. That bio-determinated thought also puts the question to the British book labeling scheme I talked about yesterday--even if the prominent display of reading levels cause more parents to buy more books, will that cause more and better literacy?

What's the difference between confidence and fluency?

Commenter Zolah passed along this story about a proposed scheme in the U.K. to label children's books by "reading age." Let's hope the Brits don't try to bring this one into Boston Harbor. The organizers claim that children will not be put off by having their books belly-branded with "early, "developing," "confident," or "fluent," but I know I would. And who will be assigning the designations and by what criteria: will individual publishers make their best guesses (there goes "for all ages") or will a central Authority feed all the books through a Lexile machine?

What I'd mostly like to know is what the presence of these labels is supposed to do. The article calls the idea "an important breakthrough in children's literacy," but how?

As Betty and Wilma say, "CHARGE!"

Children's Book Shop proprietress Terri Schmitz talks with Kitty Flynn about children's-book shopping for the holidays and recommending some of her favorites on our latest podcast.

I'll be over soon, Terri. We've got this swell Dutch couple renting our first floor apt and they have two completely adorable kids--a one year old boy and a three year old girl. Richard and I feel like we've acquired grandchildren and are spoiling them appropriately. The little girl, of course, initially spoke no English, and she would talk away at us in Dutch, too young to understand that we couldn't understand her. But then she and I had our Patty Duke--Anne Bancroft moment. She was talking to me in Dutch and clearly had an important question. I saw this little light go on in her eyes and she blurted, "Wheah's Wichawd?" Thanks, kid-- but spoken like a born Bostonian.

Yes, I do want fries with that.

Galleycat links to a thoughtfully cranky piece about booksellers who pat themselves on the back for selling "banned" books such as Huckleberry Finn while simultaneously refusing to sell Tintin in the Congo:

Providing unencumbered access to the literary works created under the auspices of free speech (all of 'em -- not just the ones we agree with or approve of) is our business. Bookstores shouldn't have to rally around themselves once a year to proclaim that they hate censorship and the banning of books.

While I agree with the scorn directed at the sometimes unseemly preening that accompanies Banned Books Week, I've never thought that booksellers should have to stock anything they didn't want to. What I would really, really, like to know is how many of the 546 challenges recorded by the OIF in 2006 resulted in restrictions or banning, a hardly-irrelevant statistic that seems absent from ALA's press materials. "Banned Books Week" is certainly a catchy slogan, but are they selling sizzle or steak?

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.

Scaring me

What with avoiding writing and having a cold and pissing off bloggers left and right and all, I've been spending the last couple of days looking at a lot of book blogs. Many of them feature sidebar ads from Amazon.com, and while I have no problem with that, I've noticed that the books featured therein are based on the stuff I've been looking up at Amazon, not on the content of the blog I'm looking at. I assumed children's book blogs would have ads for children's books, but I keep seeing ads for Leon Uris's Trinity--and I was researching his Exodus the other day. It reminds me of my favorite book review line: "This book follows Linda, a sixteen-year-old stalking victim."

How long, asked George and Ira, has this been going on?