March/April 2009 Horn Book Magazine

The Horn Book has a snow day today but our latest issue is out and, partly, up. We've posted an intelligently bristling argument from Farah Mendlesohn what's wrong with contemporary YA SF as well as veteran Joanna Rudge Long's thoughts on what to look for in a "Three Little Pigs." The print Magazine also includes Susan Fletcher's moving account of her epistolary friendship with Elvand, an Iranian writer and translator and we solicited stories of similar friendships from a handful of other authors for children. Catherine Murdock weighs in on the absence of mothers in children's books--it's A Good Thing--and Elizabeth Wein looks back in time. In better bookstores, bathrooms, and libraries now (or soon).

What's with all the flashbacks?

I wish I could find this great example Florence King gave of a sentence filled with clauses and "had"s and "had had"s that indicated that an author "had failed to begin her story far enough back in time." Flashbacks are ruining my prime-time experience. Lost, Heroes, Damages, even Without a Trace--it seems like they can't go ten minutes without the words "seven years earlier" appearing as a title card on the screen. I think what bothers me the most is that it's supposed to look like fancy sleight-of-hand po-mo storytelling when it only increases my suspicion that they are making it up as they go along, and going back to patch up inconvenient inconsistencies. Thank God for 24.

I can't quite put my finger on it.

PW has announced its (casually) bookseller-chosen Cuffie Awards, with Mem Fox and Helen Oxenbury's Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes as the picture book pick. It is a big favorite here, too, getting a starred review and a spot on our Fanfare 2009 list. Every parent I know loves it, and the text and design beg for story hour sharing.

But I have a nagging problem with it. The whole point of the book is that everyone has ten fingers and ten toes, and that while we celebrate each baby's uniqueness, isn't it great that they (and, by extension, we) have this particular array of anatomy in common? "And both of these babies, / as everyone knows, / had ten little fingers / and ten little toes."

Except, of course, when babies don't. Not everybody does--some are born with fewer (or lose them due to disease or accident), some come with an extra one or two, some people don't even have two hands, for God's sake. I know that these people are relatively rare, but there is something that bothers me when a book so determinedly inclusive manages to be so clueless about what it's actually saying. If this book had a mouth, it would be cramming all ten toes into it right now. You would never (knowingly) read this book to a child who didn't have ten fingers and toes, would you? And shouldn't that give us pause about sharing it with the ones who do?

I don't usually have much patience for debates about "sensitivity" and have no idea why this book bugs me as much as it does.

R.I.P. Coleen Salley

Horn Book publisher Anne Quirk writes:


Coleen Salley died yesterday. Her professional life was spent mostly at the University of New Orleans, where she was a distinguished professor of children’s literature, and that’s the excuse most of us in children’s book publishing used for inviting her out for dinner whenever we were within hailing distance of a bayou. But the real reason was that she was the funniest person ever born. When Colleen began to wrap her smoky southern drawl around a story, we cradled our drinks and prayed that story would never end. In her 70s, she began writing down some of those tales she’d been telling. If you never met Coleen, search for one of the several audio books she recorded over the years, then imagine her sitting across your table. That might give you some sense of the terrible loss so many of her friends are feeling today.

Inanimate Alice

is back with a fourth chapter, and there's a bit of a rabbit hole . . . . Any theories as to what exactly is going on here would be welcome.

In lieu of a gift

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

My new Mac is making me do it.

All kinds of ways to avoid work right here, but I suppose you could tell yourself that it's continuing education. I'm really enjoying Charles Cumming's "The 21 Steps." Maps! Thanks to Leila for the link.

Bye, Bear

Betsy Bird says goodbye to the bear who has been her daily companion for lo these many years. I was glad to be able to pay my respects myself last week. Betsy was out sick when Richard and I were there, but we did get to have a nice chat with John Peters, taking a break from packing up all the stuff that is the Donnell Central Children's Room. He even showed us his collection of "wishing candles," an NYPL storytelling staple introduced (if I have this right) by Mary Gould Davis in the 1920s. I was taught in library school by Ellin Greene that one would give, say, a birthday child the privilege of snuffing the candle at the close of story hour, but John tells me that in these more egalitarian times, everybody gets to make a wish and blow the candle out.