>”We have turned off the spigot, but we have a very robust pipeline”–Houghton Mifflin Harcourt spokesman Josef Blumenfeld, explaining the company’s rationale for ordering its editors to stop acquiring manuscripts. No, Joe, what you have turned off is the water supply, rendering both the pipeline AND spigot irrelevant.
>Add ‘em up, Bobby
November 18, 2008 By 16 Comments
>Listen to the children!
August 14, 2008 By 8 Comments
>Maybe Sherry Jones, whose The Jewel of Medina was cancelled by Ballantine for fear of Muslim terrorist rage, was just working with the wrong division of Random House. The copyright page of each fall 08 Random House ARC I’ve received states “Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.”
>Just how old IS Ellie Berger?
August 8, 2008 By 4 Comments
>As quoted in the Wall Street Journal:“There has been a real revolution” in books that “have more kid appeal,” especially when it comes to boys, says Ellie Berger, who oversees Scholastic’s trade division. “It’s a shift away from the drier books we all grew up with.” And I would love to know whose ass this [...]
>Trivia question
July 10, 2008 By 29 Comments
>What novelist for children with more than three or four books to his or her name has never written a sequel? I ask because I’m surveying my books to be be reviewed for the September issue (surveying being far more entertaining than actually, you know, reviewing) and, like, six out of the seven novels are [...]
>Hear Roger (and Richard Peck)
June 5, 2008 By 1 Comment
>In our latest podcast Roger brings us along for an evening in New York with Elizabeth Law (Vice President and Publisher, Egmont USA), Douglas Pocock (Executive Vice President, Egmont USA), and Newbery Medalist Richard Peck. After a lively discussion about what draws adults to read young adult books, Roger talks to Richard Peck about his [...]
>Code Pink
March 24, 2008 By 10 Comments
>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 [...]
>But I Play One on TV
March 19, 2008 By 20 Comments
>Hard books and awards
March 13, 2008 By 10 Comments
>Australian Sonya Harnett has won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, an honor that speaks to the discussion we’re having about Nina Lindsay’s comments about “shelf-sitters.” Completely deserving of the many awards her writing has won, Hartnett is, however, no crowd-pleaser. While as a culture we are used to the fact that adult fiction with a [...]
