Many of the books in this issue of Notes implicitly enjoin us to look up from the page and head out into nature (or, as my mother would say, “put down that book and go out and play!”). As I write this, we’re just coming off of Screen-Free Week, an annual effort in which young people and adults alike are encouraged to turn off their TVs, computers, and game consoles in favor of non-virtual recreation. “Read a book instead!” has always been at the top of the list of approved alternatives — but what if your book is on a screen? As digital editions take an increasing piece of the publishing pie, we are all being challenged to rethink what we mean by “book” and “reading.” I can now go outside and take an entire library along with me in my pocket. I wonder what Screen-Free Week — not to mention my mother — would think about that?

Roger Sutton
Editor in Chief

The post From the editor — May 2013 appeared first on The Horn Book.

Not here. While I’m firmly in favor of the right of people of any age to read up, down, or sideways as they choose, here at the Horn Book we like to think there is a bright line between publishing for adults and publishing for kids, defined as people of an age between birth and high school graduation. In no small part, we like to think this because it makes our work easier. But, like Jeanne Birdsall, I believe the line has value, too.

I came into librarianship more than thirty years ago as a YA librarian. Young adult literature was an almost completely different animal then. The books were shorter, the protagonists younger; sex might be happening, but it was off the page. (Judy Blume’s Forever is the big exception, but Forever was published, nominally, as an adult book.) You might have seen some four-letter words, but you’d never find a fuck on the first pages as you do at the beginning of Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor & Park, a YA novel that gets a starred review this month. Thirty years ago, YA books were labeled “12 and up,” and, as these things usually go, they were mostly being read by ten- to thirteen-year-olds. The first “14 and up” I can remember seeing was Margaret Mahy’s The Catalogue of the Universe, and now that age range is the rule.

Do you ever wonder if 14 and up, sometimes way up, should still be our job? Martha Parravano, the other day, was going through a book cart of new ARCs when she literally threw up her hands in submission to the lineup of fat, glossy YA novels. Their size, their number, their…perfectly respectable selves. I say “perfectly respectable” because the professionalism of these books is not in question, from jacket design on in to the catchy stories, fluid writing, and vivid characters (see Katrina Hedeen and Rachel L. Smith’s “What Makes a Good YA Love Story?” for a consideration of a baker’s dozen of excellent books showing just one slice of YA lit). But the fact that there is so much of it presents a question for everybody in the business of books for young people. Has contemporary YA lit outgrown our caretaking? And forget their staggering numbers: why are novels for people old enough to vote even our business? Bowker’s recent “Understanding the Children’s Book Consumer in the Digital Age” report revealed that it is adults, not teens, who buy most YA books, and those adults are buying them for their own reading pleasure. By and large, however, YA books are published by the children’s divisions of their publishers. Eleanor & Park is published by St. Martin’s Griffin, one of the very few cases I can think of where YA, labeled as such, comes from an adult trade division. I wonder if more of the grownups should be taking on their share.

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to Be a Teenager appeared first on The Horn Book.

For readers in the Southern California region, I’ll be speaking about the Common Core State Standards and nonfiction publishing at the Children’s Literature Council of Southern California’s spring workshop on Saturday, May 11, in South Pasadena. To register for the event go to http://www.childrensliteraturecouncil.org/events.htm, and I hope I see some of you there.

Roger Sutton
Editor in Chief
The Horn Book, Inc.

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Roger Sutton
Editor in Chief

From the April 2013 issue of Notes from the Horn Book.

The post From the editor – April 2013 appeared first on The Horn Book.

First of all, however, we are publishing this sheet to blow the horn for fine books for boys and girls — their authors, their illustrators, and their publishers. Small and inconspicuous space in the welter of present-day printing is given to the description and criticism of these books, and yet the finest type of writing, illustrating, and printing goes into them.

We hope to make our book notes and lists interesting to boys and girls themselves, to parents, to librarians, and to teachers, and by this means we shall keep our Suggestive Purchase List up to date. We also hope to give book news not covered elsewhere, including occasional short sketches of people who have done most for children’s literature and who should be remembered. We shall be glad to answer book questions, and if we receive at any time a particularly interesting letter about books, we shall print it in The Hornbook.

We find, too, that some of our friends live far away from Boston and come to see us only once a year. To them we want The Hornbook to carry greetings and news of The Bookshop and of The Bookshop staff.

Lest this horn-blowing become tiresome to you or to us, we shall publish The Hornbook only when we have something of real interest to say; not oftener than four times a year.

You may expect the next number on the first day of Children’s Book Week, November 10, 1924.

— Bertha E. Mahony

This editorial was in the first issue of The Horn Book, October 1924.

The post The Horn Book’s inaugural editorial appeared first on The Horn Book.

Roger Sutton
Editor in Chief

From the March 2013 issue of Notes from the Horn Book.

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Business as usual, you might think, in an industry that just gave its two biggest awards to books about a finger-painting gorilla and a larcenous fish — and you might have a point. As we planned the issue, I had what I thought was a clever idea to somehow graphically denote the reviews herein of books that we thought embodied and/or celebrated difference. Maybe we could have stickered them with a little Horn of Gondor or something. But that quickly revealed itself as a ridiculous idea: notwithstanding the nine YA novels with one-word titles, the review section is bristling with nonconformity. Kittens in hard hats, rabbits on skates, a boy with twelve fingers, a wereopossum, and all manner of supernaturally or scientifically enhanced young heroes populate the picture book and fiction reviews; pioneers such as Tito Puente, Anne Carroll Moore, Elizabeth Blackwell, and Igor Stravinsky are subjects of books reviewed in the nonfiction section. Children’s literature takes all kinds. (In “Different Drums,” short pieces scattered throughout the issue, our contributors tell you about some of the strangest.)

What this issue is aiming at are the books, the readers, the writers and artists, and the publishers who stand out from even the given otherness of our profession. Polly Horvath and Jack Gantos address the accusation of being weird. Barbara Bader and Leonard S. Marcus allow Paul O. Zelinsky and Tomi Ungerer to let their freak flags fly. In an industry that survives by cannibalism, Elizabeth Bluemle, Mary Cash, and Jason Low discuss staying out of the pot. Liz Burns and Claire Gross and Eugene Yelchin talk about books for kids who are perfectly not-weird but whose way to reading may be complicated by circumstances weirder than they should be.

As far as reading itself goes, it’s both a community and a private — sometimes secret — activity. Certainly, children of all stripes and sizes read in public without shame, and certain books foster social inclusion and even cachet. I remember our CEO Randy Asmo telling me how his son became king for a day at school by having scored an early copy of the latest Wimpy Kid title, and while I’m slightly squicked-out by the willingness of people to read Fifty Shades Freed on the subway, right out there for anyone to see, I admire their nerve. This is conventional reading in the best sense — books that tell the rest of the tribe that you’re keeping up and paying attention.

At other times, we read as a way to distinguish ourselves, to commune with those parts of the self that don’t seem to keep pace with the daily parade. Ironically, but of course, we discover by reading that there is in fact at least one other person who knows exactly how we feel. (There’s a great portrait of this kind of reading in Jo Walton’s Among Others, an adult book I’ve recently been urging upon everyone, my private reading become call to the faithful.) Independence is one thing, alienation is another; reading keeps the latter at bay while allowing the former to flourish.

From the March/April 2013 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

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But they never stop, not the books, not the battles, not the readers. The particulars change as themes and trends cycle and populations shift, but generations of young readers are alike in asking the same questions of themselves and the world, and “who will love me?” is a big one. Happy Valentine’s Day.

Roger Sutton
Editor in Chief

From the February 2013 issue of Notes from the Horn Book.

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If this sounds like the opening of one of those annual roundup letters tucked inside holiday cards, it kind of is. We’ve got a lot to celebrate at the Horn Book — much of it reflected in this issue, and beyond.

The Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards were presented in late September, on a gala Friday night event that was followed by a one-day colloquium featuring most of the honored authors and illustrators — a double whammy of a celebration. Formal acceptance speeches on Friday were expanded and deepened during Saturday’s informal panel conversations, breakout sessions, visual presentations, and art demonstrations. Our BGHB coverage here in the magazine tries to capture the energy of the weekend with a selection of excerpts from speeches, photos, and judges’ commentaries. In a break from tradition, we have not reprinted the complete texts of the winners’ acceptance speeches in the issue — but here’s where we get to the next thing the Horn Book is excited about: our online content.

You may have noticed a surge in original material published on the increasingly dynamic hbook.com, from the interactive Horn Book KidLit Election coverage on our Out of the Box blog to the remarkable articles marking Picture Book Month in November, including Crescent Dragonwagon’s moving tribute to her mother Charlotte Zolotow (“Over and Over”). This month, the website doesn’t merely support the magazine; it’s an equal partner. Want to read the BGHB winners’ acceptance speeches in full? They’re available on the site—along with video of all of the speeches. I strongly urge you to visit: you won’t want to miss, for instance, picture book award winners Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen’s very funny stories (Mac’s is about a first date gone sadly wrong, while Jon’s is about a conversation with his mother — but they both fundamentally concern the state of the picture book); or the direct line fiction winner Vaunda Micheaux Nelson draws from her great-uncle’s Harlem bookstore to her parents’ love of reading to her own career as a writer. (Illustrator Klassen also contributes our cozy magazine cover — thanks, Jon.)

The print/online link continues with the first of Kathleen T. Horning’s series of columns recognizing seventy-five years of the Caldecott Medal. In the coming 2013 Horn Book magazines, scholar-librarian Horning will examine one winning book per decade, focusing each time on a title that spotlights the developing identity of the American picture book. Her inaugural column appears in this issue, beginning with the 1930s and Thomas Handforth’s now nearly forgotten Mei Li. In print, Horning focuses on how Mei Li helped the nascent children’s book field answer the question, “What is a picture book?” Online, you will find her fascinating research into the background of author-illustrator Handforth, the China he discovered on his world travels, and the real little girl who became the inspiration for the character Mei Li. Again, you won’t want to miss it.

Finally, both in print and online we celebrate our choices for the best children’s and young adult books of 2012. There is a distinct lack on our “Fanfare” list of the generic and imitative; or, as Mal Peet put it in his acceptance speech for the BGHB–honored Life: An Exploded Diagram, the “literary equivalent of the McDonald’s Number One Combo.” No novels in which the kick-ass, snarky-witted, yet vulnerable heroine is so interchangeable she could be dropped into dozens of similar titles with nary a ripple. Nor any books in which the elaborately constructed fantasy world is really just an artifice to support the Harlequin-romance plot. (I could go on.) What you will find instead are twenty-seven individually excellent books — diverse in form and genre, character and setting, voice and intended reader — that remind us why our field is such a vibrant and rewarding one. Why we all work so hard creating, publishing, reviewing, promoting, teaching, selling, and sharing children’s books. Why we care so much — last year, this year, next year.

And that is perhaps the best reason to celebrate of all.

From the January/February issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

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Stripped (usually) of its very bad swearword, the question of what is a children’s book is in play every time we open a review copy at the Horn Book, or when a librarian makes a cataloging decision, or when a parent peruses bookstore or library shelves. (Note that it’s a question asked only by grownups.) Usually the question is subliminal: When we read The No. 1 Car Spotter and the Firebird, for example, we know it is a sequel to The No. 1 Car Spotter, an easy, child-centered chapter book by Atinuke, author of another easy, child-centered chapter book series about Anna Hibiscus. As far as this book (reviewed on page 78) and this question go, we’ve already done the heavy lifting. (The preponderance of series publishing makes our jobs easier in so many ways. Why am I not more grateful?) But what about a sui generis book like Ellen Bryan Obed and Barbara McClintock’s Twelve Kinds of Ice (page 103), an illustrated series of vignettes about winter weather? Kind of a memoir, not exactly a story, almost a poem, the book is the sort that makes us stop and think about how we are going to categorize it: we entertained arguments for nonfiction and poetry before placing the review, uneasily, in the fiction section, and settling, tentatively, on a suggested reading level. What is this and who is it for?—in other words, What is a children’s book?

Picture books bring the question to the forefront. While I hope we all know by now to steer clear of stories demanding gratitude for parental affection, what about the bedtime book (of which we review five in this issue)? At their most transparent, these books function as a pendulum swung while a voice gently commands you to become sleeeeeeeeeepy. Whose needs are really being served here? Because, traditionally, picture books are designed for a dual audience, with the adult reading the words while the pre-literate child watches the pictures, they properly belong to both adults’ and children’s literature, a Solomonic approach I’m comfortable with so long as the juvenile end of things is not shortchanged. It’s one thing for parent and child to laugh together at Bailey (see page 65); it’s another for a book to provoke laughs in grownups because the joke is flying over the head of the child. That’s just mean.

In assessing books for teens, the question becomes more insistent, and more like “When does a children’s book stop being a children’s book?” When I look at this year’s Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards for fiction (Vaunda Micheaux Nelson’s No Crystal Stair as the winner and Mal Peet’s Life: An Exploded Diagram and Elizabeth Wein’s Code Name Verity as honor books), I see three books that could have been published as adult novels without special pleading or blushing. I also see three books that represent the best that YA can be—and not because they seem like “real” (i.e., adult) books but because they respect the intensity teens can bring to reading: all three are about passions of interesting dimensions and reward the same in their readers. And if it is the blushing kind of passion you want, YA has become the place to go: what kind of a world is it when a novel for teenagers (Twilight) inspires smut for adults (Fifty Shades of Grey)? How is anyone supposed to keep track of what goes under whose mattress?

Keep asking, Neil, and we will, too.

From the November/December 2012 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

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