| From
the January/February 2006 issue of The Horn Book Magazine
Editorial
Smoking or Nonsmoking?
 ith
Jean Gralley inviting us to consider the possibilities of picture
books without paper (see “Liftoff,”
page 35), I’m reminded to invite you to visit our latest electronic
outpost: “Read Roger,” the Horn Book blog, located at
www.hbook.com/blog.
Updated at least once every work day, the blog
allows us to get out information about events and awards promptly.
It is also a good spot from which to comment upon and link to internet-based
children’s book news, such as the recent controversy over
the photo of Clement Hurd on the back of Goodnight Moon,
in which the cigarette in his hand has, for the most recent edition,
been digitally removed. While I can think of worse things perpetrated
on Goodnight Moon than this airbrushing (see the “Goodnight
Moon Board Book & Baby Socks” set), it has at least occasioned
a lively debate about the intersection between children’s
book history, the marketplace, and changing perceptions of what
“harmful to children” means.
And the blog gives me a spot from which to spout
opinions that might acquire an unmerited gravitas if committed to
print. I only wish they had already invented blogging the day I
hit upon the seductiveness of the American Girls™ catalog
as a suitable topic for an editorial, only
to be rightly thrown to the wolves in subsequent letters to the
editor. The blogging context is more forgiving of still-forming
(or half-cocked) opinions, and the opportunity for reasoned or outraged
response is right there in the “leave your comment”
box.
Whether a posting addresses what “stars”
mean in a reviewer’s vocabulary or recounts a chance phone
call with a lifelong P.E.I. resident who has never read Anne
of Green Gables, reader response is as much a part of the story
as the original posting. I do hope you will stop by and add your
voice to the conversation.
|
