| From
the May/June 2008 issue of The Horn Book Magazine
Editorial
Altogether, One at a Time
 t’s
a family-friendly Horn Book for you this month, from Megan
Lambert pondering what her children need to get from their picture
books, to Rudine Sims
Bishop’s reflections (within a wide-ranging interview
with K. T. Horning) on family dynasties in African American children’s
literature. Children’s book writers Linda Sue Park, Ginee
Seo and Bruce Brooks, Amy Schwartz, and Christopher
Paul Curtis share the tragicomic tales of getting good books
into the hands of their own kids. And Eloise Greenfield, in her
poem that closes this issue, reminds us that family members are
not necessarily on the same page (“My grandpa is the quiet
one, / his brother talks a lot”).
Ultimately, we each read alone. (Whether this sounds
sad or liberating to you is a topic best addressed with your minister
and/or therapist.) But like every reader, every book has a family
behind and around it. Its fellows, its creators, its publisher,
its reviewers, booksellers, librarians, teachers, parents, and friends
together conspire, consciously and not, directly and indirectly,
to get that book into a reader’s hands. I think I just changed
my mind: it only feels like we each read alone.
• •
•
PLEASE WELCOME the latest member of the Horn
Book family: Jonathan Hunt joins the masthead review staff.
Jonathan is an elementary school librarian for the Modesto City
Schools district in California and has served on the Newbery and
Printz award committees. He is a frequent contributor to our Borderlands
column and is currently working on an article on the proliferation
of graphic elements in young adult literature.
From the May/June 2008 issue of The
Horn Book Magazine |
