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In A Million Suns, the sequel to Beth Revis’s Across the Universe, Sol-Earth–born Amy is struggling with the claustrophobic life aboard the Godspeed after being prematurely awakened from her frozen sleep. The workers are getting rebellious, and the threat of violence onboard ship increases. The moral quandaries presented in shipboard life seem a natural extension of the concerns raised in the first book, and Revis adds a cliffhanger ending to heighten interest in the forthcoming conclusion to the trilogy. (12 years and up)

Kristin Cashore’s Bitterblue serves as a Graceling sequel and Fire companion. The story picks up eight years after Bitterblue, now eighteen, became queen of Monsea. She feels disconnected from her country and people, but friendship with two city thieves allows her to uncover a dangerous web of secrets. Cashore’s sophisticated prose propels the plot, and the believable struggles and maturation of Bitterblue’s character make the complex journey worthwhile. (14 years and up)

Froi of the Exiles is the second book in Melina Marchetta’s Lumatere Chronicles. Former street thug Froi, a secondary character in Finnikin of the Rock, is now, three years later, a devoted follower of Queen Isaboe of Lumatere and her consort Finnikin. But as the story progresses, his role shifts from loyal subject to unwilling spy, assassin, and major figure in the fortunes of his crumbling world. The tortured romances, continually surprising plot, and flashes of humor will keep readers fully engaged in this gripping story. (14 years and up)

Imagine an America in which love is a deadly disease to be eradicated. This is the setting for Lauren Oliver’s Delirium and its new sequel, Pandemonium. Lena’s former self is dead, buried in the fire and ashes that took her beloved Alex during their botched escape attempt from Deliria-Free America. Now chaos reigns as Lena begins a new life in the Wilds, becoming swept up in the war between DFA and the growing resistance. This is an action-packed, suspenseful page-turner with a rewarding and dramatic cliffhanger ending. (14 years and up)

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The paisley-patterned endpapers and title page were what first caught my eye.

intricate woodblock-style patterns on the title page

Then I discovered a whole other array of things that weren’t in the galley. Schoenherr stylistically envisions Bitterblue’s world in drawings that look like they’re woodblock (the medium isn’t mentioned, but our designer Lolly thinks the lines are too intricate to be actual woodblock). Elegant section-opening double-page spreads illustrate key scenes.

my favorite section opener

Detailed maps, illustrations, and diagrams at the front and back of the book help clarify Cashore’s imaginative world; if (like me) readers wonder about the exact look of the many bridges or the layout of the maze-like castle, they need only look to Schoenherr’s pictures for clarification. There’s also a tongue-in-cheek—and very helpful—“Who’s Who of the World as We Know It” appendix, purportedly written by Bitterblue’s royal librarian, Death (it even includes an ink stain caused by Death’s cat, Lovejoy).

the "Winged Bridge"

The galley did indicate that maps and a character list were to come; it’s not unusual for galleys to arrive without these sorts of things. However, since Cashore’s previous novels didn’t feature such an elaborate design, I didn’t expect quite this much. I can’t say it would have changed my review; the illustrations act primarily as clarification, with the heart of the novel in the text itself. It does make me wonder, though: at what point is a galley not satisfactory to properly review a book? And how can a reviewer know until she sees the final version (at which point it might be too late)?

Head on over to Kristin Cashore’s blog to find out more about the text/illustration collaboration and to read what she thinks of Schoenherr’s renderings of her Graceling Realm. I wholeheartedly agree with her comments!

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Harry Potter revealed a lot about children’s reading and changed how children’s books were published. I’d like to examine just how the world of books for children and young adults has changed since the last time I was here.

People throw around plenty of notions about what kids like to read. Or if kids like to read. Boys won’t read about girls, for example, a maxim of our profession to which British publisher Bloomsbury kowtowed (as did Viking almost fifty years ago with The Outsiders) by persuading Joanne Rowling to forgo the use of her first name on the cover, substituting her first initial and that of a pretended middle name. (She didn’t have one, so she took the initial of her grandmother Kathleen.) Would it have made a difference if the author of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone—more about that title in a minute—had been known from the start as Joanne Rowling, a lady? I propose that the biggest difference, if there was one, would be that adults would be the ones automatically thinking “girl book” and thus tailoring their recommendation of the book with that in mind.

And Harry Potter turned another piece of conventional wisdom on its head—that kids don’t like to read long books. Or books that have hard words like philosopher in the title, which had prompted Scholastic’s change to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Oh, do let’s keep going: kids don’t like hardcovers, kids don’t like books set in foreign countries, and to combine the two, kids won’t spend their own money on hardcover books set in foreign countries. Now let’s subtract. Take away the foreign countries; kids won’t spend their own money on hardcover books. Take away the hardcover; kids won’t spend their own money on books unless they are popular paperbacks.

And let’s take away the question of money altogether to reveal the conventional wisdom that unfortunately provides the basis of much of our work as teachers and librarians: kids don’t like to read. Kids must be forced to read, tricked into reading, bargained into reading. Like the terms disgruntled employee and scantily clad, reluctant reader is a compound cliché, one that slips far too easily from our professional tongues.

I could go on a long rant about this but will instead just give you a few points to consider:

Point one: Reluctant to read what? If you put down that novel and look around, you will see that lots of so-called reluctant readers are reading plenty; they just aren’t reading fiction, which in this age constitutes “real reading” as defined by “real readers”—mainly teachers and librarians. It wasn’t always thus; think of the first book to win the Newbery Medal, Hendrik Willem Van Loon’s The Story of Mankind.

Point two: If reluctance to read is considered the default, how do we feel about kids who already like to read? Do they get less attention by virtue of the fact that they don’t seem to need us as much? They do need us; in fact they are us, so let’s give them more respect.

Point three: Car commercials aren’t there to convince us to take up driving. Why do so many books, especially for younger children, belabor the point that reading is fun? A good book should be its own argument.

Let’s look at some more arithmetic, brought to you courtesy of The Horn Book Guide, to show you how Harry Potter proved we were wrong about a lot of things. The Guide, updated bimonthly at hornbookguide.com and published in print twice a year, reviews all new hardcover trade books for children and teens, rating each one on a scale from one (buy it now!) to six (hold your nose!) and indexing them in just about every way you can think of. Thus, the electronic version allows you to search, sort, and count reviews until the cows come home. I did some counting, and now I would like to show my work.

In 1998, The Horn Book Guide reviewed 3,613 books; in 2010, it reviewed 3,967 books, an increase of around 10%. A modest upswing: the much-discussed “explosion” in children’s book publishing has been largely in self-published books, both printed and digital, which the Guide does not review. Remember, however, that print runs for trade children’s books have increased, sometimes enormously; witness John Green’s recent autographing of the entire first print run of The Fault in Our Stars: 150,000 copies.

Here are some numbers to make fiction-happy librarians rejoice. In 1998, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was one of 652 novels reviewed in The Horn Book Guide. In 2010, the Guide reviewed 1,298 novels, twice as many. And where fiction constituted 18% of all trade children’s books we reviewed in 1998, in 2010 that percentage almost doubled, to 33%.

As you would expect, the success of Harry Potter meant a surge of fantasy publishing: the Guide reviewed 135 fantasy novels in 1998 and 415 in 2010. Even more meaningfully, at least 309 of those 415 were sequels or books in series; the number of reviewed series books of all kinds of fiction rose from 175 in 1998 to 520 in 2010, making up a whopping 40% of all fiction reviewed.

The appetite for series fiction neither began with Harry Potter nor ends with children. (If we would only accept how alike children’s reading is to our own, I am convinced that our reluctant-reader problem would almost entirely disappear.)

But what Harry demonstrated was a greater acceptance among adults and a greater willingness in the market for hardcover series. In the past we saw major crazes in paperback: Goosebumps, Sweet Valley High, The Baby-sitters Club. But Harry Potter proved, in the millions, that there was big money in hardcover, and an eagerness among kids for hefty books, ones that could be carried as totems of inclusion in a really big club (see Rebecca Donnelly’s “Hitting the Ground of Joy” in this issue for more on this phenomenon).

While hastening to give Harry Potter and J. K. Rowling their due for doing so much to put children’s reading in the forefront of cultural attention around the world, I also believe that we need to put them in context. There was stellar fantasy before Harry Potter, and there were children’s-book bestsellers, too: Goosebumps, anyone? In fact, it just might have been the Goosebumps kids who made Harry happen. And Goosebumps should give thanks to Love You Forever, published in 1986.

Here’s why. In 1986, children’s bookstores were flourishing, as were picture books, a symbiotic relationship based on two simple things: people were spending lots of money on books, and there was a population boom of young children. That arithmetic—consumer spending added to where the youth population is bulging—has far more impact on how well which types of children’s books do than anything else. And in the gung-ho 1980s there was a change in the balance of who bought the books, too. For most of the twentieth century, schools and libraries had been the largest customers for hardcover children’s books. But in the eighties, publishers—themselves increasingly consolidating and coming into the hands of publically traded companies—found there was more money to be made by selling books directly to children and parents themselves.

By the time Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone rolled around, those infant recipients of Love You Forever in 1986 were twelve years old. Goosebumps was at the height of its popularity in the early nineties, right on schedule for these now elementary-school kids, who were ready for something new. It takes nothing away from the phenomenon of Harry to say that the time was right. Unfortunately, the time was no longer so right for children’s bookstores—by the time Harry arrived to inject a fresh spurt of consumer willingness, too many of those stores had closed in favor of the superstores like Borders and Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.com was quietly stalking them. (Remember that when people discovered they could easily buy the UK edition of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets from Amazon.co.uk a full year before Scholastic planned to publish it here, entirely new publishing models were born.) In big box and online stores, books need to sell themselves, and that’s exactly what a series is good at.

I wish I could tell you that the recent baby boomlet (Wikipedia says that more children were born in the U.S. in 2007 than in 1957, the height of the baby boom) means YA books will go crazy again in 2022, but we just don’t know. There’s the economy, of course, and it would take a whole other speech, and a whole other speaker, to speculate on what effect the increasing ubiquity of electronic entertainment will have on printed books. No, movies did not drive out theater, TV did not drive out movies, and none of them drove out books. But—oh, let me take a stab.

I laugh when people worry about reading going electronic, because I already do most of my reading that way. So, probably, do you. I spend most of my workday dealing with e-mail, editing articles and reviews, reading news, and writing memos, book reviews, and speeches like this one. All of this takes place on one screen or another.

I do read children’s books in print, and so far the Horn Book has refused to review from electronic galleys. I’ll probably be overruled about this eventually, but my thinking is, If you’re gonna sell it on paper, I wanna see it on paper. My own recreational reading is a mix: newspapers online; half a dozen print magazines a month; books in hardcover, paperback, or e-book format on my iPad; and audiobooks on my iPod. I like to have several books going at once.

I expect that my reading will only become more electronically based—and I’m relatively old. What will it mean for babies today? What will my grandson, now two, be reading when he is twelve? How will he be reading? One thing I wonder, and part of me even hopes it will come true, is whether publishing might cease to be seen as a moneymaker by its governing corporations. That selling five thousand copies of a book might be enough, and schools and libraries might, I hope, be well funded enough to buy those copies. Wouldn’t it be funny—okay, I mean wouldn’t it be great—if libraries, currently trying to position themselves as the e-centers of e-everything, instead found themselves as The Place To Go when somebody wanted a book to hold in his or her hands? Every author in this room is going to disagree with me on this, but there are too many copies of too many books being published. A little curation would be a good thing.

In a speech at Library Journal and School Library Journal’s e-book summit (and referenced by Stephen Roxburgh in our March/April 2012 issue), Eli Neiburger brought up the idea of book publishing as being akin to the candle industry, a comparison I’m liking more and more. Particularly because the combination of candles and printed books means we will still be able to read if the lights go out forever. (Clearly I’ve been reading too many of those teen dystopia series.) But while candles have been replaced by electric light in the developed world, every house has some, everybody uses them sometimes, and you can buy them everywhere. We use candles in emergencies and in celebration. They are utilitarian and glamorous. They can be the center of attention or shine light on something else. They can be life-saving or dangerous. You can light one from another. These are all the things that matter about books, too.

Article adapted from Roger Sutton’s 2010 Ezra Jack Keats Lecture, delivered at the Fay B. Kaigler Children’s Book Festival in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, on April 7, 2011.

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Having suffered a traumatic event at an early age, Natalie, a middle-class seventeen-year old living in 1880 New York City, has lost her ability to speak… in this world, at least.  Natalie is pulled into the supernatural realm, first (figuratively) by a wealthy spiritualist, Mrs. Northe, and later (literally) by the allure of eighteen-year-old Lord Denbury—a nobleman trapped in a life-size oil painting by black magic. In her journey to free her beloved Lord Denbury from his cursed frame, Natalie struggles to gain control of her reality, find her voice, and deal with the plight of falling in love with a two-dimensional image.

Despite my initial misgivings, I found myself drawn into Hieber’s tale. Apart from the occasional awkwardly scripted romance scene, the novel effectively engages the reader with imaginative description and an unpredictable adventure.  The epistolary structure, composed of diary entries and letters, guides the reader through the tale in satisfying increments.  Although main plot points are told retrospectively, Natalie’s detailed (and period-appropriate) narrative effortlessly drives the action of the story.  Readers will revel in the quest to decode magical clues alongside this unassuming heroine.

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…packaged with paperbacks of the previous novels, Graceling and Fire. It’s tormenting Cindy and me, since we won’t have time to read Bitterblue—never mind reread the first two!—until all our Guide assignments are read and reviewed. Alas.

If you’re lucky enough to be reading it now, no spoilers!

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Sixteen-year-old vampire Pearl discovers she can withstand sunlight after an encounter with a unicorn in Sarah Beth Durst’s Drink, Slay, Love. Her family sends her up to the local high school to procure refreshments (i.e., students) for the upcoming king’s feast. Pearl becomes attached to perky Bethany and gorgeous Evan, but her violent subterranean life ultimately forces her to choose sides. A lively antihero, Pearl is fierce, smart, and sarcastic in this sweet, unusual romance. Durst creates an original, tough-as-nails brood of vampires…who will leave you thirsty for more. (14 years and up)

In Marissa Meyer’s debut novel Cinder, the first book in the Lunar Chronicles series, teenage cyborg mechanic Linh Cinder is treated as subhuman while living with her evil guardian stepmother and two stepsisters. A chance encounter with New Beijing’s Prince Kai changes Cinder’s life forever. As Cinder aids in Kai’s search for the missing heir to the Lunar throne, she and the prince are drawn to each other. Add in plague, androids, hovercrafts, and a palace ball for a sci-fi/fairy tale mash-up that is out-of-this-world fantastic. (12 years and up)

Diabolical is the fourth book in Cynthia Leitich Smith’s Tantalize series. When guardian angel Zachary teams up with wolfboy Kieren to make a daring rescue at the mysterious Scholomance Academy, they find themselves locked in and joining forces with an eclectic group of students to face down their demonic instructor, an axe-wielding caretaker, and the very hounds of hell. The Harry Potter–worthy final battle between good and evil — with a welcome dose of devilish humor added in — make this installment an expertly woven narrative, bringing new readers up to speed while satisfying invested fans with a happily-ever-after ending. (14 years and up)

The daughter of a demon and a fallen angel living in Pandemonium, one of Hell’s cities, Daphne is the unlikely heroine in Brenna Yovanoff’s The Space Between. But when her favorite brother, Obie, disappears on Earth, Daphne must venture from her protected life to the gritty sludge of Earth to find him. Aided by Truman, a self-destructive mess of a boy, Daphne must scramble to understand Earth as she attempts to complete her mission. And thanks to alternating narration by Daphne and Truman, the teenagers’ hard-earned love unfolds compellingly. (14 years and up)

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© 2011 by Jason Stemple

For a writer so notoriously prolific (closing in on three hundred titles, according to Wikipedia) Jane Yolen is notable for maintaining a high standard of writing across many genres, including poetry, picture book texts, and fiction of both the realistic and fantastic kinds. Her latest novel, Snow in Summer, is a fresh blend of historical fiction and fairy tale, a “Snow White” set in 1930s West Virginia.

1. The world has probably forgotten more folktales than it remembers — what do you think makes the difference?

Jane Yolen: Three things really (don’t you love fairy tale conventions, like the rule of three!):

First, cultures are born, grow, thrive, and die. And if they die before developing a written language, there may only be shards of story, or corrupted bits of story left.

Second: some stories simply do not or cannot live outside their cultures. They are so culture-specific that they don’t travel well.

Third: some stories are intrinsically more interesting than others, and even added to and/or changed by different tellers (think Cinderella, think Disney), they still remain in the public consciousness.

2. Snow in Summer’s heroine Summer has the nicest fairy godmother–figure in Cousin Nancy. Was there a Cousin Nancy in your childhood?

JY: Good grief, I never thought of it like that. However, yes, there was, and I expect that means my cousin/aunt (by marriage, but she felt like a blood relative) Honey Knopp was who Nancy is patterned after. Not that my parents were like Stepmama and Summer’s father. Not at all. But Honey was the one who taught me about conscience and Quakerism, liberal politics, hootenannies, and who struck the flint of my poetry. Meanwhile my father said, “Your poems are nice, Jane, but you can’t make a living that way.”

3. How does a longtime fantasy writer feel about being in a publishing world that can feel like all-fantasy-all-the-time?

JY: Well, it’s getting harder and harder to make the unreal seem real. Or rather make the stories’ magical elements seem . . . magical . . . when we have things like faster-than-sound travel, e-books, bestsellers about telling your child to go the f**k to sleep, 3-D movies, multiple dystopian novels battling for top space on the bestseller lists, Avatar blue people running along tree limbs, Kindles kindling sparks, and sparkly vampires.

4.Do you believe in magic?

JY: I believe there are prestidigitators who can do card tricks and saw-the-woman-in half tricks. I believe there are politicians who can make us believe up is down and wrong is right. I believe there are preachers who try to sell us a mess of pottage.

And then I believe that an owl in flight, a hawk in stoop, an otter rising out of the duckweed, a triple rainbow over the Isle of May, the New Jersey skyline as seen from the Highline in Manhattan on a night of the full moon, the small greenings of spring, honeybees on a blossom, and a newborn’s finger curled around mine are small everyday miracles, another word for ordinary magic. And that I believe in.

Oh — and if anyone can show me a real fairy, or a ghost, or a unicorn, I am so there . . . .

5.  If you could keep a single folktale or fairy tale in your pocket, what would it be?

JY: A single one? Impossible. But three, possible: “Brother and Sister” (a Russian tale); “Beauty and the Beast,” from the French (only I want the prince to remain older and seasoned); and “Iron John” from the Grimms.

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