The Horn Book » I am so going to hell

Candlewick is back in Cambridge

Roger Sutton — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 16:08:22 +0000

this Saturday, with “From Screen to Book” at the Cambridge Public Library, an afternoon’s discussion of picture books and digital media. The presenters include three illustrators, Candlewick art director Ann Stott, and agent Holly McGhee; the moderator is Jenny Brown from Shelf Awareness, who, incidentally, wrote a great account of the Horn Book at Simmons colloquium. I wonder if they’ll talk about the cyclical request for publishers to include in the book identification of the media used to make the pictures. I bet Lolly Robinson or K.T. Horning will know more, but this question first popped up (in my professional lifetime) in the 1980s, when the demand for picture books was high and an ancillary market in original picture book art developed and was celebrated, with Thomas Locker as our own “Painter of Light.” But in an era where “original medium” is hardly ever left digitally untouched before printing (beyond, I mean, the digital production of the book itself) what are you going to hang on the wall? And how are you going to describe it on the copyright page? “The pictures were created using PhotoShop” is about as helpful as saying “these pictures were made on pieces of paper.”

I hope you’re all taking a look at our contributions to Picture Book Month; this week we have Peter Sís’s 2012 Hans Christian Andersen Medal acceptance speech.

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Democrats are up

Roger Sutton — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 18:29:02 +0000

Now that the Young Republicans’ Club has chosen its ticket, the Democrats are off and running. Far more of them to wade through (why IS that?*) but the Party has thinned the herd down to four potential candidates who will be presenting their platforms this week. First up, Octavian Nothing.

*Really, why? I think I maybe know two declared Republicans who work in children’s books. Do the rest keep quiet? I can see why they might.

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Comments aren’t working

Roger Sutton — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 01:03:17 +0000

I asked for your thoughts on Anna Karenina earlier today but have since discovered that there’s something wrong with the comments feature throughout the website. Comments aren’t posting. We’re working on it.

But since I have you on mute, I thought I might share a few thoughts.

Team Renesmee.

Boy books are usually girl books in disguise.

Plain.

Writers who pay bloggers for reviews aren’t worth reading.

@JenniferWeiner is annoying.

And so is everybody else on Twitter.

Train.

All self-publishers secretly want a book deal.

Honor Books are runners-up.

Maggie Smith should rein it in a little.

That is all.

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Something to do while Wikipedia is down

Roger Sutton — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:43:01 +0000

Go and vote on the final Calling Caldecott ballot. Ruthless elimination has already occurred; there are now just five choices for your three votes. Chills!

I’ll be in Dallas for ALA tomorrow through Monday, serving on the Batchelder Award committee and schmoozing with our advertisers, who, it is interesting, are among the supporters of the deservedly maligned SOPA Act proposal that prompted Wikipedia and others to protest. I’ll have to remember to ask if that Dead End in Norvelt cover I plucked from cyberspace to put here yesterday is going to get us in trouble. More chills!

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Guiding the young

Roger Sutton — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 13:04:28 +0000

“This is a very good start, really. Now, you might want to move that line just a tad to the left, and think a bit about your colors.”

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>Cross out Beezus!

Roger Sutton — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 15:16:00 +0000

>I just saw ~~two~~ ~~three~~ four new YA novels ~~indulging~~ employing ~~annoying~~ pervasive strike-throughs to indicate a narrator’s ~~dithering~~ second thoughts or ~~transparently self-buffing lies~~ strategic rearrangements of the truth. I think this might be 2012′s ~~dead girl~~ ~~OCD~~ ~~selectively mute~~ protagonist of choice. It’s ~~kind of like when everyone gets the same toy for Christmas~~ an interesting new post-modern narrative choice that reveals the self-~~centeredness~~ reflexivity of the ~~typing~~ writing process.

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>When books become real

Roger Sutton — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 20:59:00 +0000

>This little bit of internet mischief always makes me think of Frindle.

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>Jokers to the left of me, jokers to the right

Roger Sutton — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 18:05:00 +0000

>Leila pointed me to this case in Seattle of Brave New World being yanked from the curriculum for being insensitive re Native Americans. The Prez has already gotten in trouble (per usual) with Fox News for the inclusion in his new picture book of Sitting Bull (http://nation.foxnews.com/media/2010/11/15/obama-praises-indian-chief-who-killed-us-general); I’m wondering if that same spread is going to get him in trouble from progressives as well, as illustrator Loren Long chose to depict Sitting Bull as a sort of landscape, with buffalo for eyes, hills and cracked earth for nose and mouth, and some pine trees placed so they form eyebrows (and, dare I say, boogers). It’s the old one-with-nature stereotype, which wouldn’t be so bad had all of the other subjects of the book not been depicted realistically. If you’re there, Debbie Reese, what do you think?

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>Here’s another thing I don’t get to do in my day job

Roger Sutton — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 16:39:00 +0000

>While I am used to growing impatient with plays, movies, and operas halfway through, I think I only left a movie twice: Madness of King George and Shakespeare in Love. (Hmm, is there a pattern?) But I was shocked when Richard, who feels a moral obligation to finish every book he opens, eagerly agreed to go home last night at the intermission of ART’s production of Cabaret.

We might have soldiered on had it not been a school night, but, man, it was grueling. The performances were fine (headlined by Amanda Palmer as Emcee) but the production heavily underlined anything it could to evoke . . . something but I’m not sure what. The decadence (black underwear, Palmer in an uncovered breast-binder and a cock in her pants) made me think of what Cliff, the Christopher Isherwood character, says to Sally Bowles: “Are you trying to shock me?” And the Kit Kat dancers as soulless zombies walking through the audience toward a glaring light reminded me of a production I once saw of Weill’s Mahagonny[no, it was Parsifal] where the director had all the characters line up to drink poisoned Kool-Aid. In Auschwitz.

But still–to miss the second act. I fear I have offended the critical gods and will somehow be punished for this.

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>Free spoilers here!

Roger Sutton — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 16:43:00 +0000

>for Mockingjay. See comments for my continued thought from Twitter. Add anything you want. [I changed the name of this post. I meant to say that there would be no spoilers on this main page but plenty in the comments. Which there are.]

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