>Marc Aronson and I have been talking about Boys Books a lot, and about how boys can be confounded by adult definitions of what constitutes worthwhile reading: usually it means a book, often it means fiction, and when it does include nonfiction, it had better look a lot like a novel. But I am loving [...]
>Off till next week
March 6, 2008 By 5 Comments
>Thank you all for the great discussion about adults and children reading. Richard and I are going to New York today to see Elizabeth and other assorted friends and two shows: the revival of Sunday in the Park with George, which was the first show I ever saw on Broadway, and Come Back, Little Sheba [...]
>Yet another G-word
March 5, 2008 By 75 Comments
>I received an email yesterday from a librarian who hated our reviews because she thought they had too much plot summary, but she was really pissed that we “almost always give away the ending.” Her first point is debatable–how much is too much?–but her second is demonstrably false while containing a truth: sometimes, we do [...]
>Happy Birthday, Judy!
January 9, 2008 By 1 Comment
>Martha told me she heard this morning on “Writer’s Almanac” that today is Judith Krantz’s birthday. (I guess there is hope for NPR.) There are lots of writers I admire, respect, enjoy, but Krantz is the one I love the most. It’s not the sex and clothes (although she writes well about both) but the [...]
>Merry Christmas Darlings
December 24, 2007 By 5 Comments
>Hey, I finally made it. I hope everyone gets some nice uninterrupted recreational reading time over the holidays. I’ve started my own off with The Exception by Christian Jungersen (Talese/Doubleday), a hugely engrossing mystery/thriller/black comedy (I think) about the employees of a Danish genocide documentation center. The women who work there have been receiving threatening [...]
>When Frog and Toad Are More Than Friends
December 13, 2007 By 5 Comments
>Who needs old closet case Dumbledore when Claire has put together a first-class list of out-n-proud GLBTQ-and-sometimes-Y fiction? I’ve got an editorial in the upcoming Horn Book about the outing of Dumbledore, who in fact joins a long line of characters who coulda-woulda-shoulda be gay if the reader so inclines–like Shakespeare in Susan Cooper’s King [...]
>Excuse My Dust
November 26, 2007 By 7 Comments
>A Horn Book interview with Philip Pullman is forthcoming on our website later this week; Philip and I spent a few minutes on Friday discussing the upcoming Golden Compass movie and the peculiar Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, whose job I totally want: the man makes more than 300,000 smackers a year interviewing himself [...]
>Burning down the house?
November 19, 2007 By 20 Comments
>Amazon’s new e-book reader, Kindle, is here. I have great hopes for e-books, read them regularly (via Miss Palm) and Kindle has a lot of neat features, mostly stemming from its free (if limited) wireless access to the internet. But two things are stopping me from wanting one: it’s ugly and it doesn’t have a [...]
>How many do YOU bring?
September 24, 2007 By 4 Comments
>"We Are All Winners"
June 12, 2007 By 4 Comments
>opined Karen Hesse in her Newbery-Medal acceptance speech (yeah, I know, easy for her to say) but I am stoked, not to mention contractually obligated, to announce the winners of Mother Reader’s 48 Hour Book Challenge. The Most Books Read Prize goes to the Midwestern Lodestar blog, and the Most Time Spent Reading Prize to [...]
