Thank you to all the judges for your unwitting participation in this series. I know you didn’t ask for this abuse.

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Perkins likes The Fault in Our Stars for its “clear-eyed funny transcendence.” But of what? I liked her experiments in comparison (which book got more Post-it notes? which one would she recommend to more people?) and while she ends with a very practical method (“Which one would I be reading again?”), I’m not at all sure if this was her deciding question or a rhetorical one, as it this point “the train began to pull away” and the conductor tells her to grab one book or the other.

Patterson chooses No Crystal Stair because “bookstores in this country are dying.” Well, yes, they ARE, but this kind of cheerleading is a little too close to Donna Jo Napoli’s “nuclear war would be terrible” reasoning to be completely, um, transcendent. I do like Patterson’s call for teachers to let students “flip [No Crystal Stair] around and go at it at their own pace.” I don’t think I started that book at the beginning, either.

Cottrell Boyce is interesting in that he subjects Code Name Verity to some fairly damning criticism but then goes on to laugh off his own comments as nit-picking, as in “this book makes light of torture, ha-ha, no biggie though.” He doesn’t have anything negative to say about The Fault in Our Stars, but gives the big prize to No Crystal Stair because it comes “from a loving heart.” I think I agree with him that it does, but I would be afraid to venture that the other books don’t. But good for No Crystal Stair. I was surprised when it won The Boston Globe-Horn Book Award and I’m surprised here, too. It’s the kind of book you love but worry that nobody else will.

The third-round winner is Lynne Rae Perkins. While I wish she hadn’t dashed away on a metaphorical train at the end of her essay, she left the impression that of these three judges, she would be the most fun to talk about books with. And I’d want to ask her more about the re-reading criteria: In my head, great books and books I love to reread are two Venn circles that barely intersect.

Tomorrow I will chose a winner from our three finalists: Perkins, Kathi Appelt, and Martine Leavitt. The winner will receive a years’s subscription to the Horn Book Magazine as well as a donation of same to a school or library of their choice.

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Leavitt does a great job. With not too much plot and with enthusiasm to spare, she was personal and specific, finding very different things to appreciate in both books. She compares them on a common point, that Hazel and Augustus in The Fault in Our Stars pulled her in while Sophie in Endangered “felt far away,” and she makes a critical point to suggest that her reaction is not just a feeling: “Perhaps it was that Schrefer named emotions rather than showing them.” There’s a little shuck-and-jive about “being picky,” but we can tell she didn’t, or didn’t pretend to, flip a coin. Leavitt wins.

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These are both fine essays (and both notable for a lack of reliance on the first person) but I feel like each could have gone either way, with each stating which book wins but not offering any reasons beyond personal preference. This has been a common occurrence in this year’s matches (always?) and maybe that’s what’s wanted? But I was thinking back on our old friends Mr. Apple and Ms. Orange. True, comparing them to each other is pointless, but can’t you have an orange that is a better example of its species than a given apple is of its? Hey, don’t bogart that joint.

I’ll go with Murdoch for her liveliness (when before has a BoB judge used “va-va-voom”?) and more analytical approach.

The first round is complete, and I’m giving the win to Kathi Appelt. I really liked that way she didn’t just give us reasons both books were great but went on to explore what about her choice made it better fulfill the criteria she revealed.

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Speaking of which . . . . Billingsley’s effusions over her books makes me think of that scene in The Group where Libby starts going on and on about the Baked Alaska while the other wedding guests suddenly start feeling like they have someplace better to be. Still, Billingsley only wrings her hands over the agony of choice for seventy-five words before getting down to business. She is also good on the books’ merits (no de-merits, however) and is succinct about what guided her choice: “what I would have loved most as a kid.” In a contest like this one, it’s as usable a criterion as any. But while she thus chooses Splendors and Glooms, I sense her worrying about running into Rebecca Stead at the inaugural Random Penguin party and so she closes with a portentous flourish in the direction of Liar & Spy.

This is close to a tie OMG OMG HOW DO I CHOOSE THIS IS ART NOT A WRESTLING MATCH but I’m going with Billingsley because she gets the job done in one third the time of  Gidwitz.

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We don’t need the immediately following caveat: “At least for this reader.” We didn’t think you were speaking for anyone else.

Caletti is practically hyper-ventilating as she begins, having “a moment of panic” (understandable, but still) about comparing a book she had never heard of to the ubiquitous and multi-laurelled John Green (“What about CARNEGIE HALL?”). And I wish I never knew AND NOW I CAN’T UNLEARN IT that Laurie Halse Anderson called John Green “a holy man.” As Richard observed to me about Bette Midler in Gypsy, the problem with starting big is that the only place to go is frantic, and Caletti’s enthusiasm doesn’t leave enough room for our own. (This is something like the point Kenneth Oppel made about Wonder.) But she identifies respective and common strengths and ultimately her context and criteria: “I am a novelist. I love a perfect sentence and a just-right image.” She chooses Green because she thinks the writing is richer. I’m inferring because she starts going on about birthday cakes then and I had to look away.

Winner: Appelt.

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Engle begins badly: “Judging is inherently biased.” Tell it to the, er, judge. Bias means that the person judging has a pre-determined and frequently unspoken stake in the outcome of something. We don’t even need to get into the weeds of subjectivity and objectivity to allow that a judge can render a decision  free of bias. But bias isn’t the problem with her and Oppel’s arguments for their choices; where they both go astray is in their refusal to actually compare the merits and flaws of their assigned contestants. Of course it is apples and oranges (and lets drop that particular image for the duration, shall we?), but that’s the nature of the contest. Engle writes beautifully of the strengths of Titanic and Verity, but she never engages the books with each other nor finds any faults (not even the cheap-assed paper Titanic is printed on) in either, thus making her choice of Code Name Verity simply an implied declaration of personal taste. That’s not judging, that’s choosing.

While Oppel never compares his two books except to say that “you would be hard-pressed to find two books with less in common” he does find one, Wonder, to be flawed: “My only general quibble is that Wonder’s characters are all perhaps a little too wise and noble, and exude so much emotion that I felt relatively little of my own.” In the generally genteel environs of the BoB, this is harsh, although kindly put. With “quibble” and “perhaps a little too . . .” he uses  weaselly phrases familiar to over-polite reviewers everywhere, but at least he’s making a criticism. I wonder if he found any fault with Bomb–as the Battle goes on, it will be instructive to see if any of the judges can dispense praise and criticism  to both books in their bracket while still naming one the winner. I mean, while we know the BoB brackets contain no ringers, it’s not like they’re all masterpieces, either.

So Oppel for the win, by a hair but decisively. Next!

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“Any book which is at all important should be reread immediately.”
— Schopenhauer

The management has suggested that I review picture book reviewing. “Feel free to rant about its sorry state.” I also feel wary, as I did when I first began to review children’s books in the 1970s. I had written and/or illustrated more than twenty-five books by then, and believed that I knew from both my education (in graphic arts) and my vocation a good deal about the subject. So when I was given the opportunity to voice some of the many opinions I had been storing up, I shivered slightly and jumped in.

Of course I was already aware, from personal experience, just how pleasant it is to be well reviewed, how devastating to be devastated. But would that make me a responsible reviewer? Could I be objective and generous enough with other people’s work? Fortunately, I quickly realized that it is always a major pleasure and triumph to discover good new work, no matter whose it is. My most difficult experiences have continued to be translating very negative, almost visceral, reactions into sensible criticism. Many years and hundreds of reviews later, I still feel challenged when faced with the twin tasks of judging and then explaining, clearly and succinctly, the reasons for a judgment. I persist because of a very deep conviction that (Note to the printer: please set the following in 18pt. Whatever Bold) A PICTURE BOOK IS A COMPLICATED FORM OF COLLABORATIVE ART. When it is very well done, it is an artistic achievement worthy of respectful examination and honor. Even failures, and especially near misses, deserve the kind of attention and understanding given to serious creative endeavors.

Picture books do not get this often enough. Like children, they are short, and often condescended to by people who, because they do not spend much time with them, do not know better. Have I ever been at a dinner party where someone, hearing what my work is, has not offered to share with me his or her “great idea for a kids’ book”?

“A few hundred words . . . a handful of pages . . . I can do that” is the common, if unspoken, belief hovering in the air between us.

Just a few hundred words? No problem, right? Then let us begin with them. Like poetry, a picture book has to be written in two ways. It must work when read aloud, and also when read silently to oneself. Every syllable counts. Most important, the well-chosen words need to be simple but never simplistic, clear and strong enough to interest a child and hold her attention. Style alone is not sufficient. When Isaac Bashevis Singer won the Nobel Prize for Literature he announced that there were “five hundred reasons why I . . . write for children.” One was that, “they still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity . . . ” Another was: “They love interesting stories.” Short, interesting stories are the structural steel that supports the illustrations in picture books. Look up “illustrate” in a Webster’s Unabridged. The root is illustrare. And among the definitions are “to light up, illuminate, embellish, shed light upon, to throw the light of intelligence upon, to make clear, to elucidate by means of a drawing or pictures.” And all that is just what wonderful illustrations do, and have done ever since books were first illuminated in medieval times by talented, cloistered hands.

In 1972, Nancy Ekholm Burkert began her illustrated version of “Snow White” by illuminating the O in the word Once. “Once it was the middle of winter, and the snowflakes fell from the sky like feathers.” These are the first words of the Randall Jarrell translation. The type starts three quarters of the way down a large white page. A bare tree stands behind the decorated “O.” A hunter and his dog step through it into the fairy tale. The reader follows, drawn by the pictures into the story, by the story into the pictures. It is this always-changing relationship of words and pictures that makes and shapes picture books.

About 1200 to 1500 of these slim volumes are published in a year that approximate figure includes fiction, nonfiction, and board books. Most of these are noted at least once, a few lines to a customer, in a couple of professional journals. A very small percent of the books published will receive more than two or three hundred words of public recognition. A talented, highly regarded editor of my acquaintance suggests testing even the more extensive reviews by crossing out any analytical comments with your pen to see what is left. The result? Even the longer reviews turn out to consist almost completely of plot summary. In the days of color overlays, this editor added, one journal consistently used slight variations of the same last line to comment on the art, “the pictures are done in striking shades of melon, pimento, and avocado.” Can a plot summary or an appraisal, more suitable to a discussion of lunch, really be all there is to say about thirty-two pages of graphic drama starring pictures and words?

Two clichés may help explain why so few picture book reviewers study the form they are dealing with and its history. The first, “it’s just a kids’ book,” is not usually articulated but relates to an old bias toward childhood. The other, heard too often, is “I don’t know much about art but I know what I like.” The problem with this one is that a critic not only needs to know what she likes, she also has to be able to say why. Know-nothing attitudes are at least partially responsible for the short shrift or “plot summary” school of picture book criticism.

In fact, there is more to learn about art, and that includes the art of illustration, than most of us will absorb in a lifetime. Looking at the work of a fine illustrator, we see, as we do when we examine fine painting or sculpture, a particular vision drawn from styles and techniques of past and present, filtered through a single sensibility. The period relevant to contemporary picture books began with the advent of modern printing, about ninety years ago. There have been wonderfully creative people at work over this time. And the more familiar one is with their output, the more discriminating one becomes. Without this background it is much more difficult for a critic to recognize original, new talent. Or to differentiate between the fresh skill in little book A as contrasted with the competent but very derivative little book B.

Many years ago, I was invited as a poet in brief residence to help introduce some classes of eight-, nine-, and ten-year-olds to writing and poetry. Working two weeks at a time over a four-year period, I found an effective starting point for those young writers that, considered in retrospect, may also be applicable to critical writing. The students and I talked then about the differences between looking and seeing. How important it is when you are writing, and drawing, to really pay attention: to see. The first assignment I gave them was to write a description of a thing. This was an exercise in using words with precision, to convey a picture of something the writer might have looked at, perhaps often, but not really paid close attention to. I wanted these students to make pictures with words so accurately that whoever read them would see what the children had seen. Gretchen described her running shoes in a paragraph. Henry studied the picture over his bed and wrote about it with care. Sara captured her favorite stuffed animal on paper. And when we read these descriptions to one another, it became obvious that many of them contained feelings about the thing being described. Sharp observation, we deduced, often goes hand in hand with personal response and judgment.

Another point my students and I discussed is also relevant here. I asked them not to be satisfied with describing something as “nice” or “pretty.” Instead I told them to be specific, and use details to explain how some place or thing was special. In a tribute to James Marshall, his friend Maurice Sendak has written, “[He] was . . . entirely himself . . . uncommercial to a fault . . . . He paid the price of being maddeningly underestimated — of being dubbed ‘zany’ (an adjective that drove him to muderous rage.)” Zany is one of those inexact, nondescriptive adjectives like pretty, nice, and wacky; the last, a label stuck on the charmingly complex compositions of William Joyce. Reviewing his book Santa Calls, I attempted a mini-analysis of its charm.

The author’s acknowledgments to “Robin of Locksley, Nemo of Slumberland, and Oz, the first Wizard Deluxe” alert us to a few of the artistic ghosts that influence these pages. . . . This is Spielberg territory, full of homages to beloved clichés. . . . Mr. Joyce is meticulous and wily. Each of his elegantly painted illustrations is set up, costumed, and lit with a cinematographer’s eye. . .

But are the thirties film touches in an artist’s style or a feeling that his work is “underestimated” meaningful to a child? And if they are not, then why bother with such specifics in a review of a book for children?

Ursula Nordstrom, one of the most noted and creative of the grand old generation of children’s book editors, used to insist that if you put a child happily in your lap and read the phone book to her, she would be delighted. After all, nobody is born with taste, either good or bad. When a beloved parent or a teacher espouses something new, the odds are that the children close to that parent or teacher will be pleased with it, too. But, both bookmakers and their critics have responsibilities as taste-makers and therefore as educators. That is why it is in a critic’s job description to point out when the wit in a story is not evident in the art, or the drawing of the central figure is an awkward knockoff of something Arthur Rackham did better. Even though the child the book is meant for will not necessarily see these fine points, someday when he is picking out books for his own child he will be more discriminating, in part because you and I have been.

Re-reading these last paragraphs I realize that I seem to have stressed the importance only of an educated eye for a wise appreciation of picture books. Obviously, intelligent criticism of such a true combination form must give equal time to the words that provide the book’s skeleton. But because so many teachers, librarians, and scholars are devoted readers with cultivated literary points of view, I am making the assumption that the written word is not neglected or misunderstood as often as illustration is.

A contradictory note here is that when picture book prizes are being handed out, it is the words that are frequently overlooked. The major medals are almost always awarded to the illustrator alone. If you have ever been a judge on such a jury — with hundreds of books to winnow away before one gets down to the preprize stack — you know that judges don’t have time to read most of the books but simply riffle through acres of pages searching for striking art. And yet, that excellent illustrator and lover of words Arnold Lobel once compared illustrating with another interpretive art, the work of an actor learning a new role. “You read a manuscript a hundred thousand times,” he sighed, explaining how he approached his job. In an ideal picture book world, why would anyone separate prize-winning illustrations from the words that have made them prize-winning?

And in the same ideal world, humor and simplicity, two arts that depend on artlessness, would receive the attention they deserve. Some years ago, writing about James Stevenson’s work, I commented on the fact that “understatement is often overlooked when awards are given to picture books.” A book I referred to especially is July (1990). It is based on childhood recollections, and in it Stevenson achieves “the essence of photographs, in wash drawings . . . .Scenes are reduced to essentials with a calligrapher’s appreciation for each brush stroke. They record the heart of things so minimally but so tellingly that we are able to recognize the children as ourselves and the memories as our own.” Too many critical (but not critical enough) eyes are impressed by self-proclaimed ART, overinflated, glossy work reflecting the graphic fashion of the moment but with little either personal or unique to recommend it. Spend some time with the work of Marc Simont, William Steig, Jon Agee, and Tomi Ungerer to appreciate the artists gifted with the ability not only to draw but to draw funny. And never forget the wonderfully careful hand and refreshing vision of Crockett Johnson. The creator of Harold and his adventurous purple crayon and of the classic comic Barnaby, and illustrator of Ruth Krauss’s The Carrot Seed, never won a prize, but left the world a better place anyhow. Surely someone, somewhere, could award him, in absentia, the first platinum Carrot for quietly sustained, imaginative humor.

A parenthetical thought on illustrative art: I am not convinced that the medium is really the message. Of course, if you know what gouache is and can tell it from transparent watercolor or acrylic, then you, and I, will find it enlightening to read about such details. However, if you, like the majority of readers, are not familiar with artists’ materials and techniques, learning that a picture is done in Prisma color and croquil line is not really helpful — better for a critic to explain that the delicately rendered scenes are sketched in fine pen line and softly shaded colored pencil, thus making it easier for nonexperts get a little more of the picture.

Because reviews of a picture book are not written for the book’s orimary audience but rather for teachers, librarians, and other interested adults with wallets, the critic, like the book’s author, needs a dual perspective. First, her own perception and standards, and second, that of the book’s young viewers and listeners. How will the sounds and rhythms of a narrative impress the ears of nonreaders? And will the life and action of the art appeal to a child’s observant eyes?

Back in 1959, in a picture book called Just Like Everyone Else, I cast a small soft dog as a special friend for sharp-eyed nonreaders to follow through the story. Although the dog was rarely mentioned in the text, he appeared on every page, quietly, uh  . . . dogging the action. I was sure that I had made an excellent discovery in using him this way. Since then I have become familiar with a lively, bursting world of minor players in picture books. Caldecott was a master of them; Mussano used cats in the opening chapters of his 1911 edition of Pinocchio; small, silent players have enlivened works by Ardizzone, Seuss, Margot Zemach, and countless others. Not to mention the hop-, scamper-, and walk-ons in all those Disney films.

Over the years that have passed since I did my first book for children (Roar and More, 1956), I have written, read, illustrated, and concentrated my attention in and around this fruitful field. But in trying to frame some coherent final thoughts on reviewing, I have arrived at only one obvious conclusion: there is always more to learn. The history of illustrated books is long and wide. But each new volume, whether it is awful, amazing, or, most usually, somewhere in-between, requires the critical ability to recognize what is old, to appreciate what is new, and to exercise faith in one’s own judgment. Samuel Butler, who specialized in saying things better than the rest of us, said this better, too. “The test of a good critic is whether he knows when and how to believe on insufficient evidence.”

This article is part of our Picture Book Month 2012 coverage.

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Two: I am being interviewed by Emma Walton Hamilton tonight at 7:00PM EDT at the Children’s Book Hub. It’s a membership site, but you can listen for free by following this link. I’ll be talking about book reviewing, trends, and how I really feel about your blog.

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