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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The Morning News started its tournament of books

Our sis School Library Journal begins its Battle of the Books on Monday Tuesday, and I’ll be over here critiquing the judges in brackets of two and allowing one to “move forward,” where, eventually (and if I’ve done the math right) one shall face the BoB’s Big Kahuna judge, Frank Cottrell Boyce. I’m not doing this to be mean–unless somebody drives me to it–but to test my frequent assertion that there’s too much diplomacy in children’s book discussion (again, see the Silverman essay linked above). I am also interested in exploring what kind of criticism these non-professionals will employ: will they argue from personal taste, moral significance, reader appeal, aesthetic value? Each or all of these can work; what matters most in this contest is that the judge is able to express a clear preference for one book over another and say why. The prize is two one-year subscriptions to the Horn Book Magazine, one to the winning judge and another to the library of his or her choice.I’ll be judge and jury (shades of SLJ’s Lillian Gerhardt: raise your hand if you’re old enough to remember her infamous Billy Budd Button and Huck Finn Pin!)

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On Thursday, the Morning News will choose between Louise Erdrich’s National Book Award winner The Round House and John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, whose omission from this year’s Printz lineup intrigues me. (Does anyone know the scoop?) I’d go with the Green–The Round House has a Jodi Picoult plot but, to my ears, a flat affect that keeps the story and characters at too much of a distance. BoB’s first bracket, judged by Kenneth Oppel on March 12, is Steve Sheinkin’s Bomb versus R.J. Palacio’s Wonder. Not a fan of the latter. How about you?

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