Dear friends:

Yes, everything is still terrible out there, and I am glad that this morning’s psalm (37) had these words:

A little longer — and the wicked shall have gone.
Look at his place, he is not there.

I wonder if those Horn Book readers who cancelled their Magazine subscriptions, offended by our slighting references to the President, are still on this mailing list? (Hi!) Anyway, keep coming back for more anti-racism resources, rule-breaker articles, and Trump jokes on our website.

I was in the Horn Book office Monday for the first time in almost three months, and for the last time ever, as we moved across the Simmons campus on Wednesday. It’s pretty enlightening how moving makes you see what you can toss in recycling without a backward glance. Cleansing. But you need to tell yourself from the start to refrain from rereading, because then you’ll never get out.

My own reading has left behind Dorothy Day (whom I would ask to be my patron saint did I not fear she would turn me down) and moved on to John Eliot Gardiner’s Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven. (Here he is conducting the aria I chose for my wedding.) Sendak is probably going to hurl down a lightning bolt at me, but I can listen to Bach all day, where that much Mozart would drive me nuts. Shall we have a poll?

Love,

Roger

(Illustration from Raúl the Third's original comic "The Adventures of Baby D" in the May/June 2017 Horn Book Magazine Special Issue: Humor.)