My talisman is a rhino, and it would be SOOOooo cool if Jerry Pinkney would feature one in a book as wonderful as The Lion & The Mouse!

A ladybug due to 9/11. Long story involving my class coping back then in NYC, good luck, Swiss chocolate, etc etc.

ooh,I want an umlaut too. I can never remember out how to do them on an American computer keyboard. Now a Swiss or German keyboard has them all (and has some interesting changes based on the most used letters in German).

As a person with an umlaut in her name I can help you. Here are the instructions if you use windows on a PC:

Use the keystrokes "Ctrl+Shift+:" , and then press the vowel. This will place a lower-case umlauted vowel letter like ä, ë, ï, ö or ü.

Use the keystrokes "Ctrl+Shift+:", but hold down the "Shift" key to for the umlaut in a capital letter. This will place a capital vowel like Ä, Ë, Ï, -- or Ü.

For MAC: Just press "option+u" and the two dots appear.

Monika

Kind of interesting to use Pullman to explicate Schubert. *fangirl vibes*

I want the variations and themes on Die schone Mullerin for flute and piano played by Jean-Phillipe Rampal. i-Tunes doesn't carry it. This makes me cranky.

Thank yoü Monika!

Monika,

Endlich!

Vielen dank.

auch Monika aber ohne umlaut

has anyone noted the revival of the BETSY-TACY books?

NNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Dammit.

(I'm referring to Xmas, not the Betsy-Tacy books, btw.)

After the hubbub regarding the VINE, a big trade house had an intern email to ask if I would review their books on my blog. I consider my blog the anti-blog. I started it out of frustration with the uber bloggers since they felt unfocused and had no appeal. I asked if I was to be paid for my services and use of my blog for their authors. Publisher does not pay for reviews. I declined immediately. Why is a big trade house asking for charity from authors who they are not publishing nor blogging about in return? Talk about backwards. Authors should feel honored to work for free for a random publisher who wants to use that author's blog for publicity? Doesn't the marketing/publicity dept personnel get paid? Where are they? That's right..they're too busy yakking it up on Twitter or FB.

I use children's literature blogs as a supplement to journals. Sometimes they bring a book to my attention that I would not have come across otherwise. Where I find blogs more helpful is in areas that traditional journals don't cover as well, such as children's music.

"There's a whole sub-genre of children's literature that has found its best audience among the adults who serve children" Oh, my, yes.

This is a great conversation. For me, blogs are an addition to the review journals I read. One more way to stay up to date on what is out there. I think reading lots of opinions/thinking helps me to see possibilities in books that I wouldn't have seen on my own. I think I am reading as a classroom teacher--really trying to find the books that make the most sense for the kids I am currently teaching.

I have a handful of blogs (3) that are helpful in collection development. Two bloggers frequently post about upcoming books (one specifically for YA and the other picture books-middle grade; both review for print publications and both have written guides for children's/YA literature), and the other is a multicultural blog written by children's/YA authors. I've been reading these blogs for several years-long before I started doing collection development. If it seems like it's a book we should have, I will look it up on our distributor's website, where I have access to the major print review journals (we also have print subscriptions).

The blogs I read are helpful in the way that the spring/fall announcements issues and prepub alerts are helpful; they give me "heads up" on what is coming. When I do collection development, I create different carts for picture books, nonfic, YA, chapter books, yada yada, for each month. Then I create an "Essentials" cart for that month-books that I really must get for that month (I also have different carts for board books and other specific books/genres/issues). A blog review or a description in a preview issue/prepub may get a title in one of my carts, but I really need to read the print reviews before I make a decision.

Jennifer. You make a cart? Could you elaborate for the uninitiated? It sounds very interesting.

Roger, can you explain what you mean by "systematic"? If you mean that the reviews in the journals are more thorough or intelligent, I haven't had that experience with, say, Booklist as opposed to Fuse #8. And if you mean that journals are more comprehensive and review everything, well, I have yet to see any of my books reviewed in the Horn Book!

I'm not talking at all about the quality of individual reviews, Emay. What I mean is that the print journals have systems in place that librarians know about: they know that Booklist reviews all recommended children's/YA titles, and that School Library Journal and the Horn Book Guide review all new trade hardcovers. The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books and the Horn Book Magazine are more selective, but review within certain time limits--the latest we will review a Fall 09 book in the Magazine is January 2010, for example. With the blogs, you have no idea of what they will review when, nor do they confine themselves to new books, so you can't count on them for ordering help in the same way as the print mags.

I agree with Roger. For my book purchasing I rely on the main review journals. As you all know, among those reviewers the opinions can be very diverse and sometimes even directly opposite but over time I learned which reviewers I tend to agree with. I read some blogs and subscribe to several listservs for more information but I don't buy a book because one particular blogger liked it.

Reading five review journals takes a lot of time and most school librarians have busy schedules. They might not have the time to follow several blogs in addition to reading the reviews. Some librarians might also only rely on one or two magazines which makes the work of those publications so important and I appreciate the care and thoroughness of their review process.

While the bulk of my selections come from reading HB, SLJ and Booklist (which my library subscribes to), but I was a blog reader before I was a librarian with a budget. There are several bloggers whose opinions I trust and whose reviews prompt me to take a closer look at a title. They might alert me to an upcoming title before it gets a print review, or remind of something I overlooked when I was flipping through SLJ.

Anon asking about carts - we do our ordering thought BWI and Baker & Taylor, and they both allow you to create multiple online shopping carts under your login. I usually have a cart for each month.

Ah, I see. Thanks Jess.

good for them. It's common sense that if a word will get a child in trouble in school, it shouldn't be in books either. I doubt any teachers want a student telling them "go to hell"

Well, Anon, there's language I use in school and then there's the language I use "out of school," so to speak. I wouldn't want children's reading experiences to be limited to school settings. I wouldn't want them limited by the language appropriate in school settings, either. I'd like to see people respect children's ability to tell the difference between language they can use in school and the kind they can't. I am confident that they know the difference.

Anon2

Anon1,
It's probably just bait your casting, but I'll rise to it just a bit. The logical extension of your argument is that any language not used in polite adult conversation should also not be used in books for adults. Your line of argument is fouled.
IF

I went to read 6Boxes's commentary. I really don't like the Scholastic book fairs. In the twelve years since my kids started school I have seen them go from mediocre to worse. They push off the cheapest, cheesiest, tacky, vacuous schlock on an audience that--for once in a YEAR probably--has the money in pocket to buy a book.

There's huge social pressure to give your kid money for the bookfair, so parents who would otherwise never buy a book for their kids, cough up the ten bucks. And what can the kids buy with it? Remainders that have sold nowhere else, overpriced pencils, posters, and TV tie-ins.

At the same time that I hate it, though, I have to say--it makes money. 6Boxes laments that Scholastic has a monopoly on bookfairs, but maybe this is WHY they have a monopoly. They don't ever push the envelope. They keep everything mainstream to a fault. When everyone cries out for a book to be included, then they know it is time to add it to the bookfair, but not before.

Anon2

As a Canadian who is often baffled by America’s policy on things like censorship particularly when free speech is in the country’s constitution, I’ll say this, it is up to the individual to put up the good fight. Now your rights Americans then make certain it is upheld.

I agree Roger. The "homosexual content" bit was about the lamest thing ever.

Seconded. Is it "sexual content" if a kid has, well, parents? What about all those books about kids with a baby sibling on the way? Does anyone have a problem with those? I don't think so.

My middle grade novel was considered by Scholastic Book Club-- they wanted me to take out the word "butt," any reference to the girl's period, etc etc. I was mayyybe willing to take out "butt" but come on, getting your period is biology. You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the Facts of Life. I see nothing controversial in the Facts of Life.

Hee hee! Mr. Magoo! I miss that son of a gun.

Roger,

You'll probably be horrified to learn that Guvmint runs this. Most municipalities declare specific times when Trick-or-Treating starts and stops.

Kinda kills the spontaneity if you ask me.

I think in my neighborhood it's 3:00-7:00. (I like it that there are suggested times--it helps the grown-ups to be prepared for the little ones who come early, and helps discourage teenagers from ringing the doorbells at 10:30 at night when the youngsters are sleeping it off.)
IF

Rochelle in our Ohio office said they all got it over with last night.

Here in Utah, if Halloween falls on a Sunday, most towns and cities will reassign Trick-or-Treating to a Saturday or Sunday. 'Cause we can't have youngsters traipsing around as witches and ghosts on Ye Sabbath, can we?

P.S. -- It took me forever to figure out who "Hopey" is. First thought: one of the Seven Dwarfs?

Whoops -- I meant to say that Trick or Treat gets reassigned to a Saturday or Monday.

At dusk her in Canada. Happy Halloween.

One or two p.m. for the very littlest ones. Regular hours start around six and go til nine. Then comes the Half-Hour of Disapproval for tutting but still handing out candy. Then it's (porch) lights out.

In NYC it's been going on non-stop for a week :) Happy Halloween.

LOL~ I thought the best way to get people to leave comments was to insult their integrity and to tell them that they don't deserve to write down their opinions for others to read.

Brilliant way to build readership. (I prefer your blog though)

For those who argue that a blog's popularity is all about the comments, Betsy --- score!

Is there a term for this out there a la Godwin's Law?

I have no idea what any of you are talking about. But I'm sure whatever you do on your blog, Roger, is a tiny bit better than what anyone else does. Who can argue with someone who quotes Betty Cavanna?

What if I myself accused you of accusing me of doing the same thing that you're currently doing? Rather than exploding, I think the universe would simply IMplode.

Oh, great, now Betsy is over here accusing me of accusing her of doing what I was doing, which was accusing, well, not her, but the commenters on her blog who were accusing her of accusing them of having about as much to say as this sentence but in three times the number of words.

I'm accusing that ya'll confusing :)

I just like that the word "accusing" is so close to the word "cussing". Gonna get down my OED to see if they're related.

Girls. On their way to World Domination.

I'm curious about how they "purposely marketed the survey to attract male readers." Boys' bathroom stalls? What's the online equivalent?

I don't think there is one, Elissa. Hence, the 96%. I wish the ambassador would show up because I am very curious about the success of Guys LIt Wire. Do they have any males of the species? Or is it also used primarily by girls who like the boy books? Maybe you could page Colleen Mondor, Roger.

Anon 12:07

maybe it's just that ADULTS (esp. female adults) are reading children's\YA books now? general decline in adult intelligence

Maybe THAT wil bring the swarm off of Betsy!

If you're tired of the science museum, why not try the Sci-Fi Museum in Seattle? Original manuscripts and blasters never lose their charm!

Nina was back on PR last night!

We saw this tonight. It's not a movie for children, but for adults. It's pretty brilliant in many ways.

The first twenty minutes are possibly the best artistic presentation of the inside of an angry, lonely, and hurt child I have ever experienced.

Claire's review, by the way, is near perfect. It expresses elegantly much of what I thought.

Not to mention the server farms... the ginormous heat-emitting server farms...

And when an e-reader dies, what kinds of toxins does it release into the landfill?

And the horrible "resource wars" in Central Africa to feed the insatiable appetite of electronic devices for obscure metals.

I imagine the cost of electricity will be included in the price of the e-book, nook, or vook--in other words, the consumer will pay.

Nothing new there. What scares me is that Wal-mart will be able to reach even more people with their $9 Wal-mart-approved books, which will one day be packed with product placement for Wal-mart-approved wares readers can buy with a click.

I'm pretty sure Feed would not be Wal-mart approved--unless Anderson changed all of his made-up product names to sponsored links.

Roger,
I'd like as well to make amends for unkind thimgs I said. And actually,I think your bowtie
is quite handsome.
Enclosed essay, "The Book Is Dead, Long Live The Book" makes the argument-- and I quote-- that "We have to kill the book to save the book". It is typical of what I'm speaking about and is blogged on Business Week. There are so many examples of this, I'm rather surprised they've escaped your notice. It is increasingly the predominant discourse. Books, among this crowd, are described disdainfully as "Dead Trees" or "Dead Trees bound between covers".
Enter Silicon Valley, which is fast becoming the economic hub of 21st Century Economics, talk to people about the future of paper books: you'll see what I mean.
Again, thanks for your last entry.
With regards,
Alan Kaufman

Here's the essay:
http://www.buzzmachine.com/2006/05/19/the-book-is-dead-long-live-the-book/

The book is dead. Long live the book.
by Jeff Jarvis

Resist the Feed!

I worry about the students I meet in the inner city. They cannot afford computers, what will they read?

As someone in their 20s, I can tell you that my friends and I often wonder how much more we could have achieved were we not constantly distracted by the goddamned internet. As much as we love it, we wonder what we might have done with all the time spent looking at youtube. As for being connected to the internet all the time, I've seen what it does to iphone junkies, and it's not pretty!
Sue

Wow, Alan, that is really horrifying, even though his argument has holes one could drive a truck through. Thanks for pointing it out.

In that Buzz Machine blogpost, Jeff Jarvis makes a fascinating statement amid his insulting comments about books: He says that he is soon going to write a book himself! In other words, book publishing evidently still does some things that he himself considers important.

What hypocrisy! Why would anyone read and pay heed to such internally contradictory commentary? And yet, as Alan essentially is suggesting, people will pay attention to him indeed! And I seriously doubt that Jarvis will forego the author advance, royalty payments, author interviews on the radio, citations by other writers, and classroom adoptions that will be the possible outcomes of his writing a book about how The Book Is Dead.

I also worry about the folks who can't afford all these devices. The national guidelines for poverty haven't been revised since 1955, so there are a lot more poor folks out there than we'd like to believe. These are hard times; library use is up. Looks to me like the book still lives.

Sherman Alexie rants about Kindles -- I agree with him of COURSE. http://bit.ly/4gQFLj

Word verification: brapp: the sound of all my hot air.

It would seem that my hunch that the war against the book amounts to an actual crime is not far off...and I believe that as travel further into this heart of darkness, to uncover and discover all its implications, we will see that it's not simply a crime of business standards violation but as I allege in my essay, an actual crime against humanity.

Booksellers Ask Justice Department To Investigate War Over Pricing---from the Wall Street Journal

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703816204574489891863465178.html?mod=wsj_share_facebook

Here's the Canadian take on the deep-discounting going on in America: They're against it, God bless 'em.

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/715182--why-the-book-price-wars-haven-t-come-to-canada

Word verification: defics, which I take to mean "depicts" and "defies." I get some real doozies.

Well I think the American Booksellers Association's letter to the DOJ happens in context of decades of activism against monopolism in the arena of consumer activity. So, I disagree with Alan that there is something new happening with the current round of price wars. It's a longstanding battle and shouldn't be thought of as criminal in a human rights sense. (I am on the same side in the battle as Alan of course.) It's a battle about homogenization of culture. Not the same as genocide, because those affected (like me as an independent bookstore owner who's operated four different stores) do not get physically killed when our stores die. I am alive. I continue to help open and operate new bookstores whenever I get the chance, which happens regularly. People still want to see new bookstores open in their neighborhood. (Hurrah for the brand new and brilliant Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn!)

For instance this article below compares the anti-chain store movement of the1990s (and more recently too) with a previous anti-chain store movement in the 1930s that actually resulted in the passage of the laws now being drawn on in our current battles (such as the Robinson Patman Act). So -- it's been a cyclical thing. We are fighting. It's not by any means a done deal that independent voices will lose.

"The Anti-Chain Store Movement and the Politics of Consumption"
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/american_quarterly/v060/60.4.scroop.html

Lest we forget: Nancy Willard's picture book poetry collection won the Newbery: A VISIT TO WILLIAM BLAKE'S INN. It was also a Caldecott Honor Book.

Jane

Yes. The Junkies - I collect them! So far, I have over 300, and am willing to share: http://deborahfreedman.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/the-junkies/

I often get names by leafing through my TOTAL BASEBALL encyclopedia. Which is like a cemetery for retired ballplayers, on their tombstones is engraved their final stats.

James Preller

add Chantay Branner.

I love the title of this post. :D

And what a nice cold, rainy afternoon to do so!

Good day to see a movie. Looking forward to reading your thoughts on the film.

What do the HBook critics have to say? :-) LER.

Claire Gross is reviewing it for us--I'll just say I liked it more than I was expecting to.

I need to get a job at your office!

I checked out a lot of audiobooks when I lived in Seattle, due to the commute. Then the SPL started lending e-versions of the audiobooks, but I couldn't play them on my iPod, which rendered them useless--you had to have a Zune, of all things, to be able to use them on a mobile device.

Your thoughts here pretty much mirror my thoughts about the audiobook problem. I preferred to just reserve the physical cds (which were harder and harder to find because they were investing all their audio money in these books that no one could access conveniently--who has a Zune?).

I'm not sure that publishers *should* open up the library licensing for multiple checkouts, though--unless they were to charge similarly to the way that publishers charge libraries for subscriptions to periodicals, depending on patronage size. That way, publishers wouldn't feel like they just gave away 1000 or more possible sales because those who would normally have bought the book instead of waiting in line at the library could now get it for free. That's not sustainable for publishers.

One librarian quoted in the article said she supported a per-read payment system for ebooks but publishers don't think this works for them. (Librarians aren't the only ones trying to fit new models into old molds, or however that metaphor should go.)

"libraries are trying too hard to fit ebooks into a circulation model designed for physical media." Bingo. This applies to more than just ebooks, I suspect.

Exactly. I think something like that would work, though we'd of course have to implement some sort of system to track it. (I imagine libraries already have plenty of circ tools at their disposal that would show such things.)

This whole ebook thing doesn't work so well with the classics. If a library has several editions of a translated classic, I like to be able to flip through each one to figure out which translation I want to read. And sometimes my choice is based on something that's more tangible than anything -- HC vs. PB, type size, font, or a pretty front cover.

And ... how high exactly DO your eyebrows go, Roger? Didn't raising them that high hurt a little?

Melinda--until the world decides to conform to my expectations, I am content to live in pain. It's the R.C. in me.

Well, let's remember that $15 is more to some people than it is to others. Not everyone who wants to read the latest Dan Brown can whip out his wallet and buy it at a discounted price. The nice thing about having more money than the next guy, I guess, is that it makes all kinds of lines disappear. But libraries have to think of all their patrons, not just the ones who wonder why they can't get the library ebook on their iPods or Kindles. I agree that providing audio ebooks only to "Zunes" users is pretty silly (who has even heard of a Zune, much less bought one?) but my heart goes out to the library directors trying to stay ahead of the curve on technology and still serve the patron who thinks $15 could buy the workbook his son's teacher is asking him to buy for school. That guy stands in line behind 1000 other people (that's the wait list for a copy of The Lost Symbol at Seattle Public Library) and would be happy if the line for the ebook were shorter even if the format were less than state of the art, no?

From a librarian. The whole thing about having to wait in line for an ebook it not the libraries fault. That's a licensing requirement from the publisher. Why on earth would we want to enforce that? It's a total drag.


We have an okay ebook system. The better on out there, mentioned in the article, is OverDrive. My memories of our committee discussion of OverDrive was that our discounted offer for the platform--just the software platform--was $20,000 a year. Books, about $30 each...per year. To start a collection of 1000 titles then--which is a dinky little collection--would cost $50,000 a year, which is the entire budget of the Main Library Children's Room here, or a medium-sized branch in my library system.

So the major difficultly is that we have to find something to DROP in order to make it fit. Can we scale back our print collection that significantly?

Now, the same thing happened when we had to start acquiring DVDs on top of our Video budget. Or squeeze in online databases along with print magazines. But our budgets aren't going up these days, they're going down. When we start adding formats, there's an overlap with the "old" format as both are still in high demand. Where do we find the money? I ask myself this every day at work.

I actually love the idea of per use costs for ebooks...when it's no longer used, we'll stop paying for it and drop the title. That's a whole different model of acquisition for libraries, and has significantly lower back-end costs... no weeding! No Nicholson Baker skulking in our discard bins! Woo hoo!

I understand why the publishing industry has concerns. I just hope we can move to a different pricing model. I just don't see library circulation of ebooks cutting into the ebook market anymore that library circulation of print books cuts into the print book market. It cuts--but we know by how much. When you check out an ebook from the library, you only get it for the loan period, and then it disappears (another licensing requirment). I know that that compels many library users to go buy a print copy when they have to return their print book before they've finished--won't it with ebooks too?

Chasing Ray has a good post about the inclusion of Stitches.

The builders of St. John the Divine left cryptic messages in the stonework—messages that come to us all the way from the 1970s!

Hmmm. Not seeing it. Scary, but not in a good way.

Just imagine Tom Hanks in flared pants hitting a secret button to reveal a hologram of L'Engle in a rosary-beaded Nehru jacket.

Perhaps someone should spearhead a marketing campaign to repackage L'Engle's books a la Jane Eyre and Twilight. As in, give them misleading Dan Brown-esque jackets and slap a "Robert Langdon's childhood inspiration" sticker on the cover or something? THAT I would love to see. ;)

Claire

She gave the Cathedral the "Dan Brown" treatment herself - The Young Unicorns.