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[JM] Roger Sutton has been the Editor in Chief of The Horn Book, Inc., since 1996. He is widely recognized as being among the country’s leading experts on children’s literature. So it wasn’t without a little trepidation that I asked Roger for an … Continue reading →

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The May/June Horn Book has arrived in my home. Yes, I am still reading the March/April issue. You know me so well. So this is hardly a preview.

Some Favorite Horn Book Articles

Mind the Gaps: Books for All Young Readers by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson This was Nelson's keynote address at a Horn Book at Simmons colloquium last fall. It deals with the issue of diversity in children's literature. Why is it needed? "Children believe in story only if they've experienced the magic of living in one. This may never happen to young readers with few opportunities to see themselves in the books they read." Nelson raises a wonderful point. It's not enough to publish diverse books. Those books need to get to child readers. Do they? (I'm asking that last question.)

Designing Woman: The Achievement of Atha Tehon by Leonad S. Marcus This is another one of those "women in children's publishing" articles that The Horn Book does from time to time. I sometimes find them a little, well, Cult of the Childlit Woman Warror for my taste. But this one was written by Leonard Marcus, who should be the center of a cult himself. He does more than just place Tehon on a pedestal. While writing about her, he writes about why book design matters.

Some Favorite Horn Book Reviews

 

Wolfie the Bunny by Ame Dyckman

I Don't Like Koala by Sean Ferrell with illustrations by Charles Santoso

Grandma in Blue with Red Hat by Scott Menchin with illustrations by Harry Bliss 

The Tight Rope Walkers by David Almond

 

And that is as far as I've gone with my reading.

 

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I've never taken part in one of those Waiting on Wednesday type meme things, though a great many people do. Recently I've actually been taking Wednesdays off from blogging. Time Management Tuesday can be exhausting. But I saw a number of books I found interesting in the most recent Horn Book. Waiting on Wednesday seemed a good opportunity to mention them here.

• A Fine Dessert: Four Centuries, Four Families, One Delicious Treat by Emily Jenkins with illustrations by Sophie Blackall. When I was a teenager, I read substantial historical novels that covered generations of the same family. This picture book covers families making the same dessert over four hundred years. Not exactly the same, but you can see the attraction for me. In addition, the reviewer says the book is "an effective introduction to the very idea of history." 
• No Parking at the End Times by Bryan Bliss. This one sounds as if it's going to be a post-Rapture story. But then where's the Rapture?
• The Cottage in the Woods by Katherine Coville. Jane Eyre with bears.
• Tales of Bunjitsu Bunny by John Himmelman. Martial arts with bunnies.
• In Search of the Little Prince: The Story of Antoine de Saint-Exupery by Bimba Landmann. I'm game for another Saint-Exupery book. Seriously!

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I blew through the two most recent issues of The Horn Book while riding in the car off and on for more than two weeks last month.

The July/August issue was also the annual awards issue. This is never one of my favorites, but this year it ran an article by Elissa Gershowitz called Newbery 2014 that was essentially about books that didn't make the cut. It has just a little bit of the tone I saw this past year in articles about why the hell Tatiana Maslany didn't get an Emmy nomination for every clone she plays on Orphan Black. Usually the awards coverage in The Horn Book is incredibly respectful and, um, maybe just a little bit warm and fuzzy? I liked this change of pace.

Reviews I found interesting:

A Girl Called Fearless by Catherine Linka. I was reading the review and thought, Gee, this sounds like The Handmaid's Tale. The reviewer thought so, too. That's not a bad thing.

The Shadow Hero by Gene Luen Yang. Because it's by Gene Luen Yang.

Hi, Koo! by Jon J. Muth. I liked the panda.

The September/October Horn Book carried a story on Robert McCloskey by Leonard Marcus and Folklore vs. Fakelore by Jane Yolen.

Reviews:

The Misadventures of the Family Fletcher by Dana Alison Levy. Maybe The Penderwicks for guys?

Very Little Red Riding Hood by Teresa Heapy, illustrations by Sue Heap.  A toddler Red Riding Hood. Hahahahahah.

Edward Hopper Paints His World by Robert Burleigh, illustrations by Wendell Minor. I like art books. I saw a couple of Hoppers at the Carnegie Museum of Art, though, and I was kind of disappointed. Does Minor do him better?

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The Horn Books are piling up around here, so it's time to review one of these review journals. In this case, the May/June 2014 issue. I didn't rush to get to May/June because it was dedicated to Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh. I am a member of that minority of people who are not Harriet fans. I didn't read it until I was well into adulthood, which may have been too late. I can't recall whether I read it aloud to my sons or not. What I do remember is reading the last page and thinking, What? I may have found the book overtly literary. But I'm talking a long time ago, so don't hold me to that.

You can understand why my favorite article in this issue was Becoming a Book Detective by Cathryn M. Mercier. She wasn't crazy about Harriet, either. Plus, both Mercier and I read Reader's Digest Condensed Books when we were kids. Hmm. Is this nostalgia I am suddenly feeling? I have so little experience of it, I don't know.

Horn Book Reviews That Caught My Eye

The Islands of Chaldea by Diana Wynne Jones, completed by Ursula Jones. Because I have a thing now for Diana Wynne Jones.

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart.  The reviewer calls this a "taut psychological mystery" and says "The ultimate reveal is shocking..." I like being shocked.

Dreams of Gods & Monsters by Laini Taylor. I've read the first two books in this trilogy. This review explains why I wasn't crazy about book two. It moved from urban fantasy to high fantasy. I was hoping the end of that volume suggested that book three would be back to urban fantasy. But, no, reviewer says we'll be going on to "epic fantasy."  I'll try it, anyway.

The Boundless by Kenneth Oppel. I'm reading this now.

Fighting Fire!: Ten of the Deadliest Fires in American History and How We Fought Them by Michael L. Cooper. Fire. History.

Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker by Patricia Hruby Powell.  Read it.

The Pilot and the Little Prince: The Life of Antoine de Saint-Exupery by Peter Sis. I'm a Saint-Exupery groupie, and I've liked Peter Sis's work.

Boundaries: How the Mason-Dixon Line Settled a Family Feud & Divided a Nation by Sally M. Walker.  A feud. History.

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Well, I missed her birthday, but it's wonderful to see Helen Keller's Best Friend Belle included with these other fantastic books about Helen's life over at  The Horn Book!

 

(Thanks for the heads-up, Debbie!)

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Yes, the May/June issue of The Horn Book is out. But I'm writing about the March/April issue, because I'm not comfortable being up-to-date.

I'm talking about The HB's illustration issue. I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did. My interest in art is historical and cultural. I'm interested in what art says. How it's created is another thing, and I have little knowledge of technique. Less than little knowledge. Nonetheless, I found lots of good stuff in this particular issue, much of it written by illustrators.

First off, I loved Leonard Marcus's An Interview with Neal Porter, probably because I love everything Marcus does. Porter is a founder of Roaring Brook Press, and the interview deals with picture books.

Julie Danielson, of Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, has an article in which she introduces the idea of illustrators working with both "hand-crafted" and digital techniques. Gareth Hinds picked up on this thought in his Paint & Pixels.

A number of illustrators wrote about how the way they work changes over time. Brian Selznik was influenced by an exhibit of another artist's work. Yuyi Morales's favorite medium is the one she's about to try next. And Gene Luen Yang moved on from How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way.

Then Thom Barthelmess goes at illustration from another angle with What Makes a Good Book Cover?

Even The Horn Book's From the Guide section deals with picture books, wordless picture books.

Whew. Yes, there are reviews in this issue, too. Check them out when you get hold of the issue.

Usually I pass my Horn Books on to a relative who is a middle school librarian. This one is going to one of the artists in the family.

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Earth Day is over, but that's no reason to stop reading environmentally themed books. The Horn Book's Recommended Reading For Earth Day list is interesting because it's so long on nonfiction. Plus, the fiction books for older readers all have a post-apocalyptic or at least dystopian thing going on. Monument 14 sounds intriguing, but in a disaster movie sort of way, not an environmental sort of way.

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Okay, I'm talking about the January/February issue and not the current one. But if you haven't read it, you're going to have trouble finding it now. Not to worry. I will share favorite bits and and a few thoughts.

The Articles

What's New About New Adult?, which you can read. I would probably have at least taken a look at this particular piece even if blogging colleague Liz Burns wasn't one of the authors. (Along with Sophie Brookover and Kelly Jensen.) A concise description of NA from their article: "New Adult — aimed at an adult audience but with strong appeal for teen readers — has recently garnered much buzz. Story lines tend to follow the contours of contemporary genre romance novels, but starring younger characters." They also say that NA has "more drama and explicit sexuality than even the most daring YA."

I heard muttering about some kind of new category of book for older than YA readers for years before New Adult turned up on the scene. I was expecting it to be rooted in college-age and twenty-something experience of starting jobs and being out in the world, though, and not limited to romance and sexuality, which is all I'm hearing now. I was thinking things like Lonely Werewolf Girl. Yeah, I got that wrong.

Owl Moon Redux by Jane Yolen. I am not a poetry person, but I found this article on different ways Yolen could have gone with the text of her book Owl Moon fascinating.

What Makes a Good Horse Book? by Anita L. Burkam, which is also on-line. Guess what? I was a horsey girl. Billy and Blaze. The Black Stallion. Gaudenzia, Pride of the Palio, which I remembered as Queen of the Palio. Another article I just had to dip into. And what did I find? Maxine Kumin wrote a horse book for kids!

The Reviews

A lot of Horn Book reviews deal with  apocalyptic, paranormal, and fantasy titles or some variation of same. As a general rule, there are also a lot of dead parent or dead somebody stories. This probably reflects what's being published rather than any kind of direction from the magazine. There's a limit to how much the-future-is-a-dreadful place and dead Dad reading I can do.

Some other types of titles that caught my eye:

Year of the Jungle, Suzanne Collins' picture book about her father's tour in Vietnam.

Jane, the Fox & Me by Fanny Britt. A graphic novel with a character who is into Jane Eyre.

The Day My Father Became a Bush by Joke van Leeuwen. This book actually sounds a little over my head, but I was grabbed by this line--"...then she meets a captain who's AWOL because he's unable to use the imperative mood." He couldn't give orders?

The Mad Potter: George E. Ohr, Eccentric Genius by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan. Eccentric art genius.

No Monkeys, No Chocolate by NESCBWI colleague Melissa Stewart

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The current issue of The Horn Book includes an article called Hey, Al and the Choice by Kathleen T. Horning. Hey, Al, illustrated by Richard Egielski and written by Arthur Yorinks, won the Caldecott in 1987, even though it is, according to Horning, "clearly an adult's fantasy."

The entire article deals with the issue of Hey, Al being signaled out for an award for children's books when its protagonist is an adult. Horning says, "...I'm not sure it's a completely satisfying story for children. Essentially, it's a retelling of their mentor's masterpiece, Where the Wild Things Are, told from the perspective of a middle-aged man."

It's not a definitive article on picture books for adults, in general. Think of it more as a variation.

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It's been a long time since I've discussed an issue of The Horn Book here (I couldn't even find the last post when I "reviewed" one), but the March/April issue was particularly good, I thought. Think of today's offering as being like a Downton Abbey or Walking Dead recap but without Maggie Smith or whatever it is that's on the Walking Dead.

Okay, this was a theme issue on weird-as-- , or, rather, "the odd, the marginalized, the independent, and the otherwise nonconforming among us." Within those essays, I particularly liked Two Writers Look at Weird by Polly Horvath and Jack Gantos. I also liked Something Wicked by Christine Taylor-Butler. I read that when I was young, too. Have I ever told you about my Uncle Mickey and his trunk full of paperbacks, from which he pulled some Ray Bradburys and handed them to me? Sigh.

Enough with the trip down Memory Lane. The Jack (and Jill) Be Nimble interview with Mary Cash and Jason Low was terrific. Painlessly showed me the world of the original independent publishers, as in small publishing companies that aren't owned by conglomerates or shareholders and can thus function without  committees and group thinking.

The Price of Truth by Eugene Yelchin is a great memoir of his youth reading in the police state that was the Soviet Union. Here is a true story on top of his true story: Yelchin mentions a poet, Osip Mandelstam, whom he says was censored by the Soviets and had his papers destroyed. His wife memorized his poetry and years after his death, dictated it so it could be written down. Hours after reading this in The Horn Book article, I heard the Mandelstam story again on On Point. Seriously.

Liz Burns, who I kind of know in that blogger-knowing-blogger way, wrote Reading: It's More Than Meets the Eye  a well-done piece about providing books for the print disabled.

I don't know Elizabeth Bluemle, but I've been to her bookstore, the subject of her article, When Pigs Fly: The Improbable Dream of Bookselling in a Digital Age.

And there are more articles, of course, and then the reviews. I'm delighted I got a chance to recap this issue before the next one arrives, which should probably be next month, only a few weeks away, right?

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Ah, the power of guilt. As Edgar Allen Poe fans know, there's no escaping it. Penny, the mouse heroine of Henke's easy-reader series, learns this the hard way when she spots a marble on her neighbor's lawn. The marble, big, shiny and as blue as the sky, proves irresistible. It seemed to say to Penny: "Take me home." And so she does.

Guilt soon plants itself in Penny's heart, and she hides the marble in her dresser drawer. At dinner she loses her appetite when she notices how the oranges look like big orange marbles and the peas like little green ones. In bed that night she tosses and turns, and when she finally falls asleep, she dreams the marble grows so big it demolishes her dresser.

The next morning Penny makes a decision about the marble. Beginning readers, many of whom have probably struggled similarly with their conscience, will be relieved to see Penny do the right thing.

In Penny and Her Marble, Henkes has delivered yet another winner. In the Horn Book's March/April issue, he confesses the seeds of the story. When he was five, he swiped a plastic medallion from his neighbor and was stricken with guilt. See, crime does pay!

Penny and Her Marble
by Kevin Henkes
Greenwillow, 48 pages
Published: March 2013

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I am back from Retreat Week. While it wasn't the most retreating Retreat Week I've ever done, I did do some professional reading, which I'll be writing about this week.

First up, I saw some interesting things in the Jan./Feb. Horn Book.

1.Both Code Name Verity and The Brides of Rollrock Island made The Horn Book Fanfare list of Best Books of 2012.

2. The Gail Carriger YA novel, Etiquette & Espionage, is reviewed. It publishes next month. I find the idea of a YA novel from Carriger interesting because one of her adult books made a list of adult books for YAs sometime in the last couple of years. I liked the book. In fact, I may own it. I own several of her books. I just don't see anything about it that makes it of any more interest to YAs than any other adult steampunk book about vampires and werewolves. So it is interesting that Carriger wrote a YA, which I look forward to reading.

3. Days of Blood & Starlight is reviewed. This is the sequel to Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor, which I liked. So, again, I'll be looking forward to reading that.

4. Reflections: On the Magic of Writing by Diana Wynne Jones is reviewed in the "Of Interest to Adults" section of the mag. I've been hearing about this book for months and want to read it also.

5. Also reviewed in that "Of Interest to Adults" section is Listening for Madeleine: A Portrait of Madeleine L'Engle in Many Voices  by Leonard S. Marcus. I've never been a L'Engle fan, though I did enjoy hearing her speak once years ago. And I do like Leonard S. Marcus. Plus I think I might have read at least part of the "controversial 2004 New Yorker article" referred to in this review. So if I were to stumble upon this book somewhere, I could read it.

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I subscribe to the Horn Book; one thing I like is that some of its content is online, some just for those who get the actual magazine.

This month's must read, what do you think, article: Eating Reading Animals by Jennifer Armstrong. In a nutshell: children's book people should be vegetarians. "So what I am suggesting is that if you love children’s literature, you cannot kill animals just because they taste good on a bun. There’s more than a bit of hypocrisy involved in urging children to empathize with pandas and polar bears and bunnies and ducks in books and at a distance and then feeding them hamburgers and sliced deli meats."

Personally, I disagree with Armstrong's thesis. I will say this: it is well written, firmly grounded in examples and references, and is an excellent example of persuasive writing.

Armstrong says, "We’re not looking for mindless obedience; we are looking for the critical thinking that makes moral and ethical evaluations, and we have to model that for children with our own critical thinking and our actions."

And I'm exercising my critical thinking to say interesting, provoking article. And my critical thinking leads me to say "yes" to eating meat.

The Horn Book doesn't allow comments for individual articles; but you can comment a-plenty at Read Roger, the Horn Book blog.


Amazon Affiliate. If you click from here to Amazon and buy something, I receive a percentage of the purchase price.

© Elizabeth Burns of A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy

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One of my favorite Horn Book features is their recurring short feature, "What Makes a Good . . .?" in which they pose a question about children's literature. This inquisitive focus began in the Sept/Oct 2006 issue in which the question "What Makes a Good Book?" formed the spine of the entire issue, dealing with it both generally in long essays ("Finding Literary Goodness in a Pluralistic World") and in shorter pieces which defined good thrillers, beginnings, translated books, poems, holocaust books, second grade books, bookstore books, fantasies, and endings. On that last one, Virginia Euwer Wolff says "If I give myself over to a book and let it absorb me, I want its ending not to let me go back to the self I was before I read it." Think on that, writers!

The answer to the posed question usually forms a short article, as the one below, "What Makes a Good Read Aloud for Middle Graders?"



I love author Christine McDonnell's choice of Lloyd Alexander's The Book of Three as a stellar read aloud. As she says, "Alexander's Prydain series has language that flows like a song and characters whose speech is wonderfully idiosyncratic." Indeed.

But even if she hadn't riveted me by citing my favorite book of all time,  I would've read the entire article with attention, respect, and delight. Because if I had to answer the question, "What Makes a Good Magazine?" I would answer "The Horn Book"---while gleefully flinging open my closet doors to show you the stacks of back issues I've hoarded through the years.

But as Horn Book readers know, there is no assertion like the one I just made without backing it up with well-chosen, linguistically honed, and tightly woven reasons.  So here you go:

What Makes a Good Magazine?

1) It asks questions---continually---of itself and of its readers.

As Parker Palmer says: "Each of us has an inner teacher, a voice of truth, that offers the guidance and power we need to deal with our problems. But that inner voice is often garbled by various kinds of inward and outward interference. The function of the Clearness Committee is not to give advice or "fix" people from the outside in but rather to help people remove the interference so that they can discover their own wisdom from the inside out." (Source)

I hesitate to call The Horn Book a "clearness committee" because it sounds creepily like Doublespeak, but I do think the questions posed in its pages help remove some of the fuzzy thinking that creeps into any group of people devoted to A Good Thing (even children's books.)

(Furthermore, occasionally, as in the current issue on color, The Horn Book models its own proposed answers:  "Color is not just decorative but elucidating." I agree. The full color interior of the refreshed Horn Book makes it much easier to read and enables readers to experience illu

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He also calls me a boozin' blogger: Read Roger's take on the SLJ cover controversy is at Step Away from the Bar, Ladies. (Bonus points because as the former lawyer in the group, I did step away from the bar!)

Roger also shows a cover that a Horn Book subscriber objected to. While its from a few years ago, it just goes to show some of the narrowness that Teri Lesesne rants about at Professor Nana.

Amazon Affiliate. If you click from here to Amazon and buy something, I receive a percentage of the purchase price.

© Elizabeth Burns of A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy

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Though I haven't read any of its articles, I have whipped through the new Horn Book's reviews. Two things jumped out at me.

1. I had never even heard of the Cathars until a couple of months ago when I read the second book in The Youngest Templar serial. Then I stumbled upon them again while doing some quick research on the historical figures in a book by Geoffrey Trease. Well, the Horn Book's review of White Heat by K.M.Grant tipped me off that the Cathars are back in another novel. White Heat is the second part of a Cathar story. K. M.Grant wrote one of my favorite recent historical novels, How the Hangman Lost His Heart.

2. In all the angst this past summer over the cover of Justine Larbalestier's new book, Liar, I totally missed that it's a...Oh, wait. Larbalestier makes a big deal at her website about not giving away any spoilers, and perhaps this is a big one. So I won't repeat what The Horn Book reviewer let slip. (Assuming she let anything slip, because the book is called Liar.) But, still, somehow I got the impression earlier this year that the book was just a teenage problem novel. I am much more likely to read it now that I know that it's a...um...hmmm.

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The November / December 2009 issue of Horn Book Magazine has an article about fanfiction:

In Defense of Fanfiction by Becca Schaffner

As you may remember, Carlie Webber and I wrote an article about Fanfic called When Harry Met Bella for School Library Journal in August. Schaffner references that article: "On the other hand, more well-intentioned efforts like School Library Journal’s August 1, 2009, article on fanfiction cover the mechanical basics of fanfic writing and culture and try to relate them to something more traditional and tangible — that is, the print world whose value we take as a given." Schaffner's piece is more of a personal essay than the SLJ article. Whatever your level of participation in fandom (not at all, "hey so that's what I was writing in High School," or you're a BNF), it's a great article to read.

On a kinda related point: Schaffner makes the point that fandom is about the community.

And I've had a few real life conversations with people about the similarities between fandom and book bloggers. And I've seen others online who see this also. At YA Fabulous, Renay wrote: A big part of the book community is that it’s still a very new fandom, and the fandom I am a part of is definitely not young anymore, so half the time I see the drama llamas flying through the tubes and I’m like, “Oh! How sweet! ALL GROWN UP AND HAVING ITS FIRST WANK!” Or I’ll watch BNFs throw hissy fits or bribe readers with giveaways because they’re not The Center of Attention and Worshiped By The Masses and I think, “Boy, this reminds me of something! Oh right, wait, I’ve seen this before….10,000 times.” It's part of a footnote at a post at YA Fabulous.

Thoughts? Is it like a fandom? Or is it just like any other community, especially a community with no real rules?





Amazon Affiliate. If you click from here to Amazon and buy something, I receive a percentage of the purchase price.

© Elizabeth Burns of A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy

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Farah Mendlesohn has a terrific article in the March/April Horn Book called The Campaign for Shiny Futures. Oh, and look! You can read it. (Sheila, you want to read this.)

So many seriously thought-provoking things here that I don't know where to start. I will just say that I'm going to be thinking about didactic books quite differently from now on. At least, I will if they're didactic science fiction.

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The Horn Book has some neat essays in this issue, all under the heading The Confounded Critic. Five reviewers write of their reactions to books they've reviewed in the past that left them wondering what, exactly, they had stumbled upon.

Sarah Ellis discusses When the Wind Blows. The book was published in 1982, but I'd never heard of it until last fall. And now the title has turned up again. And still I haven't read it.

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Kindle, eBooks Discussion in The Horn Book This Month...

Lately I've had Kindle on the brain. First was the Oprah to-do in which Ms. Winfrey declared it to be her favorite new gadget and said it changed her life. Then I started seeing tests for a Kindle version of CWIM. (It's OK but not great at this point. It seems the Kindle's not awesome with books that are not straight text. There are some funky icons and weird caption placement and things like that, but I'm told Kindle users are used to such things. I was surprised how good the images showed up, however.) Getting our Market Books (as well as a host of other F+W Media titles) ready for Kindle and other electronic readers is a hot project around here.

Seeing the CWIM test was actually my first in-person encounter with the Kindle. I can understand it's appeal, but I'm not sure it's a gadget I'll be snapping up any time soon. I'm in love with the printed book. The feel. The smell. The piles in the corner of every room. The 87 boxes of them I have to back every time I move. I don't mind lugging a book in my carry-on luggage. And at $359, I'd rather buy an iPhone or a really awesome pair of boots.

When I opened my November/December issue of The Horn Book which a big section titled "When e- Is for Reading," in which several writers discuss reader-gadgets, I read it with great interest. Here's a bit from Stephen Roxburgh that puts things in perspective:

And, for the moment, let’s not engage in the “death of the book as we know it” debate. Technology is the means to an end, and not necessarily the end of a means. Think about the fact that people still walk, bicycle, ride horses, drive cars, take trains, and fly to get where they are going. When we read, we have a goal in mind. We are going somewhere.

Click here to read the rest of Roxburgh's piece along with the others.

Anybody out there tried the Kindle? Do you like it? And what do you think of CWIM on the Kindle?

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I had to take today off to go recreational shopping with two relatives. Four hours of shopping (plus quite a lousy lunch) and one and a half hours of drive time. Each way. So on the way there, I very graciously offer to sit in the back seat where I can inconspicously read from the magazines I stashed in the enormous bag I was carrying.

Unfortunately, one of the first things I read was Questions for Li'l Readers in the new issue of The Horn Book Magazine. In this learned article, author Miriam Glassman speculates about discussion question for picture books on a par with those she's seen in middle-grade and YA fiction marketed to parent-child book groups.

I was reading her first few questions for Green Eggs and Ham--"The main character in this book is named Sam, yet he's always referred to as 'Sam-I-am.' What's with that? Do you think the narrator has that reading problem where all the words get mixed up?"--when I started laughing.

You know how when one person laughs, other people start laughing? Well, that's not what happened here. Someone in the front seat started yelling at me for reading when I ought to be talking with them.

You know what they were talking about? Whether or not one of them should buy an electric fireplace for her living room. I had to stop reading to discuss whether those things throw any heat. Like I know.

Then I suggested I read them other funny bits from the article, so we could all share in the experience. I figured it would be as if I were talking to them, but different. I read them a couple of Glassman's questions for Curious George. "Do you sometimes wish your dad was like the man with the yellow hat? Has your dad ever let you smoke a pipe? How was it?"

They didn't get it. I don't think they knew who Curious George is.

On the way home I snuck out The Horn Book again (it's a very convenient size for this sort of thing) and just read reviews. They didn't catch me that time.

By the way, this month's issue includes an article on e-book readers called Better Than a Suitcase by Sheila Ruth.

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I haven't finished reading the September/October issue of The Horn Book yet--I'm not even close to getting to the reviews--but I did find An Interview with Pat Scales interesting. Scales is President of ALA's Association for Library Service to Children and has a long history in library science. In addition to discussing programs she's conducted in school libraries, she talks about Accelerated Reader and the impact she thinks it's having on reading.

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The March/April issue of The Horn Book does a lot on editors with an article on Ursula Nordstrom and some shorter pieces by contemporary authors on their relationships with their editors.

I have to admit, if it were not for The Horn Book, I wouldn't know who Ursula Nordstrom was. Nonetheless, I believe I've read every word they've ever published about the woman, and I read every word of this issue's The UN Tapes by Leonard Marcus. The UN Tapes is a collection of first person recollections of Nordstrom put together from interviews Marcus did with people who knew her when he was working on the book Dear Genius. I was left with two reactions:

1. The Ursula portrayed in these accounts and I probably would have had nothing to do with each other, and thus would have gotten along very well.

2. As I read along, I felt poor Ursula (I should call her Ms Nordstrom) was being violated a good twenty years after her death and even longer after she was a mover and shaker in publishing. As a general rule, I'm not at all bothered by the exposure of historical figures' warts. I like humanity in history. But while I understand why Nordstrom is a giant in our field, I question whether she is a big enough figure in the overall scheme of things to justify exposing so very much of her vulnerability. The tone I heard in this article was often, "The queen is dead. Now's my chance to voice a little simmering resentment in as nonjudgmental a manner as I can muster."

Or maybe I just like Ursula more than I think I do.

Other articles in the magazine discuss authors' personal relationships with their editors. Those pieces filled me with anxiety because I barely have a personal relationship with my editors. Kathy and I used to talk about The X-files a bit when we first knew each other, and Susan and I went to the same university. But she doesn't get the alumni magazine anymore, and I don't think either one of us gives a damn about collegiate sports, so once the work's done we don't have much to talk about other than whether or not we had a good time over the holidays. (We always do.) Years ago, people at Readerville used to talk about buying their editors Christmas presents. I thought, Come on, who does that? Now I'm wondering if maybe everyone does, and I didn't get the memo.

Susan went to Bologna and has been out of the office for a couple of weeks. Perhaps I should run out and get her a welcome home gift? Maybe I should haul my heinie into New York and make her go out to lunch with me?

Won't she think I'm stalking her?

By the way, Kathleen Krull has the final word on editors in The Horn Book's Cadenza feature. It's called How a Children's Book Manuscript Gets Bought (or Not): The Inside Story, and it's hysterical.

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Hey there sugar frostians. Here is my post for SFG's weekly challenge: Saturday Morning Cartoons. I did a portrait of Johny Quest. Those were my all time favorite cartoons. They are still good to watch to this day!

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