How to use this Page

I've learned to do a query blurb, and a synopsis this way as well. Highlight the key characters and scenes in a favorite book. Pin down the goal, motivation and conflict. Somehow it's easier to do this with someone else's book. Eventually, I had a blurb and a synopsis for my own WIP. Great exercise.

I try to do that as much as I can. A funny after-effect of this practice is that I start writing similar sentences. It only lasts a few days, but it's kind of confusing in the middle of an intense writing spree. May I suggest critical reading is better suited to editing sessions?

Another way to do this, take your favorite current author and a book that is so good it is just like a book you'd like to write. Get three colors of underliners. And choose three elements.

Say, Action, Description, Dialogue.

Underline each element with its own color and see how a master author controls pace, plot, emotion by expertly weaving elements through the story to, in fact, create the story.

It gives you a feel for if nothing else how long you SHOULDN'T spen on description in a given chapter.

An existing novel you just love is the best text out there for how to write.

I've been doing that for years. I'm a rereader and keep my favorite read-them-over-again books in three large bookcases in my bedroom.

When I read a book that completely sucks me in, I'm usually not critical. But, after the first time, I'll be reading it to try to figure out why it works, what sucks me in, what compels me. What works and even what didn't.

Only down side is that it gets harder and harder to slog my way through anything that's not "great" (as my kind of book). If I'm NOT sucked in, I tear it to shreds as I read. Useful exercise, but not entertaining.

I find this really helpful too, I have a couple of books I read that help me point out whats working or not especially since I am targeting a publishing house.

There's no way I could re-read an entire book with that critical eye, because I still read mostly to entertain myself...and my critical eye and entertainment eye don't cross. ;o)

BUT, I have critically read multiple openings to books that sucked me in from the beginning. Those writers obviously knew how to start a story, and I'd be smart to study and figure out how they did it.

As a member of a novel writer's group, I'm forced to read other people's work critically. It's exhausting and we have a high turn-over because of it, but I believe it's essential to making my own writing even better.

This is how I get through tough spots in my own work. I pull out an old favorite and am reminded, once again, why it works and what my WIP is missing. So often it's something very simple--like the romance! LOL...it's so easy to get caught up in the plot and the action, and totally forget the layers of emotion between the protagonists which, when you're writing a romance, is extremely important to the overall story.

Often, I feel as though someone is walking in my head. When I come here it happens quite a bit.

This morning, actually five minutes ago I bought the kindle of someone I want to read for that same reason. Not her story, per se, but the setting and the way she set up her series.

Great advice for anyone who wants to play with genre styles.

Thanks once again :)

Thanks for this post.

I found an amazing book by Nancy Lamb (The Writer's Guide to Crafting Stories for Children - and not isn't just for children's writing). It teaches the art of critiquing while reading.

I've never read a book the same since and it has literally rocked my writing world.

I'm rewriting my novel and it was immediately obvious in my writing. I'm now feeling like a real author.

I do it all the time. There was a famous writer's colony in the l950's...can't think of the name right now...that produced a few bestselling authors. And each morning the writers read from their favorite books before they started working on their own books.

I use this technique often. The more I read, the more I start noticing the way authors do things. How they describe, how they characterize, how they set things up. It's fascinating to me to discover these things in the books I read.

I make notes in the margins of books that I read, in an attempt to learn from them. But there are limits. Recently I decided to try a mainstream book to see how it became so popular. I chose one of James Patterson's more successful novels.

It's just horrible. It's written at about a fifth grade level, with rapid POV shifts and chapters that are only one or two pages long. Characterization is blatant and stereotypical, and the pacing makes no sense at all.

The only thing this book has to teach me is "Popular books are Dumb", and I don't think that's a useful lesson.

@Ben: I've found myself doing the same thing. Your idea of saving this especially for editing sessions is a good one, and it's probably easier to compare and evaluate your own work once you have a draft of the story.

@Tracy: You wouldn't have to do it over a whole novel. It can be really helpful to just read passages from a previous favorite, to see what works or doesn't work. (This was my comment, btw, and I originally made it in the hopes that by doing this for just a short portion of a book, we could understand how the reading agents do for work is different from the reading we all do for fun. It's much more exhausting, even if it can be enjoyable.)

And I'm honored you reposted this, Jessica!

Excellent advice. Much can be learned from novels we *think* we know inside and out.

I also find that reading aloud can be an excellent way to get a new take on certain passages. I think it's safe to say that most of us read more quickly than we speak, so the simple act of reading the words aloud forces us to slow down. What sentences roll off the tongue? What sticks in the throat? What do we stumble over, and what makes us long to give up the reading aloud and race ahead in the story?

We notice rhythm, word choice, the poetry of good prose. Readers might be surprised just how much beauty there is in good writing beyond just enjoyment of the story.

Not only is this a good way to help train the critical reader for published books, it's also a great tool for writers' own manuscripts. You get a completely different view of your own writing, and you can learn a lot from it.

If you want your eyes to bleed, read the new V book that came out, as in the one that continues after the original books. It seems to pay no attention to the series (the original series) but I don't remember that much. It serves as a great example of what NOT to do with a book... except, if you read it, it may damage your ability to write well.

This must be why I'm not published yet. I don't reread many books. I find it hard to keep up with all the new ones that there are to read.

I don't get to read as much as I'd like, but sure to my long commute to work I listen to alot of audio books. Hearing so many books has helped my writing tremendously.

One problem you get is (unintentionally) mimicking that writer's style, esp while you're writing the ms. One author I liked used so much description, adverbs, adjectives and similies that I started sprinkling my ms. with all sorts of description--thus slowing the plot and cluttering the ms. Now I have to go back and take it all out...so make sure you study the best writers, not just best-selling authors.

great points! I love the part about dreaming about it. It's fascinating when a book enters every part of our psyche.

The best part of being a writer is reading.
When I'm finished with a project...are we ever really finished?
Anyway, when I'm done and read for the umpteenth time something that has been living in my head for what seems like forever and even then...get wonderfully taken in by the story..ah ha...I know it's good.
Good is great!
Good gets an agent, great gets a publisher.

As an English teacher (and an avid reader) I sometimes get too caught up in the editing side of it. I'm reading a book for a book club meeting right now, and I'm about to tear my hair out. I just want to keep telling the writer, "Get on with it! Could something just happen? Please?"

Then again, I know my own prejudices. I love a book with a plot. I also love good moments, though, moments that stick with me long after the chapters end, like a great film scene.

I'm going through this right now with the book I'm prepping for agent submission....I've had nibbles in the past with other books, but I want this one to be the one! That said, I'm finding the spots that don't work by recognizing which parts I'm NOT getting lost in. It's the first time I've really allowed myself to go back in and be ruthless with the cuts and changes. I want the book to sail through my mind, not make me stop and wonder at its quality. It's a fun process!

Oh, yes. Until the movie was cast, I saw Dolores Jane Umbridge from Harry Potter as my mean and crazy high school Am. History/Lit. teacher!

Ramona Quimby and Anastasia Krupnik both live in imagined versions of my childhood home. Sally J. Freedman lives in a version of my grandma's house. :)

I think that's true. I'm working on something right now that demands a particular setting - a gated, sterile community. A mutual friend tried to persuade me to change the setting to a 100-year old brick house. Funny, both she and I live in that type of house. Similar characteristics. It's moving "away" from what we know that is the most difficult to shape something today's child will recognize and connect with.

Still - my heart is always going to belong to settings like the one you pictured. Just looking at the house brings back the scent of fall air and tumbling leaves.

Every time I read Sarah Dessen, my first instinct is to imagine my neighborhood at home. Only when the setting is described do I change things around to fit the story.

Hi, my memoir entitled, "My Father's Luncheonette" Dutton 1992 was written and illustrated decades after I had moved from my childhood home and my father's luncheonette. If you look at the illustrations some have some weirdly angled slopes (that I can get away with as a naive painter). However, I returned to my childhood neighborhood to give author programs a few times (talk about karma, teaching in the schools I went to as a child). And there they were, the very hilly streets of the Bronx that my conscious mind forgot, but not my life cells. Love how art brings up so many unconscious or subconscious memories.

In On Writing, Stephen King says many of his books include scenes he imagines happening in a scary junkyard near his childhood home. Different books, different settings: yet, he always envisions that same junkyard. Every time I read a book set in a high school, I envision my high school.

So I'd say yes, readers and writers both have their own favorite settings they set stories in again and again.

Like Marie, I often picture my own high school or my grandma's house--not the one I grew up in, strangely. If the house is a middle-class neighborhood, I picture my grandma's house; though if the setting is rural or on a farm I'm more likely to be my own barns and my own fields. Dairy Queen, for example--set in Wisconsin, not far from my hometown in IL. When she practices out in the fields, it will always be set in my own pastures that I ran in growing up.

I think that's a fun thing about reading, actually--one thing that brings the other worlds the writer is describing "home" to us. How would our world change if... etc. But it's interesting to me that--for me--it seems to always be a place of my childhood--a childhood friend's house, my grandma's house, etc.--rather than any place I currently know.

Though this changes if the setting is in a place I know well like Chicago or Boston. Things Not Seen, for example, is set in a neighborhood in Chicago that I once lived in, and I had a great time imagining this invisible kid running down 57th St, living in a house like the ones I would pass by on my way to work.

Nope. I grew up in 1960s California tract housing, and I fully expected houses in books to be old and charming and surrounded by trees. While my extended family all had newish houses, no one in my imaginary world lived in a house younger than 1945. I love CA for its landscape and people, but not for Silicon Valley's building stock.
When I moved to NY, it was as if I had come home to my imagined literary neighborhood.

Ramona Quimby lived, in my mind, in a house very much like my best friend's house on Second Street in my hometown. When I reread the books today, I'm immediately transported to a house I haven't visited in decades.

Yes--I do this too. Every time I think of Nancy Drew, she is always in my grandmother's house.

i had four housing choices for characters in books: my childhood home, a house my family looked into buying when we considered moving, my grandpa's farm house, and tara from the movie version of gone with the wind. until i was in college any character that lived in an apartment lived in the apartment of that skeezy guy who made Coco strip for the camera in Fame.

Marie, when you wrote "scary junkyard" I immediately flashed to my own literary scary place, a skeevy vacant lot down the street from that blue house. Do we think this kind of setting substitution is immature of us?

The Ramona-phenomenon caught me, too. With Ramona in my house and Howie and Willa Jean in my best friend's house.

I think this is a good idea for not overloading a setting with particulars. It's disturbing to hear that a character sat in a cafeteria chair, when in my mind the cafeteria has little round stools welded to the tables.

Yes! I set many books in the house we left when I was six, rather than the house I lived in for the next ten years, and which I still visit frequently. So maybe those first memories are the strongest.

I guess this is part of the reason it's important to have books published locally (cough cough Australian productivity commission). I always knew the bushy Australian suburb I grew up in was nothing like Ramona Quimby's. (Though Ramona looked JUST LIKE ME, she was who I would have been if I lived in America and my mum's name was 'Mom').

I think I tend to fuse various real places together to make new places - both as a reader and as a writer.

p.s. How beautiful is that house?

Yes, my grandparents' house and, for some reason, the house I lived in my sophomore year of college, all seem have have a number of fictional residents. I tend to start with a place I know and add on rooms as necessary.

And, this is very strange, but Kristy from The Baby-Sitter's Club and Lia from Wintergirls live in the same house in my mind - and I have no idea whose house I'm picturing.

I love this list; thank you, Claire. I don't have as much time to keep up with children's lit. these days, and I can count on the Horn Book to choose the more interesting books. I will bring several of these titles with me to elementary schools when I'm promoting our public library's summer reading club. Really a life saver for me.

My aunt and uncle gave me a boxed set of The Lord of the Rings when I was young and just getting into the books. The timing was probably coincidental, but it was just right. It was a paperback set, nothing fancy, but as elegant and serious as a Bible. The covers were tan, with black (red?) lettering, and in the center of each cover was the same image, a clean and simple but convincing Tolkien drawing of Sauron’s eye, encircled by the ring and runes. Nothing flashy or gaudy about it, no faux leather, gold trim, etc. Totally understated. (The opposite, in many ways, of Pete Jackson’s vision, which seemed to need to turn every visceral knob as high as it would go.) The set seemed to sit in silent command of my bookshelf, and of course I still have it.

I had the "approved" paperback set in college. I read it during reading days first year while studying madly for exams, and read it every January after that for nearly a decade.
Then I didn't read it again for about 12 years, and discovered when I did (a lovely hardbound edition this time) how much it had informed my prose, my thinking (I made a button in the 1970s that said, Light and dark, good and evil, god and sex, what else is there?, and my love of high fantasy.

Before the movies came out, I reread everything in a one volume paperback edition, so I would be ready for the movies.

I really love this book almost more than I can say.

The first time I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy was when I was 14 years old, and they were my dad's lovely boxed set of the Tolkien watercolors. I've purchased my own paperback copies since, but they just aren't the same. That original hardcover set still holds so much magic for me.

I am a "young person" (23 years old), and I will say, loudly and proudly, that having the physical books is still EXTREMELY important to me...and most of the twenty-somethings I know. Nothing can compare to the actual, physical, paper-and-ink book. Nothing.

The physical book has character that a digital file can never have. It also has a power to evoke emotions (nostalgia, particularly) and associations (comfort, familiarity) that ebooks could never possess.

I have to admit that I even have more than one copy of some of my favorite books...a reading copy and a "shelf copy"...because I like having a familiar, well-worn, falling-apart-at-the-seams, "this book has been with me every step of the way" copy in addition to the impressive, beautifully crafted, pristine copy that just looks really nice in my bookcase.

Mind you, I am also a literature scholar and very soon-to-be publisher, so I may not be the most typical example of how someone my age might think and feel...

When I hit one too many bumps, either because Life interrupts, or the book tosses me out, I start to skim. Then I have "technically" read, say, Paper Towns, in the sense that I can reasonably be sued for copyright violation when I write a screenplay about a guy whose objet d'amour goes missing and how he tracks her down. On the other hand, I cannot claim that what I did with the last half of Paper Towns was reading it.

Skimming for plot points so that you can eyeball the resolution without actually participating in the story, that's not reading. But that's what I do instead of not finishing a book. Better maybe, I should let it fall.

I usually read before I go to sleep. If I find that three or four nights have gone by, and I've only been able to read a few pages each night before falling asleep, I'll usually move on to something else. I figure that the book isn't capturing my attention. I'll also sometimes drop a book after one too many instance of bad writing. I don't use a formal page limit for deciding to stop.

Technically, I aim for fifty pages before "officially" giving up, but if a book isn't grabbing me, I set it aside with the idealistic belief that I'll come back to it later and try again.

I recommend Orhan Pamuk's Snow like crazy despite leaving the last fifty pages unread.

Doug Johnson just had a similar post. Great minds and all that. 100 pages sounds ok, but I think if you're reading it for fun the rules are your own to make. I don't care what anyone says, I'm never finishing The Bone People.

I'm the same with Famished Road by Ben Okri. Exquisite writing but the novel didn't hang together for me. Perhaps I was too young and I need to read it again. Though I did discover his short stores with relief, now I can love Ben Okri in achievable portions. I struggled with Starbook too, and that is also languishing unfinished in my pile of good intentions.

I hate that annoying point where you leave off a book and then enough time passes that you feel you can't pick up from where you left off but it's too soon to start reading again from the beginning.

Have you read How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard? I skimmed it (I know!) but it does deal with similar questions. Also French.

I don't claim to have read a book unless I have gone through the whole thing. However, as someone said, sometimes what I was doing was not quite reading. For example, I've gone through Finnegans'Wake; but did I really read it? Has anyone?

I usually give a book 50 pages, and don't say I've finished fiction unless I've read the whole narrative. But I'm never sure when I have or haven't "finished" a non-fiction book if it has appendices or instructions or the like.

I agree with Kimberly about nonfiction. One of my most dearly-beloved books on the horticulture shelf is The Manual of Woody Landscape Plants and Shrubs by Michael Dirr, but reading it all the way through? There's no way. But I will say that I've read it, and that I worship its author. With fiction, however, I will have to read (or skim) it all the way through.

I really don't have any rules in reading. Generally I pick up books at the library like candy, but if I don't finish them, oh well, I'll probably check them out some other day. Or not.

I stop reading books all the time. If I'm reading something for work, I'll make myself continue even if I'm not feeling it (taking any shortcuts I reasonably can). But if I'm reading on my time and can't get into it fairly early on, I have no trouble walking away. And I can't think of a book I've put down in that way and ever picked up again.

If I'm offering an opinion about a book, I'll clarify whether I've finished it to put my thoughts in context.

I tend to "drift away" from a book also. Typically give it a few chapters to grab me and then skim a few more to see if the title can be redeemed, if not, I walk away.

If I am reading a YA book to review for the library, will often read the first half, skim the next part and read the last few pages. And yes, I will have claimed to have read the book. . . I usually 'fess up at some point that I technically "skimmed" the book, but details like that don't seem to bother teenagers.

I have no qualms about walking away from a book -- and in fact, I probably don't walk away as quickly as I should. After slogging all or part of the way through one title, I'll get absorbed by a book I really love and be reminded, "Ah -- this is how it's supposed to feel!"

If I find myself re-reading a sentence or paragraph over and over and JUST. . .NOT. . .GETTING. . .IT. . .that's my ultimate signal. I had that problem with "Shipping News" and a lot of Joyce Carol Oates. And don't get me started on anything by Margaret Atwood.

I used to give a book 100 pages. I am down to 50 and falling fast because there are too many books out there I haven't read yet to worry about quitting too soon. You know--you can always go back.

Jane

Oh, dear. With a couple of exceptions, I give up if the reader doesn't grab me on the first page. I am a slow reader and there are a lot of great books to read. First pages are important.

The exceptions: If someone I know well has suggested the title. Or if I am a fan of the writer's other books. But even then, I wouldn't go past twenty or so pages.

I've got no qualms about ditching a book early on, but once I cross the halfway point, giving up feels like a waste. If I've made it that far, I insist on getting some kind of return on the time I've already invested in the story and plow forward out of sheer stubbornness. (One of my dopier habits.)

I think you have to make allowances for books written in an earlier time. If I'd given up on Middlemarch before it got really good (roughly page 200), I'd have missed one of the best books of my life.

Admittedly it helps if lots and lots of people keep telling you it's one of the greatest novels ever written. I can't give every book I dip into 200 pages. Sometimes 20 are enough to say "not for me right now."

If I'm having trouble getting into a book that I'm not required to read, I'll usually give it 100 pages before I decide to give up completely. However, if it's a children's/YA book considered noteworthy for some reason (recently won an award/was on a list, popular with local children/teens...I've had a Newbery medal and honor book reading project for a few years, and I've had to make myself finish some of the earlier winners), I'll keep reading it.

I'm not nearly as forgiving with adult fiction and nonfiction. If I'm really not liking it, I'll stop long before the 50-100 pages.

I don't have a hard-and-fast rule. If it's something I'm reading for professional reasons, I'm inclined to stick with it longer than I otherwise would.

When I do give up, it's often an unconscious giving up. I am a two-timing reader, often simultaneously reading two or three (or more) books. So, I continue to read whatever else I'm reading at the time, and I may or may not get back to the offending book.

I refuse to feel guilty about it. There are too many books I haven't read for me to waste time on a book I don't like.

Fifty pages. Then I discover I have often thrown it across the room. I am too old now to waste hours of my life on drivel and trash, unless of course I am enjoying it.

I only read 25 pages of The Da Vinci Code and the end, only because we were going to Paris and TheInfomancer had actually finished it. It gave me actual, physical pain - not Paris, that damn book.

Hurrah! Somebody else who couldn't finished The Shipping News.

I've abandoned books when I've already read 90%; I've abandoned books on page 3. But if I feel I need to say I tried, I do as many others do and shoot for 50. If I've spent those 30-60 minutes with the characters and feel so little for them that I don't care what happens to them (or am so annoyed with them that I wish they'd all get hit by a truck), it's time to stop and look for a book that speaks to me.

Lisa hit it on the nose. The book has to speak to me, if not, I chuck it (unless, of course, I need to read it for work. Sigh...many a children's/young adult book has been slogged through.)

Life is short. If a book doesn't grab me by a couple of chapters in, I usually drop it. The harder part is what you mentioned about liking a book and then having it wilt right there in your hands for some reason.

To say I've read a book, I have to have finished it. Otherwise, it goes on my "I tried to read it, but..." list.

I recently slogged through a novel for book club that I really didn't like. Nothing is more painful than wasting precious reading time on a book you don't want to read!

I like to give the author fifty pages, but I think it's also important to play fair; to read those fifty pages when I'm not exhausted, in a reasonably quiet place. Sometimes my schoolchildren take a book, glance at the first page, spend the next ten minutes giggling, chortling, and poking their friends, and then come back to me with the words, "I couldn't get into it. It's kind of boring." I try to do a little better than that.

I thought of a two more exceptions when I'll give a book a longer read.

Like mb mentioned earlier, I will make allowances for an older classic and I always finish books or manuscripts that I'm asked to read for contests. However, it's interesting to note that the way I felt about the first page is usually the way I end up feeling about the book. First impressions are lasting.

Kimberly

P.S. I loved The Shipping News. It was a difficult read for me, but the characters were unforgetable. I'm so glad to have read it.

I gave up on Tenants of Time 100 pages shy of the end. At that point suspense wasn't building, boredom was.

I have no rules. I read for enjoyment. If I'm not enjoying a book I stop reading it. If I haven't read an entire book I don't say that I have.

Ditto what most said. I, too, sometimes can't/don't/won't finish a book because it is more work than pleasure.

But it is often because my own work swallows me whole and I set books aside. Sometimes it is that I have stacks of research to absorb. Other times I am lost in writing.

But I only rarely go back because of the hynotic buzz of new books, the growing piles of friends' new works, etc,.
I feel terrible about it. My office is littered with good, half-read books I am almost sure I will never finish. Once a year, I give them to local schools.

depends on what else you are reading at the time (or have read recently) I am now trying to read THE WAPSHOT CHRONICLE and can only think of WICKFORD POINT. Either one might have amused me but too close together they cancel each other out does anyone else have this problem? when reading for pleasure, of course - it's different when you are doing a group review of books on subject x.

I cannot imagine not finishing a book. I have always felt the need to finish every book that I have started. I have found that although some books start off very slow, they pick up speed very quickly towards the middle and the end. If you stop reading a book because you don't like the beginning, how will you know how it ends?

To me, you have to have read the whole book in order to say that you have read it. Otherwise, you have just started it and never finished. That said, I have tortured myself through many a book when the very fact that the reading of it was not enjoyable meant that I should have given up long, long ago.

Super-duper, Roger! I saw it here first, because I haven't gotten my Sunday Times yet. Thank you!

Well, I question your patriotism.

Who do you suppose REALLY wrote that book? My hunch is, someone on the White House publicity staff. (Not Harper editorial or promotion folks - they would know better. Must be wincing now.)

So much for MY patriotism. Thanks for a great review!

No, they wrote it--Laura said they thought about it for a long time and then sat down and wrote the thing in twenty minutes. I remember Bill O'Reilly saying Madonna couldn't have written The English Roses, but, as there, I don't understand why everyone thinks writing a bad picture book is difficult. It isn't.

I think they wrote it in less than ten minutes. Did you read that thing- I won't qualify it as a book? Harpercollins-LOL! Shame on you!

Shame on Harper indeed--but it IS #1 on the NY Times bestseller list and that is all the Game now. Sigh

By the way,I thought they said it took them 45 minutes to write. I see they were exaggerating.

Jane

I don't think this is a shame-on-Harper moment--is there a major publisher out there who would have turned this down? Except when publishers eat their own (like Harper commissioning the colorized Charlotte's Web, or Random House's collection of truncated picture book classics) I think blame should stick to the authors, so shame on Laura like white on rice.

Amen, Roger. Amen.

I don't understand.

Why would two people who presumably know better produce a book like this? Do you think they were constrained by expectations? Suppose they had produced a competent but uninspiring rehash of Where the Wild Things are-- the typical Billy had a bad day, but he's better now Book. It might have gone to the top of the list driven by celebrity and marketing, but buying it wouldn't have been an affirmation of right-mindedness, a badge of honor. It just would have been a book. But THIS, this isn't a book you are buying but a token of your membership in the Literacy Party. Did it have to be bad in order to count? So heavy handed so that grown-ups could buy into it?

Would Harpercollins have pushed for just this kind of book because everybody who claims to believe in Literacy has to buy it?

Or is it that the book isn't actually for children but for adults who need to be convinced that reading is important for their children. So many picture books seem to be parenting lessons in disguise, like the TV show Caillou. Adults are so much denser than children, you have to be really heavy handed to get the point across?

I'm clutching at straws, maybe, but I'd like to know why this sort of thing happens so often.

h

It seems odd to me that no one has yet asked: "How much was the ADVANCE?"

The market for celebrity-author picture books is almost always parents and other end-consumer adults. Such books have little traction in the school-and-library market and little kids themselves have zero interest in who wrote a book. I think they're mostly aimed at people who don't read but think that reading is a virtue they should inculcate in their kids. The celebrity authorship provides a comfortable reference point, and because these consumers equate reading with school, they think there should be lessons.

So you think they couldn't successfully have written anything else? If they had written a book that would have appealed to readers/librarians, it wouldn't have sold well enough to justify the costs?
h

It may not become a bestseller but it is nonetheless a real investment for the publisher. The authors get a whopping advance, which will presumably be donated with appropriate fanfare to a well publicized charity.
And the agency, in addition to the fee, solidifies its relationship with a major publisher and potential clients.

I’ll bet that the book is at least as bad as RS’s review indicates but let’s not pile on. It’s not the first time that good intentions and belief in a worthy effort (and we can at least give them that, yes?) have clouded authorial talent and judgement. Often enough, the more noble the cause, the worse the prose.

Roger notes in his review, " ...no librarian! In a book promoting the joy of reading, this, my friends, is low."
It's ironic that the Bush administration's unfunded NCLB mandates is making this very nearly true. Thank goodness for moms with the stamina to push back.

Anon@2:37

I didn't mean to pile on. I am not interested in bashing the Bushes. As you pointed out, this isn't the first time people have poured heart and soul into something that turns out heavy handed and soulless. I just wonder why that happens. And why people, who should be able to see that something has gone wrong, can't.

I bought the Bush book and read it with my son. He said, "Papa that book is by the President's Wife. It should have been really good!"

Then we went back to Prince Caspain. Thank goodness Harpercollins has a Backlist!

A.D.

On LARRY KING, Larry asked the Laura and Jenna how old Tyrone, their main character was. I was appalled that Jenna, a former teacher, doesn't know age ranges. This is from the transcript:

KING: How old is he?

(CROSSTALK)

L. BUSH: Second grade.

J. BUSH: So he's about nine or 10, eight or nine.

I hated the book, but I'd totally forgotten the reference to the library pages. Along with being offensive and totally unnecessary, put using the term "pages" in the category of "words kids wouldn't use."

I've also wondered at the choice of name for the main character, Tyrone. What's up with that?

I was reading somewhere a discussion of the Bushes' choice of "Tyrone," with several commentors querying why she gave a "black" name to a white character, and others countering that Tyrone is actually Irish. But BabyNameFacts.com confirmed what I had suspected, that, black or white, guys named Tyrone are far more likely to be pushing forty than nine--it's getting into dog-name territory, like Roger.

I think Dorothea's Very Big Mistake was marrying that sad, controlling old guy in the first place. But Roger, you are really making me want to reread, or listen to, that book.

Anyway, I actually went up to two teenagers at B+N today who were haunting the teen shelves and asked them what they liked to read. Usually I just stalk them to see what they pick up, etc. Anyway, one of the said Tamora Pierce and Sarah Dessen, and the other didn't answer.

This could possibly explain my strange quirk of refusing to tell people the name of the book I am reading while I am actually reading it. I can ramble on about the book while it is in the next room, over on the table, so on; but if it is IN MY HANDS AND OPEN, I won't tell you what it's called. Maybe it's a way of protecting the inner reaches of my mind from prying.

I love to do this! Though most of the time it's more of a test for me to see how many books I can identify when I can't fully read the title. It's like a brain teaser for me.

My super-nosy husband managed to read a *line* from a book over someone's shoulder on the T, but was then unable to see the cover. The power of Google revealed the book to be "Middlesex" (like "Middlemarch," but not).

A librarian friend and I always joke about our obsession with other peoples' public space reading habits. We would like to have badges that say "Library Police" so that we could go up to strangers, flash our badges, and demand to know what they are reading. Not to police their tastes, of course, but just to give us the right to be officially nosy!

Do you ever try to read the titles of the books that decorate the shelves in furniture catalogs? The Pottery Barn catalog is fun that way. IKEA's no good for me, though, because the books are in Swedish.

Ooo, kinda like peeking in people's medicine cabinets, except you don't have to lie about it.

My other peek (and no, I don't mean other than medicine cabinets--cause I would NEVER do that-- I mean other than sneaking a peek at book titles) is into grocery carts. I'm always amazed at people's food choices.

Orange soda?? Really??

Barb Kerley

Orange soda is delicious.

Oh...I try to read the book titles in catalogs too! I'm glad it's not just me!

I like to read the books on the shelves when I go into somebody's office. It's like taking a look at what's on their i-Tunes. Though I think I tend to do this because I want to see what I'm missing, more than I want to peek into their minds.

I'll zero in on a book more if a young adult is reading it, though.

Also, you know, books! I just like looking at books!

Who are those three people in the photograph? It is assumed that we will all recognize them. Maybe characters in a sci-fi movie? (Surely not Middlemarch folks?) Too much credit given to readers' familiarity with blogger's private enthusiasms.

Those people are what came up when I did an image search for "mindreading machine." Blame Google.

re photos: this one reveals
a fallacy common to children's books folk: there MUST be illustrations to get readers' attention and explain. some readers are capable of understanding clear writing. and pix can often distract

I'm wondering why you neglected to cite where you found the picture at the top of this post. "I found it on Google" isn't an answer I would accept from my students.

I bet your friends don't try to get away with that, either. They've learned.

To paraphrase Michael Kors (or is that too insider-y for you), "lighten up, it's just blogging." I think Roger was just having fun posting an image to go along with his blog post, for Pete's sake. I think we could do a whole separate chain about the use of illustration in children's books, (and why children often are very glad illustrations are there) and another one about the importance citing sources. But can't you guys recognize a little camp fun?

Elizabeth - I just had to respond to your comment. Referencing Michael Kors as an expert on blog etiquette is akin to checking Turabian for the latest fashion trends. Giving citations for images is a matter of respect in my mind. I'm not always a stickler regarding format but I do believe that it is always important to give credit to the creator of an image or other work. I'm certain that Michael Kors wants his name attached to his designs, whether they are shown on the runway, in print, or in a blog.

Yes, yes, yes, and yes. Brilliantly put. As a writer for children, I need to read books that stretch me, so that I'll be reminded to stretch my readers.

After all, I'm bored by books that are too easy. Why shouldn't children be the same?

I like to think that learning Japanese as a second language taught me something about children's literature - not least that when I have a hard time just decoding the text, I don't want a realistic sad literary story (even if the text itself is not that complicated). I want fluffy wish fulfilment. I hadn't yet arrived at the stage of taking pleasure in symbolism and prose cadences, so I had to take pleasure where I could, in magic and inventive bits and happy endings.

And as I work my way through favorites of my own childhood with my children, I realize that the older books do, in fact, include many of the kinds of features you describe in this post. I still read aloud in the evenings to my 8 year old, and I find myself having to parse these compound-complex sentences using voice intonations, which makes me more aware of their complexity.

Which leads me again to a previous rant about much current J and YA fiction. The modern emphasis by both educators (what a distasteful word) and parents on "reading level" as defined by some preset scale of word length and sentence length has resulted in books that seem to have been structured more by a computer model than by a living speaker of the language.

I participate on a number of parent-related boards, and the number one question about books is not "Has your kid read any good books lately?" but "I need books at a 4th grade/Level M/DRA 38..." Everything is about the level, not about the content. BLECH.

There was a time when Alice in Wonderland was a "Children's Book." *Many* of the classic books that kids keep turning to (or, realistically, being pointed at) wouldn't meet today's "metrics" for an "elementary aged novel" or "Young Adult book." Yet - kids manage to read them.

I am a frequent lurker on your blog. Partly inspired by your earlier post about reading adult literature, I read Jane Eyre (for the first time) and was blown away. I am now reading Eliot's Daniel Deronda, and agree with you about Eliot being "hard." You have to concentrate so hard, but when you do, the payback is just wonderful. Her microscopic analysis of gesture and relationships is dazzling. Of course, I now want to re-read Middlemarch, which I loved in college. Thanks for the inspiration: reading adult books again has been a real adventure, and I'm sure that when I go back to the new spring books, which I must very soon, it will be as a newly energized reader.

Dear Roger,

I once tried Middlemarch on tape and couldn't blend it with anything. It required all my concentration.

One hopes you are not driving heavy equipment while listening...

KT

KT is right: even though you're listening, you look away at your peril--between Eliot's packed sentences and the perils of traffic, something's gonna give. My audiobook sweet spot is located between the subway stop and my house, an uphill walk of about ten minutes.

I am reminded of Thomas Hood's poem about skipping.

Little Children skip,
The rope so gaily gripping,
Tom and Harry,
Jane and Mary,
Kate, Diana,
Susan, Anna,
All are fond of skipping!

The Grasshoppers all skip,
The early dew-drop sipping,
Under, over,
Bent and clover,
Daisy, sorrel,
Without quarrel,
All are fond of skipping!

[many more hilarious verses follow such as:]

The very Dogs they skip,
While threatened with a whipping,
Wheeling, prancing,
Learning, dancing,
To a measure,
What a pleasure!
All are fond of skipping!

[until finally we arrive--after the reader has grown tired of the repetitive structure and is ready to skip to the end of the overlong poem--to the last verse:]

But oh! how Readers skip,
In heavy volumes dipping!
***** and *****
***** and *****
********
All are fond of skipping!

[by the way I don't recall ever seeing this marvelous poem in a children's anthology]

That's hilarious, Andy. I wonder how many reluctant readers might join the crowd if they knew that skipping was o.k.

Oh Roger, you are a marvel. Two weeks ago I was deeply (and vocally) affronted by your suggestion that people who read exclusively children's books need to "grow up"- and then you add the corollary "and read more books like Middlemarch" and once again I am putty in your capable hands. There is nothing quite like Eliot-- if I could know for sure God thought the way she did, I would be deeply religious. And, of course, you're right- reading books that challenge you, and force your brain to stretch and bend is a necessary part of being a good reader. And, in the case of reading Eliot, a better person.

Lastly, if you ever want an exhaustive explanation of the historical context in which the novel takes place, please do ask me. I wrote a research paper on it Sophomore year and it's (from my junior Victorian academic perspective) fascinating stuff.

Alternately, the Oxford World Classics edition has really excellent footnotes. Happy reading!

I'm finding this to be true with Fanny Burney. I'm reading Camilla and loving it for the most part, but oh-those-sentences that remind me that I don't know everything.

Middlemarch is making me feel a little daunted at reading pretty much anything else (for fun). Eliot is so good at showing you how people are that I'm afraid anything else is going to seem like amateur hour.

If this is anything like the regular Children's Choices selection, the choices are skewed from the beginning. Adults pre-select the list of books children can choose from. My guess is this entire list has been selected by adults who selected it from Children's Choices, chosen by children from a list of books pre-selected by adults.

I can see the advantages to having adults pre-select, but if you're going to end up with a list like this, you might as well let the kids have at it from the get-go, without any outside intervention from adults.

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Roger,

I've been a member of the IRA for a long time. Our school system once participated in Teacher's Choices. I was one of the teachers on the panel evaluating books. I was given a number of books to read and review. (Many were good.) I can't recall how many books--but it wasn't hundreds. I'm not sure how the books for Teacher's Choices and Children's Choices are pre-selected. I do know this: When I was weeding books from my school library a few years ago, some of the ones I tossed were stamped "Children's Choices." Those picture books had been in our library for quite some time. I think the quality of books has really improved over the years.

Are the Children's Choice Book Awards something new? I've never heard of them. Shame on me! I guess I should know already. I'm serving my third term as president of our local reading council of IRA.

Elaine, I don't think any one group of children participating in Children's Choices sees the whole lot of nominated titles, which is why there has never been any ranking beyond inclusion in the hundred. The Children's Choice Book Awards are new and thus far dubious, given the opacity of the criteria and nomination process.

It's not just your ivory tower. I'm in a large public library system, we get tons of books, and I didn't know many of the titles at all. Of the ones that I knew, I only thought a few of them were great. And I'm talking great with the kid-friendly caveat, not even Newbery winner great. I thought I was missing something, but after seeing your and Betsy's reaction, I know it's not just me.

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Ohhh, this is so cool. Maps! Transit! Transit maps! Love, love, love...

I did some pretty serious nerding out at the London Transport Museum a few years ago, where they have a display on how the subway map came to be.

And where would Tolkien be today without Those Maps (drawn by his son, I believe)? Maps are great. Right up there with cutaways. See also Edward Tufte's map to end all maps ("Probably the best statistical graphic ever drawn") up at his web site (under posters).

YES to subway maps, and DOUBLE YES to Edward Tufte's map of the march on Russia. The most wonderfully compressed and explicit chart ever made! (and I am an elderly female, not teenage boy!)

Yes, maps, schedules, lists, and facts about places are the stuff. I had great fun incorporating all these into my book MVP: Magellan Voyage Project about a twelve-year-old boy is challenged to circle the world in forty days. Since the books publication, however, I've been confounded by the number of mothers who have e-mailed and scolded me for the alibi I give Adam so he can take the adventure--lying to his mother that he's at summer soccer camp. How else can a modern-day boy take an adventure without some deceit?

I glimpsed this at the Newton Free Library in the hands of a shy young man, asked him about it, and his face lit up. He must have spent fifteen minutes raving about his favorite systems as we flipped through the pages together, and I was hooked. The Tokyo subway map made my head spin as I remembered getting lost in that city, and the changing face of BART maps over the decades made me miss my City by the Bay. A great read for all map-lovers, and the perfect gift for that twenty-something headed to Europe with her grungy backpack.

wow. now i am even more convinced that i am male (for some value thereof).

I'm a girl, and I took one look at that and went, "OOOOOHHHH..." Trains. Maps. Yes.

Here's another damnable thing. When it comes to reading, girls can like anything, because reading is so girly to begin with. But if I had let anyone know of my love as an eight-year-old for Rumer Godden's Miss Happiness and Miss Flower, I wouldn't be here today.

You could have just said that you loved the appendices--diagrams of house building! (I did love that book, mostly for the story, but the reason I still own it today is because of the appendices).

--Sarah

Yes, girls can cross-dress and cross-read. I'm sorry that you were once pressed to secret reading, Roger, but given the hints of blame I sometimes feel aimed at women teachers/librarians/editors in recent guys need charts/facts/comics/statistics discussions, I have to note that it's guys who were threats to reading freedom. I've met teachers who have happily enabled third grade guys to dress up as Laura Ingalls Wilder for Biography Day and many more who are really really happy when anyone reads anything. --Jeannine Atkins

I don't blame women, although it was my female teacher who led the laughter when I ordered Sterling's Mary Jane from the Scholastic Book Club in fourth grade. It's gendered expectations that are at fault, and their enforcers of whichever sex.


Thanks, Anon., for reminding me of those diagrams in the Godden book--I did love them. So schematic! ;-)

As a public librarian, I feel that my biggest enemy when it comes to what guys read is their parents! I have to regularly explain to parents that nonfiction books are perfectly acceptable (awesome, in fact), and that if their sons are totally obsessed with one subject THAT IS OKAY. Reading is reading.

There's nothing new about the argument that women inhibit boys' reading. The issue was first raised in the 1920s when a group of men (mostly writers of boys' series fiction) were angry that Frederic Melcher entrusted the Newbery Medal to a bunch of spinster librarians.

In an attempt to counter the charge that they were ill-suited to choose fiction for boys, children's librarians aligned themselves with [a-hem] the Boy Scouts. It's interesting, too, that the first several Newbery Medals were awarded to "boys' books," almost as if to say, "See? We can do this!"

The argument recycles every twenty years or so, and, for some reason, always appears to be a fresh, new idea.

Avi had a brilliant two-part article in Horn Book back in the 1980s about the feminine values in children's literature, and why they are threatening to men. Any chance we could get this article in the Horn Book Archives online, Roger?

"...this book celebrates Facts, especially facts united by a theme but untied to any story save the one they allow me to tell myself."

Are you saying this is more a boy thing? Nonlinear books that allow readers to construct their own stories, that is.

I think I might be, Monica, but don't have anything to back it up. Readers will read anything, but non- or "reluctant-" readers can be persuaded by short bursts of text or story (think Choose Your Own Adventure or joke books) where a "regular book" might put them off.

I just put it on hold. Can't wait to get it!
Seeing this and reading these posts brought back memories. When I was a teenager, I would spend hours in my room looking at atlases. Oh how I loved the population statistics... and the beautiful maps!

Oh enjoy! I have tickets for Sunday in April and I can't wait.

Love Denise Mina. Enjoy!

Oh, Roger, you rogue! You lead such a charmed life. How I wish I were you!

Sunday in the Park was great, especially the notoriously problematic second act. And, my, the things they can do with, er, color and light these days!

Off to MOMA and a surprise inspection of John and Fuse at Donnell. I'm disguised as Angus McKillick.

That should be KILLICK, no MC btw. Angus has the most beautiful collection of striped shirts I have ever seen.

MOMA is fortuitously providing a great companion to the Sunday in the Park revival with the show Color Chart: Reinventing Color 1950 to Today. There's an online glimpse at http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2008/colorchart/ but try and see the show if you can.

While books for adults similarly try to bring readers around to their point of view, the position is much more mano a mano, not directed from above.

With books for younger children, it may be different, but as a YA writer, I have to say that I'm not--consciously, at least--directing from above, but looking at the reader at eye level, so to speak.

Even middle grade is more complicated, if I think about it honestly. But my experience (and of course, I filter for things I enjoy reading) has been that YA really isn't about looking at or presenting viewpoints from all that different a place than adult fiction is.

(I put that badly. I didn't mean that YA doesn't have a different perspective than adult fiction, just that it's not a from-above perspective, in my experience.)

I'm 22. Most of the novels I read are young adult (and I'm writing a young adult novel of my own) but I do read adult novels from time to time. (The Life of Pi is one of my favorite books.) Most of the non-YA books I read are nonfiction, though: history, psychology and true crime. Do you have an objections, Roger, to someone who reads YA novels and adult nonfiction?

Let me say again that I am making no judgments about what people choose to read--children's books, romances, Faulkner, whatever floats your boat.

In my line of work I regularly--not frequently, but regularly--meet people who upon learning who I am or what I do, say "oh, I only read children's books." They say it as a point of pride, continuing with "because those are the best written." This is where I have a problem--not with what they are reading but that they are proud to read only children's books, that it indicates a keen delineation of taste that only the cogniscenti share. I don't get this from people who only read mysteries, say, or sci-fi or romance. They just like what they like. I understand that the general ignorance and sentimentality about children's books in the larger culture might make one defensive about having a taste for them, but let's not go overboard.

I have great respect for children's & YA literature. I derive great enjoyment from it. I read it pretty much exclusively until I came to college, but here is the thing: though they are good, they aren't everything. Good YA novels, like any other good literature, derive from their historical and literary tradition. If, for example, you read Chris Crutcher's Whale Talk without knowing anything about Taoism, some of the points are lost. (Same with the Earthsea books, actually.) If you read Octavian Nothing having studied British imperialism, the American Revolution, 18th century science & society, you will get a lot out of it and make a lot of connections that you will not have otherwise. If you read His Dark Materials, the whole thing is a lot more interesting with Genesis and Milton under your belt.

The point is, YA books are good--but a sophisticated reader is not satisfied with the last incarnation, with the end product, with what is, if we are being frank, generally easier to read and less substantial than its source material. (Yes, it is good, yes, it is substantial, but there is more.)A sophisticated reader--of any age--wants to know what things mean, where they came from, and how they fit together. If reading just YA is enough for someone--without any interest in why and how it exists--I think that's both lazy and rather dull.

I agree with Roger. My liberal arts education: let me show you it.

Heh. I actually do hear this sort of thing from romance and SF/fantasy readers as well. (And don't disagree, when put like that, that reading in any one genre is potentially limiting, though having a home/preferred genre is not.)

Roger, you say: "In my line of work I regularly--not frequently, but regularly--meet people who upon learning who I am or what I do, say "oh, I only read children's books." They say it as a point of pride, continuing with "because those are the best written." This is where I have a problem--not with what they are reading but that they are proud to read only children's books, that it indicates a keen delineation of taste that only the cogniscenti share."

My take on that would rather be that because children's literature is so patronized in the wider critical circles, we feel the need to make outrageous statements like this to wake people up to the fact that there is fabulous writing in children's literature. Not necessarily pride reading nothing else...just a shock statement. I've said it many times in just that way...and it's not even true in my case. (Yep, I'm a liar.)

To take this is another direction...I'm someone who reads both adult and chidlren's literature recreationally, but I do find often that my recreational response to chidlren's literature gets in the way of my professional response. On a daily basis I have to actively separate my appreciation of a children's book from my critical brain. At the same time I find that my public library colleagues who don't read children's literature recreationally also tend not to choose to review it professionally...just because they don't really like to read it. This then puts a whole new layer on how I read reviews of children's literature; if I suspect that most reviewers are actually "fans," I have to suspect their evaluation of the audience for the book, and look actively for evidence in the review that they considered a REAL child audience. The evidence isn't always there. I'm probably guilty of neglecting it myself.

People can read whatever they want, but the reflexive smugness of the person who says, "Oh, children's and YA books are so much better than adult books! That is all I read!" makes me somewhat ill. For one thing, it is a gross generalization. For another, why on earth would anyone be proud of limiting his or her reading?

It also makes me wonder if these people read *Weekly Reader* for their news coverage.

While I agree with some of your points, and am certainly anti-smugness in generally, I think you're overlooking something major with your condemnation here:

WHAT one choses to read and HOW one reads it are two VERY SEPARATE THINGS. I went on an ill-fated date lately with one of those "I believe everything the NY Times says about ART" people and although his recently read books were no doubt more "literary" than mine, I can guarantee you that he read No Country for Old Men with but a tiny fraction of the care, intelligence, analysis, acuity, and, yes, MATURITY with which I approach even fluffy books like Princess Mia.

I would not deem someone reads Flannery O'Connor blindly because "that's what's done" any more inherently "mature" than I would deem someone who exclusively reads YA lit and is proud of it. What matters is HOW a person engages with their reading, not what they chose to read. As long as their brain is on, any reader is mature in my book.

I don't get this from people who only read mysteries, say, or sci-fi or romance.

Clearly, you have not been around enough SciFi people...

Oh God, Cassandra Mortmain, must everything be so heavy? I like to read Flannery O'Connor because she's so creepy. And I'm sure if I were taking a class or reading an article on her, I would get additional insights that I would enjoy. But while your date might have been an obnoxious name dropper, I don't think it's any less pompous to brag about the WAY you read! For Pete's sake, life is busy and hard enough, aren't we talking about reading for fun? This reminds me of the time Deborah Brodie told me I could only go the Met if I studied the opera beforehand.

And I'm not the Elizabeth who posted at the beginning of this thread, I'm the one who posts fairly often here and is 47. Roger is staying at my apartment right now, and Come Back, Little Sheba was a sad play, but Epatha Merkerson was GREAT. Of course, although I was very moved by the loneliness of both the central characters, I'm sure I would have been more moved if I had watched the play with acuity and MATURITY.

I didn't mean to imply that my way is the only way to read- and, to be frank, I don't do it to be SERIOUS, I do it because that's how I enjoy reading. I engage closely because it's fun for me. I just meant to point out that there's more to the issue of reading than what you choose to read and plenty of immature things can be engaged with in a mature way.

And I can also guarantee you that most of my dates aren't treated to an exhaustive description of how I read- I only bring it up here for argument's sake :).

C'mon Roger: YA adult readers "need to grow up"? I read anything I can get my hands on - adult fiction, definitely adult fiction (i.e erotica) and YA and midgrade fiction. Not only because I'm a kids writer (Feral, Orca Book Publishers April 08, Keeper of the Light, Conciliar Press 06, Royal Monastic Conciliar Press, August 08). I like kids books just as much as adults books. The writing isn't overall better or worse - there are brilliant books in all those categories. I read what catches my interest and what moves me. But to suggest that I need to grow up because I read kids' books? No. You're off track there.

bev, i think that you, like many readers, missed roger's point and keep missing it. he has never said there was anything wrong with reading kids books, or with enjoying kids books. what he keeps saying is that it is kind of lame to read ONLY kids books. just like it would be lame to only go to operas and not see musicals, to dismiss rock because you think only classical is worth listening to. to refuse to visit the museum if it didn't have just the one kind of art that you think is worth looking at.

it's really starting to bother me that people can't follow this argument. read anything you want. but if all you read is kids books, i think you are pretty intellectually limited. just as i would if the only thing you read was military sf with oooh lasers and stuff.

Yes, Bev, I would be off track--not to mention self-delusional!--if I were suggesting that adults should not read kids' books. But I never suggested that, so I guess we're on the same page.

Anonymous 10;40 PM has it EXACTLY RIGHT! What a shame we've had to read through pages of gush about "how much YA fantasy etc means in my life". It would appear that no one actually read the initial post but seized the opportunity to declare their allegiance to a medium that was never challenged. If only she had made this intelligent statement FIRST!

I find time to keep up with both only because my library finally carries audiobooks. I can keep up with adult reading through listening on my commute.

Tee-hee. I spent Tuesday reading an adult recommendation of Roger's from last December-- The Exception by Christian Jungersen. 500 pages of bloat, if you ask me, which is why it took up only a day--I skimmed. But I can't stop myself from looking for tips, and maybe one of these days I'll get around to the books he mentions he's reading this weekend....

I forgot that damned Japanese mystery (Grotesque) at Elizabeth's. But the first fifty pages (about the cruelty of adolescence, ironically) were GREAT.

Like Zee, I get a lot of my adult books via audio. Just started Middlemarch . . .

"Let me say again that I am making no judgments about what people choose to read"

Um, except that you are making judgments. The "grow up" line? That was a judgment.

I do love you defending being smug about people's reading choices by pointing the finger at people being smug about their reading choices. Masterful.

I actually agreed with the first part of the post, about revealing the ending when it would be relevant to the adult purchasing or recommending the book. And you have a point with the wealth available to readers in books written for adults. But that last statement? Not good.

"Grow up"? Yeah, you're right, that's a judgment. But it's true (for me): I can't take seriously a grownup who doesn't read grownup books on the grounds that they aren't as good as children's books. Can you? People who "learned everything they needed to know in kindergarten" or who find "ineffable wisdom" in The Giving Tree--nope, wouldn't trust 'em with my kids.

I'll admit it always seem strange to me when people ONLY read books meant for children. The same way I'd think it odd if they ONLY ate "kid food" (fluffernutters?) or ONLY listened to "kid music" (Though I do love Dan Zanes!).

This is not to say that children's books aren't great, complex, well written, etc. Or that adult work is *better*. Only that the bulk of children's booksa are meant for... well, kids! The dramas of the YA world are different than the issues facing adults.

That these same readers might get something *else* from checking out some adult book.

(They might not, I guess. But from my own experience, though I LOVE to read middle grade, I learn more about myself as a person from, say, Chabon or Irving or whomever)

I wonder what some of the people commenting here would think of someone who only watched kiddie tv. Barney and Sesame Street. If they met a grown man who sat around at night, alone, drinking beer and watching the Teletubbies...

I mean, the writing on Sesame Street *is* far better than the inanity of reality tv.

As a writer too, I find that when I'm reading an adult book I'm looking for ways to bring the craft over into my writing for kids. To push my writing. When I read adult poetry, I'm thinking about sentence structure, internal rhyme, and how I might use them in picture books.

I guess it just seems a kind of arrested state, a weird barrier to me. It seems extremely limiting. A closed circle.

Just my 2 cents.

xoLaurel
http://laurelsnyder.com

Roger, but you know that I never actually want to grow up! I read a lot of "adult" books when I was really young, both classics and contemporary at the time (70s and 80s.) And then, I did decide that I really enjoyed reading Children's and YA lit more, more often, than reading "grown-up" books since, um, I don't find "grown-up issues" categorically or entirely appealing in novel or nonfiction forms. (Same way that I don't find shows like 30 Something or Sex and the City appealing... they are just whiny, and I'll tell you, whiny middle-aged men and women are much less savory than bratty children! Of course, I'm not saying good adult novels/nonfiction are all like those soap-operas! I do find popular adult fiction like The Kite Runner both well written and yet very heavy-handed in their attempts to encapsulate human experiences.)

Anyway... I don't know that we (those of us prefer reading good children's books for fun) "need to grow up," only that we need to admit: sure, we can be a bit arrested in our mental/emotional development. And at the same time, I can be proud of it. It's my life, after all, not someone else's. As I see it, as long as I am happy and not out destroying the world (which I am somewhat capable of doing, haha,) it's safe to keep me around, even as friends!

So it was YOU, Roxie, who took down Go-Krida!

And now, wreaking havoc in Second Life, mwahaha... But, seriously, I do enjoy certain non-children/YA authors and have little patience with MANY books published, supposedly for children and teens! (I still need to read Spook City, I know!)

Thank you for such a great interview with Nancy Traversy! We discovered Barefoot books after our first son was born and they immediately became family favorites. I became a Barefoot Stallholder last year and it has been a great experience for our family. Upon finishing a story the other day, my five-year-old exclaimed, “When I become a papa, I will read my children Barefoot Books!”.

I am thrilled to be a part of the Barefoot Books community. Educators frequently ask me what I am reading to my children saying, “she is so creative, articulate and can think ‘out of the box’”. I believe excellent writing and speaking skills originate from what we are exposed to and Barefoot Books provide amazing, thought-provoking content.
My children are truly blessed by our experiences with these outstanding books! Just last night I read Mama Panya’s Pancakes to a pair of six-year-old girls. We learned about the animals that live in Kenya and how Kenyan daily life differs from ours in California. The girls observations were enthusiastic and questions pertinent. Such an enjoyable bedtime!

Educating and reading to our children is so important. The key is finding books they want to read again and again, but also have amazing content that as a parent you want your children to learn from. I have found with my two children, Barefoot Books really exceeds our expectations. The art of the books pulls them into the story and the multicultural content teaches them about the world in a fun and unique way. Every educator and parent I show these books to falls in love with them. What a joy I have in sharing these books with parents and children!

Thanks for such a great interview with Nancy! I’m thrilled to say that I’m a Stallholder with Barefoot Books and feel so fortunate to have found this company! As a Mom to a 5 year-old and a 3 year-old, as well as a teacher, I have found that Barefoot Books are not only beautiful and well written, but they are the books that they choose to read again and again! Parents and other educators I meet and introduce Barefoot Books to all agree that Barefoot Books are a gem!

[…] 22nd, 2007 · No Comments Nancy Traversy, Co-founder of Barefoot Books was recently interviewed by One MoreBook. […]

[…] Nancy Traversy, CEO and co-founder of Barefoot Books, was interviewed recently on the podcast, Just One More Book. The interview is interesting; I always find Nancy’s story of the Barefoot journey compelling and I have a lot of respect for her as a female entrepreneur and long-time WAHM (she and co-founder Tessa Strickland started the business from home).  While, I was there, I also fell in love with their website/blog. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in children’s literature. […]