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As a school librarian, I can’t tell you how many times people offer used, new or self-published books for the school library. For one reason or another, nine times out of ten, they are not appropriate for our collection.

Want your book’s spine facing out on the library shelves? Then listen up…

1. Enough with the anthropomorphic animals, people!

So you wrote a charming picture book about a helpful squirrel or a shy frog. Good for you. I have 3, 276 of them already. Talking animals have been done to death. Unless you’re the next H.A. Rey or Kate DiCamillo, please consider a premise with more minty freshness. Kids are tired of these books and so am I.

Talking robots or mutant woodchucks?  Now you’re talking.

2. I will throw your book across the room if you mention the phrases “learns how to…” or “teaches a lesson…”

Seriously. One whiff of GRANDMA TAKES RAINBOW KITTY TO THE DENTIST and I’m out. Kids want to read about complex characters tackling conflicts in a vivid setting. They don’t want to be taught or lectured. They want to get lost in a story and draw their own conclusions. Leave the lessons in Sunday School, please.

Didactic books are so last century. Don’t go there.

3. Your writing style reveals you don’t have a clue about your audience.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve started reading a so called “children’s book” with the voice of a misty eyed eighty year old.

Gee whiz, Gramps.

If your dialogue, phrasing and plot conjure the words  “heartwarming, old fashioned fun” or “Dick and Jane antics,” you don’t know Jack about what kids are reading.

If your story would make a great hallmark movie, it’s probably not a home run for today’s market. Or my library.

4. Your writing style reveals you don’t have a clue about format or genre.

A 30,ooo word picture book? A twenty page mystery for sixth graders? Fritz the Friendly Frog, a chapter book for shy tweens?

No. No. And heck No! Maybe you chose the wrong format. Maybe your picture book is really a middle grade novel. Maybe your middle grade chapter book with an eight year old protagonist is really an early childhood picture book. Maybe your voice is not a good fit for your target audience.

Maybe no kid of any age would touch your book with a ten foot Nerf bat. Just sayin’.

5. I’ve read books written by second graders better than yours.

After reading your typo filled book with the dayglo, grainy stock photo cover, I suspect you barely have opposable thumbs.

I don’t just reject these dreadful books, I exorcise them from my library. Get thee behind me, Lulu!

6. Your books scares me. And not in a good way.

Your anime style romp with sword wielding, brimstone breathing, scripture quoting heroes in spandex? Tis’ the mark of the beast.

Your middle grade chapter book infused with colorful pejoratives and racist overtones? No thank you, you are not, in fact, this century’s Mark Twain. Kindly respect the restraining order.

Okay, before you the comments section with hate scented air freshener, just know I’m exaggerating. A little.

Maybe.

What turns you off a book? I’d love to know.

Hungry for more? Try these Indoor S’mores, the eas

This morning Wired listed the top 5 Science Fiction/Fantasy books which were written by great authors but were awful books.  You can check out Wired's reasoning by clicking though but the general theme seems to be that these are the books where each author lost sight of what made their writing or their series great.

1. To Sail Beyond the Sunset by Robert Heinlein
2. Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer
3. Narcissus in Chains by Laurell K. Hamilton
4. Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman
5. MasterHarper of Pern by Anne McCaffrey

So have you ever come across a great author that you loved, except for that one absolute turkey of a book they wrote.  Either email me (my name at bookfinder dot com) or add a comment with your thoughts.  This can be any genre, and doesn't necessarily have to just be science fiction or fantasy but you have to like the author, just not this book(s).

[Now Reading: The Van by Roddy Doyle]

This morning Wired listed the top 5 Science Fiction/Fantasy books which were written by great authors but were awful books.  You can check out Wired's reasoning by clicking though but the general theme seems to be that these are the books where each author lost sight of what made their writing or their series great.

1. To Sail Beyond the Sunset by Robert Heinlein
2. Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer
3. Narcissus in Chains by Laurell K. Hamilton
4. Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman
5. MasterHarper of Pern by Anne McCaffrey

So have you ever come across a great author that you loved, except for that one absolute turkey of a book they wrote.  Either email me (my name at bookfinder dot com) or add a comment with your thoughts.  This can be any genre, and doesn't necessarily have to just be science fiction or fantasy but you have to like the author, just not this book(s).

[Now Reading: The Van by Roddy Doyle]

The news of New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary’s death on Friday has brought that first ascent of Everest in 1953 back into the headlines, along with tributes to Hillary’s subsequent humanitarian and environmental work in Nepal.

The Sherpa Tenzing Norgay is indelibly linked with Hillary and so it is really no surprise that we reached for Robert Burleigh and Ed Young’s wonderful book Tiger of the Snows: Tenzing Norgay, The Boy Whose Dream Was Everest. An inspiring prose poem of aspiration and determination, it expresses Norgay’s love and respect for the mountains which tower over his home and how he comes to climb to the very top of Everest alongside Edmund Hillary. Ed Young’s breathtaking pastel shading draws young listeners into the mountains so that they too are trudging through the snow and seeking not to awaken the power of the metaphorical but depicted sleeping cat within.

It’s a story worth telling and this is a lovely version for young children to go to sleep on.

By Kurt Hettler, Marketing Director, Special Projects

In recent years, climbing Everest has become something of an industry (on one single day in 2003, nearly 120 people reached the top), and today when I learned of Sir Edmund Hillary’s death at 88, in his native New Zealand, I marveled at his extraordinary accomplishment. High Adventure is one of my favorite Oxford books. It brings to life all the unforgiving conditions the adventurers endured—the unstable snow ledges, the brutal weather, the chaotic icefalls—and shows how, with relatively low-tech equipment, but an indomitable will to conquer, they succeeded where many others had failed. Hillary recounts the two-year odyssey that began with the discovery of a new Southern route up Everest in 1951, continued with grueling training in the Himalayas the following year, and culminated with Hillary and his Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay, triumphing atop the summit in 1953. It’s the thrilling and remarkable story of risk and adventure, and a fitting final testament to a man that spent his life seeking new challenges. We here at OUP tip our hats at the passing of this simple man who climbed to the top of the world and came back down.

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