By: Roger Sutton,
on 11/21/2014
Here are two new YA books about the Rapture, starring teen girls.
“It’s the end of the world as we know it / And Vivian Apple and Abigail feel fiiiine.”
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By: Roger Sutton,
on 10/21/2014
Last weekend my friend Lori was in town and we took the dogs for a walk in the schoolyard across the street. Three tween girls were hanging out on the jungle gym and as we passed they started whispering ostentatiously in our direction and laughing meanly. ‘Girls that age” said Lori, a middle-school math teacher in the Bronx, “are the worst.”
That encounter stayed with me as I started exploring the saga of YA author Kathleen Hale and the Goodreads troll, which Hale described at great, great length in the Guardian. What did the editors think to let her go on for 5000 words? Perhaps they are part of the great catfishing* conspiracy erected to oppress Ms. Hale, because while you begin the essay thinking “poor her,” as Hale unravels you start to smile nervously and look for an exit. It’s far away.
Then I went to a blog that Hale cited as an ally in her fight against the Dark, Stop the GR [Goodreads] Bullies, which I thought would be, I don’t know, some kind of manifesto about maintaining decency in book discussion. Instead I soon felt like Jennifer Connelly discovering Russell Crowe’s crazypants chalkboard diagrams as pages of scans and proofs and links and trolls and catfish whirled about each other with manic glee. Here, as in Hale’s confessional, I saw no victims, just bullies on all sides.
I know it’s unlikely–or NOT, he adds, as the madness infects him–that any of the participants in this circus are twelve-year-old girls, but watching the accusations fly and the drama being whipped up reminded me of those kids at the school, a big helping of attention-seeking with a side of hostility. I’ve avoided Goodreads only because it was too much like work, but it always seemed like such a nice place. Now it looks to me like those spy novels I love, where the apparent placidity of daily life and ordinary citizens is completely at the mercy of the puppet masters. If you want me, I’m in hiding.
*as Liz Burns points out, that word does not mean what Hale thinks it does.
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By: Roger Sutton,
on 9/16/2014
illus. by André da Loba from the New York Times
Leonard Marcus gave a swell talk about Robert McCloskey last night, but what’s really sticking with me is a response he gave to a question at the end about ebooks. Size matters, he essentially said, when it comes to picture books and other books for young children. Of course, we all know this, but I hadn’t thought about the point in the context where Leonard was placing it, that the size and shape of whatever ebook you’re reading is subsumed by the size and shape of whatever screen you’re reading it on. The difference between the board book, picture book and big book editions of Goodnight, Gorilla disappears in your e-reader edition (which–I just tried it–is a disappointing experience indeed). I’m thinking I may need to gin up a jeremiad for our Cleveland presentation on Friday.
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By: Roger Sutton,
on 3/17/2014
Ooh, who remembers this one? In 1982, the library systems of Chicago, Milwaukee, and San Francisco banned Margot Zemach’s Jake and Honeybunch Go to Heaven from their collections (Chicago, from where I followed the whole story avidly, did include it in its two regional research libraries). Unlike the headlines, still popular today, that too-loosely use the term “censorship” to describe any effort to remove a book from a library (it ain’t censorship unless the effort succeeds), this was the real thing: local governments, through their libraries, actively refusing to stock a book because of “partisan or doctrinal disapproval.” This was the book that made me realize that librarians could be their own worst enemies: I recall one librarian interviewed in an NPR story about the flap who actually said, “when WE do it, it’s selection, not censorship.” That is exactly backwards.
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By: Roger Sutton,
on 4/1/2012
Here at the Horn Book we’ve gotten used to publishers sending us off-the-wall books. But this week even we were taken aback when we lifted the flap of a box and found this volume sitting on top of the stack:
As Bertha Mahony Miller might have said: WTF?
Was this a sequel to our newly-crowned Newbery? If so, how come we’d never heard any advance word about it? The confusion continued when we lifted out the next book:
Fortunately, we then found the paperwork that accompanied these books, sent by a new publisher, Hexwood Books. According to their press release:
Newbery winners?
Critics, librarians, and teachers love them.
Kids? Not so much.
As demonstrated by the popularity of Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilght” series, kids today want to read stories about sexy vampires…stories about fangs poised above the neck of a young innocent…stories about blood slowly seeping into the bodice of a white ruffled nightgown. Our new series, “Vamped-up Newberys” will satisfy both young people and their teachers – featuring the plots and characters of your favorite award-winning novels, slightly altered to include today’s most popular subject matter among young people: vampires!
The first five volumes in the series are based on the 2012 winner DEAD END IN NORVELT, last year’s winner MOON OVER MANIFEST, 2007’s THE HIGHER POWER OF LUCKY, JACOB HAVE I LOVED (1981) and that classic from 1945, JOHNNY TREMAIN.
Take a look at this series. Share the novels with a kid you love. Then tell us what you think. We’d love to hear from you!
Passing the volumes around the office, we began to compare the “Vamped-up” editions with the original books. Although a good 80% of the content – prose, characters, dialogue – is virtually identical between original and “altered” versions, each of the Hexwood Books has been modified to somehow include vampires.
Remember the sibling rivalry between Sara Louise and Caroline in Jacob Have I Loved? It’s still there, but now the sisters are feuding vampires:
Johnny Tremain is now a Revolutionary War lad with iron-enriched blood being fought over by two covens of beautiful and sexy vampires:
And
By: Roger Sutton,
on 3/19/2010
From the promo blurb for My Double Life, by Janette Rallison:
You know how they say everyone has a twin somewhere in the world, a person chance has formed to be their mirror image? Well, mine happens to be rock star Kari Kingsley. How crazy is that?
By: Roger Sutton,
on 1/13/2010
but I guess she's also gone Hollywood. From a Little, Brown press release heralding Cornelia Funke's Reckless, forthcoming in September:
This sweeping story, which will delight Funke’s legion of fans and garner her new ones, was inspired by Grimm’s Fairy Tales and developed with film-maker Lionel Wigram, executive producer of the Harry Potter films and producer/co-writer of the recent Sherlock Holmes blockbuster.I'm assuming she will still write the thing, unless of course she has People For That.
By: Roger Sutton,
on 10/29/2009
The discussion/flamewar over at Betsy's place about the Amazon Vine program reminds me yet again of the best way to get people to leave comments on a blog post: write something about blogging that implies in even the tiniest way that some practices might be better than others. People love to go all meta on that stuff.
In other words, as Betty Cavanna's Diane Graham (in A Date for Diane) recalls from a teen dating etiquette book she's optimistically memorized, "let a lad talk about himself."
Now, if someone would kindly leave a note in the comments accusing me of accusing Betsy of doing the same thing that I am doing right now, we can all watch the metaverse explode together.
By: Roger Sutton,
on 6/13/2009
This Times article about the gypsies invading the castle of professional film criticism has a lot of import to the kidlitosphere as well, as amateur (I use the word in a strict sense) and independent critics join the established professional players in reviewing new books for children. I like what A. O. Scott has to say: “the paradox is that the Web has invigorated criticism as an activity while undermining it as a profession.” He means, I think, that as more people are embracing criticism as valuable, the notion that particular people can have expertise (worth paying for) becomes devalued: all opinions become equal.
Here's what worries me more. In the recent dustup about the BEA bloggers panel and subsequent debate about first- and second-generation bloggers, a-list and b-list bloggers, whether blog tours do any good and what constitutes pay and payola in the book-reviewing blog world, I kept thinking about my favorite Nora Ephron crack, which I will have to paraphrase as I can't find my copy of Crazy Salad. Writing about her experience with a 70s feminist consciousness-raising group, Ephron noted that in its waning days the conversation had devolved into a discussion about how each woman was going to stuff her turkey that Thanksgiving, and that none of the members was even particularly interested in hearing what the other women had to say, they were just impatient for their turn to talk. (Or as Fran Leibowitz put it, "conversation is not the art of listening. It is the art of waiting.") I worry that Internet 2.0 is turning us all into better talkers than listeners--that's what will kill criticism from wherever its source.
By: Roger Sutton,
on 5/22/2009
"Strategically placed almost midway between the annual Games, [the Victory Tour] is the Capitol's way of keeping the horror fresh and immediate."--from Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins.
By: Roger Sutton,
on 2/20/2009
and adults' books editors? In any event, there is a great roundtable discussion among four of 'em over at Poets & Writers.
This past week I had to deal with a new author who was rather over-enthusiastic in his attempts to persuade the Magazine to review his book. I finally had to call in the big guns--his publisher--to get him to back off, but it also provoked a lament on his publisher's part that the rules seemed to be changing, that authors were being pressed by their publishers, their colleagues, the whole media culture, to go out and promote their own books with the time and zeal that used to be spent on writing the next one. So haranguing review editors might have seemed to this writer to have become acceptable--expected--behavior. I hope it's not a trend!
By: Roger Sutton,
on 1/9/2009
Another classic gets re-envisioned for new media.
By: Roger Sutton,
on 1/9/2009
Elizabeth sent me this link to the end of literature as we know it.
By: Roger Sutton,
on 8/6/2008
In my new fascination with readers-as-fans, I've been visiting fanfiction.net, where readers become writers, choosing their own adventures for Harry, Hermione, and Bella (is that name an hommage to Mr. Lugosi?). While the site has more than 350,000 Harry Potter stories and 32,000 Twilights, who would have thought that Tuck Everlasting would have 182?
Here's a taste:
"Fuck that Amy, Give me the bottle." Beatrice had just downed her third shot that night and was reaching for the entire bottle of Jack Daniels as her drunk friends looked on, laughing their heads off. Her alcoholism had just begun that past month. It was two twenty am and she was already high, getting drunker by the second.
She was a victim of unrequited love.
She had fallen into a downward spiral of depression, and only one man could pull her out.
-
Winifred Foster went to work every morning, no matter how hungover she was from the previous night. 7:00am at the local diner, close to where the spring used to be. She was now 107 years old. But to her 'friends' and colleagues, she was 17 year old Beatrice Allen, new to the town of Treegap since a year ago, when she had grown tired of Tokyo. Winnie had dyed her naturally chocolate hair black, and bought some hazel contact lenses to hide her vibrant green-blue eyes. She did this in fear that somebody should recognize her, over time. She kept a low profile, and traveled around a lot, blown off lots of replaceable friends, but she did this because she could not risk the secret of Tuck Everlasting.
The spring had survived, she was still the rightful owner of the wood, she refused to sell it. Even if she had wished to, no buyers would be able to track her down. So many years of aliases, and fake IDs. Her actual identity was a mystery to anyone who wanted to find out. She only faintly remembered the 'Man in The Yellow Suit' now, but he was still there, taunting her somehow. Maybe it was her remorse, for not being there when her mother died, for faking her death and leaving everyone behind. It wasn't her fault she had begun getting older and not a thing had changed. She had no choice but to run. She had a new life to expect then. Now? After nearly one hundred years, and still no Tucks. She had no idea what to expect.
And as she poured some water for a kind gentleman in his booth, she wondered if she could make it another day, in her meaningless existence. She contemplated drinking herself into alcohol poisoning; but 'of course', she thought with a bitter laugh she would never die.
By: Roger Sutton,
on 3/4/2008
For yet another made-up memoir. As a culture we've become convinced that only real stories are true stories, or do I have that the wrong way around?
Tangentially, does anyone else think it's hilarious that the book tour for an addiction memoir is sponsored by Starbucks?
By: Gail Gauthier,
on 12/17/2007
I can't say I was ecstatically looking forward to reading Everlost by Neal Shusterman. I thought his book The Schwa Was Here had an interesting premise but didn't stay on task too well, so I'd never read anything else by him.
Then I saw him in October at the Rabbit Hill Festival of Literature, thought he was very engaging and interesting, and decided I would give his work another try. But Everlost, his newest book, is about dead people. Generally speaking, I find books about dead people tend to be a bit maudlin. The writing often manipulates readers emotionally. I don't care for being manipulated, so I avoid them.
If I hadn't stumbled upon Everlost at the library, I would have probably missed it altogether, which would definitely have been a shame. If you can get past the "Boo hoo, everybody's dead in this book" factor, Everlost is a very good adventure.
What Shusterman has done in Everlost is create a fantasy world that just happens to be in what we'd call the afterlife. Certain things as well as certain humans pass over into this fantasy world, known as Everlost. The things have to have somehow engaged intense human feelings during their 'lifetimes.' The humans have to have not 'got where they were going.' Our two main characters, for instance, were strangers who died in the same automobile accident on page two, bumped into each other in that long tunnel with the light at the end, and went careening off course into Everlost.
And then, while attempting to figure out what's going on in their new world and visit their homes in their old one to make sure their family members survived the accident that killed them, they begin to have adventures.
This world is very well done. Every character in it is just marvelous. We have powerful protagonists of both genders so this is a good read for both boys and girls. It's written in the third person with point of view characters that shift smoothly.
Everlost isn't a heavenly place by a longshot, so some younger readers might find it a little anxiety-inducing. Yet it's also clear that Everlost isn't all there is to the afterlife. There's still a potential for heaven, as well as a potential for hell. This book about the dead actually ends hopefully, even though none of our major characters have yet gotten where they're going.
Everlost came out in 2006. It's another one of those books I was only vaguely aware of, if that. I'm surprised I didn't hear a lot more about it. It's that good. However, Universal Studios has bought the screenrights and Shusterman (who is a screen and scriptwriter as well as a novelist) will be writign the screenplay. So somebody knew a lot more about it than I did.
By: Gail Gauthier,
on 4/22/2007
Anyone else notice how short and unreview-like that last post was? For the past couple of months, I've been thinking that maybe I don't really review books at my blog. When I saw Colleen's first post in a series on reviewing at Chasing Ray, it occurred to me that I may not even know what a review should be.
So I've decided that what I write here are reader responses.
Original Content isn't a pure literary blog, anyway. It's my major marketing tool, since I'm so lame at real-world marketing, my way of keeping my name in front of readers and reminding them that I and my work exist. Under those circumstances, is it even appropriate that I should muddy the waters by presuming to review books?
I do like to pretend to talk to people about what I've read, though. But I don't know if what interests me in my reading is what should go into a review. I'm usually interested in how a book represents a certain type of writing. Or I'll obsess about one particular aspect of a book. Or I'll drone on about how a book connects with something else in my life. Or I'll take off on some book that was written back before the Fall, which is hardly up-to-the-minute criticism now, is it?
None of that seems like reviewing. So I'm going to continue doing what I've always done, I'm just going to call it something else.
This is going to get me off the hook with one of my young family members, by the way--the family member with the really strong sense of Moral Values. (Who knows where that came from.) He believes I have no integrity worth mentioning because I won't give the titles of books I absolutely hate, the books I feel have no redeeming social value. He's right. A true reviewer should do that. But my feeling has always been that I am a writer with a blog. Is it right for me to use my personal, self-made soapbox to bash other writers who may not have blogs?
I absolutely believe in discussing what I don't like (and God knows, I don't like a lot), but because I am not a pure review site the way true literary blogs are, I feel I should always find something positive to balance out what I have to say. (Sort of the way Paula Abdul always tells bad singers how nice they look.) Sometimes I have to just link to more favorable reviews to tell readers that mine is not the final word. Sometimes, however, I hate a book so much I can't bring myself to do even that. The fact that positive reviews (sometimes starred reviews) exist for a book I can't stand, puts me into Lewis Black mode. Some awful books I can't name or my head will explode.
If I do reader responses instead of reviews, I can keep my head in one piece.
Funny you should say that. Little Vampire Women just arrived on my doorstep this morning and left me with a look between "huh" and "why?" I'm sure we can find a teen that'll read it ... a parent? not so much.
Little Vampire Women?!
So, does this mean Beth lives?
Yeah and does Laurie finally man handle Joe into loving him? He should bite her. Joe messed up a good thing with Laurie. Damn her. Maybe if Laurie were a vampire he could scare her into loving him. I gotta get that book!!
Professor Baer was the only vampire in the original. Or perhaps a troll. He sucked the life out of Jo at the end. I wanted her to hit him up the side of the head with a frying pan when I re-read the book as an adult. As a kid, I loved the whole thing unreservedly.
Jane
"In my day we called these paperbacks."
Snicker.
I look at them and think, "huh, if it were a movie it would be straight to DVD..."
I wonder if the zombies-and books are going to be like Blanche Knotts' Truly Tasteless Jokes and the Magic Eye books--ubiquitous then, bam, gone.
...only to rise again at some point in the future. I mean, isn't always about the sameoldsameold?
I was at the book release for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, and the author said pretty much yeah, a trend, it'll be over soon, and he won't be writing any more himself. Though I'm still sort of sorry (but only sort of) that Little House and Werewolves was apparently only a rumor.
Little Vampire Women: yikes. Though what LMA's father said to her on his death bed, then her dying two days after him, always seemed creepy. I hope Bronson gets cast as the blood-sucking one, though in the old tradition of unsexy vampires.
This puts me in mind of the excellent Leonard Marcus interview with Jean Feiwel that HB published last fall, which offers a cautionary tale about publishers putting all their eggs in one basket. I do wonder what will happen when these books fall out of fashion with kids, as Goosebumps did overnight. The cool teens are already making fun of Twilight. Seller, beware!
written in an undemanding style and with an alluring, quickly graspable premise
Wow. Thanks for trashing an entire revenue stream. Really. Thanks. Because I've been having this problem lately when I read glowing reviews for a book and finally get a copy and read it and am left stunned by how silly it is, with the occasional high-minded moralizing pasted on to be thought-provoking. I couldn't understand why these books were so well-received.
Obviously, the reviewers I am reading aren't drawing any distinction between a good book and a good trashy book.
Hi Roger,
I wasn't going to comment, but then figured if I didn't, everyone would think I was the last anonymous comment.
To tell you the truth, when my editor asked me to write this book, I had some similar thoughts to yours and joked with him more than once that we should call the book: Yes, Hannah Montana Fans, This Book is for You!
But really, there are no new plots, just new characters to live in them. I asked myself what elements I could add to this much used Prince and the Pauper plot to make it meaningful. Trust me, the issues in the book do run deeper than the flap copy suggests.
As far as the benefits of commercial fiction go, I'll just say this: I've had teenagers tell me they didn't like reading until they started reading my books. I had two reluctant reader sons who learned that reading could be fun by reading Captain Underpants. Whatever works! Now they're reading the classics.
And thank you, Roger, for all you do to bring the wonderful world of reading to kids too!
Now I think I'll sit down and start writing that Little Vampire Women book you mentioned. It's going to be gold!
Ms. Rallison,
That took a lot of guts for you to comment - nice job! I've read your books and I think they're great. I'm sick and TIRED of crap like HUSH, HUSH getting rave reviews when it tells a girl that having a man repeatedly threaten to rape and kill her is sexy. Oh, and she can change his ways if only she is patient enough with these silly little threats.
Really.
I'll read commercial cliches over irresponsible trash like that any day, thank you very much.
Janette - I'm really glad you stood up about your books! I wholeheartedly agree with you, as a Teen Librarian, that the goal is to get kids and teens reading...it doesn't matter what they are reading! Once someone develops the habit they will become more discerning and may decide to branch out...or not...Does it really matter? We just want people to read!
My vote goes to writing what the audience will read. As for Janette Rallison - I've read all of her books except this last one which I intend to get the next time I'm in a bookstore. After I read good YA books I pass them on to my nieces and nephews. Janette is just one of the authors I trust to get a good read from.
Margaret
Janette, You rock! You hit the nail on the head. Every story has been told, it's the characters that are different. Your books are a fun read and the teens love them. Keep it up.
Roger, What would you have the Young adult market be? I think that authors must offer what the readers are looking for.
Janette Rallison happens to be an author that writes books that have laughter and tears and dig a little deeper than many others I have read in the young adult market. So I doubt that My Double Life is as shallow as you as you say.
I will say I have read some very shallow YA novels that I felt were a waste of my time. However, I don't know if you can brush the whole YA market under the rug saying it all needs to go out with the trash.
Thanks for coming by, Janette. I am not picking on your book in particular or on the genre of commercial fiction in general, either, just pointing out that our attitude towards it (as evinced by the comments that follow yours) differs from the way we regard similar books for adults. When you say your editor asked you to write it, do you mean that you were presented with a concept and asked to write a book that would fit? To me, that is definitionally commercial fiction. That's not to say it "needs to go out with the trash" and I'm not sure how Amber inferred that from what I wrote. I read and enjoy tons of commercial fiction (those who know me know I can quote entire passages verbatim from the complete works of Judith Krantz).
But I think librarians who believe that it doesn't matter what people read need to examine that credo closely. First: Really? It doesn't matter what people read? People read all the time on their computers; does that count? Or do you mean it doesn't matter what people read so long as they read books? Why are books special? And so on. My point is that most defenders of the innate value of reading "anything" are in fact far more particular in their definitions than they admit.
And why is reading, beyond the kind of functional reading people need to do to survive in contemporary society, good? Why is recreational reading better than watching TV or playing a game or whatever else a non-reader might prefer to do? Why is reading "something" better than reading nothing? Is "at least they're reading" truly a powerful defense of the practice?
Hi Roger,
Putnam likes me to present them with a bunch of plot ideas I could turn into novels and then they choose which one I write. That way, if they already have a novel coming out about a girl who decides to climb Mt. Everest, I don’t inadvertently write another one. This last time I sent in many well thought out and meaningful plot outlines and I also sent in a one line idea: A girl who doubles for someone famous.
That’s the one they choose. I quickly realized it was a very narrow plot idea. For example, if you’re writing a romance about a girl who doubles for a rock star (and there’s very few jobs a teenager could have that she would be famous enough to need a double) there is really only one possibility of who she can fall in love with: another famous rock star. If she fell in love with some guy from the lighting crew there would be no danger for her character, and thus no tension. He wouldn’t care that she wasn’t famous. He might even be glad. Nope, it has to be someone way out of her league so she has something to lose if the truth comes out.
The more I plotted this story out, the more I realized the plot points had already been determined in those original seven words.
I didn’t want the book to just be about fame and money, so I choose a character who is looking for a father who doesn’t know she exists. Her job as a double allows her to meet him. In my mind the story is all about family and the desire kids have to be loved and accepted by their parents. But that doesn’t sound nearly as cool on a flap copy.
As for getting kids to read and what they should read, I could talk for an hour on that subject since I have two reluctant reader sons. Keep in mind that 1 in 5 children have a reading disability. I myself am dyslexic. (Thank goodness for spell check!) When my oldest son was in 4th grade his teacher came to me (after the school refused to get him extra reading help) and she told me, “I’ve seen this happen a thousand times. Kids struggle with reading, then they fall behind in school, then they hate school, then they get in trouble and drop out of school. If you don’t want that to happen, you need to get your son reading help.”
I homeschooled him for fifth grade so we could concentrate just on reading.
My Harvard educated father was aghast that I let my son read Calvin and Hobbes and counted it as reading time, but comic books are a great thing for reluctant readers. The pictures and punch lines keep the kids there reading, and while they’re doing that, they’re learning important reading skills like vocabulary and visualization techniques.
I went from disdaining Captain Underpants to getting every book in the series. And when my son stayed up until 3:00 a.m. in the morning to read The Lightening Thief, I decided that if I ever meet Rick Riordan I’m going to kiss him. A lot. Security will have to pull me away.
This same son is reading The Iliad now. (Okay, not willingly, but he’s still reading it.) My philosophy is that kids need to learn that reading is fun first. It’s not like calculus homework that very few people do for enjoyment. Once we’ve taught kids that reading is fun, we open up a world of possibilities to them. Until they think it’s fun. It might as well be calculus homework.
Again, thank you for the part you play in helping kids connect with books.
Cheers,
Janette
But -- why is calculus homework inherently NOT fun?
To me calculus is actually a lot like reading. Once is stops being difficult and mechanical, it becomes completely fascinating.
Emily, Emily, Emily...
Dear Roger,
I hope you do look at my book "Little Vampire Women." As a re-imagining of "Little Women" with the March girls as vampires, it can be too easily dismissed by those who think the current trend of mashing an original text with new material is a cop-out at best and the death of originality at worst. I think it's a valid endeavor to provide new context to a familiar story and can only hope to send some young girl scurrying to the original to compare lines the way I did with "Hamlet" after watching "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead."
The presence of vampires and zombies, of course, raises the issue of sensationalism, which also makes books like these easy to dismiss. Personally, I think the beautiful absurdity of Elizabeth Bennet wielding a sword is validation enough, but obviously that's just my opinion. So the debate goes on, and I find it is particularly fitting that we have it over the grave of Louisa May Alcott, who herself wrote many sensational stories with titles like "Pauline's Passion and Punishment" and "Lost in a Pyramid: The Mummy's Curse." (Incidentally, she wrote "Little Women" at the request of her publisher, who wanted a "girls' story," even though she wanted to write about boys.)
I understand that "Little Vampire Women" isn't for everyone--although the curiosity I read in several of the comments posted here makes me think it is for more people than I imagined--I think the conversation is for everyone. John Matteson, Alcott's Pulitzer Prize winning biographer, agrees. That's why he and I are sitting down on May 6 to discuss vampires, werewolves and Louisa May Alcott at Symphony Space in New York City. If anyone is in town, please come join the conversation.
Lynn