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I've always detested having to speak on the phone, particularly for work and particularly when I don't know the other person. It's no coincidence that I ended up as an editor, in which communication focuses on the written word. My favourite part of working freelance was the fact that my main client was in Australia so I almost never had to speak with them (and they were really quite nice). Editor/writer is listed as the top job for introverts (second is a surgeon, so I'll make that my fallback career) and I'm very happy with my quiet, self-contained daily routine.

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I don't have much time this morning, but I wanted to post a quick video from last night. This is for Kate Messner, who couldn't be here at BEA because she is a dedicated teacher and she is teaching this week.

That did not stop her book, The Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z, from winning a big honking award last night.

A quick entry... life is almost back to normal, I swear.


Thank you, Children's Book World, for showing the love to THANK YOU, SARAH!!

I grew up in a remote corner of Alaska, without electricity or a telephone, at a time when the Internet would have been considered a maniac’s wild fantasy. Anyone entering our house at night would have found everyone in our family clustered around a couple of gas-fueled lanterns in dead silence, each of us deeply immersed in a book–except for my little brother.

He loved books, as long as they were read to him, and I loved reading aloud, except when it cut into my own reading time. Often when my parents, my sisters, and I were all silently reading, my brother would be off in a corner alone, taking his tricycle apart and putting it back together or interrupting us with requests that one of us read to him for a while.

Scarred by an unsuccessful introduction to reading in the first grade, my brother had soon became embarrassed by his lack of skill in a family of bibliovores and was a resolute functional illiterate. The rest of us found this appalling as well as inexplicable and discovering a book that would make my brother a passionate reader became an overriding obsession for us all.

Not too far away there was a tiny library that was our family’s idea of paradise. Even my brother loved it, since it contained picture books and illustrated encyclopedias–and as it turned out, a sizable collection of Tintin books.

We were not a family of comic book readers, but when my brother came home with his first volume of Tintin, poring over the pictures and painfully puzzling out the words, it was a big day for us all. It was the moment that my brother became a reader and Tintin became a household saint. Now we all–even my little brother– were to be found clustered around the lanterns, blissfully engrossed in our books without being disturbed by “Won’t you read to me now,” or “Help me find the big crescent wrench, somebody” coming from a distant corner of the room.

As a bookseller, I love to find books for the uneasy reader and Tintin is always high on my list of suggestions. A colleague of mine specializes in turning reluctant readers into bookworms and in an upcoming interview she will tell us how she does it. What about you? What titles do you suggest for the uneasy readers of your acquaintance? Let us know!

My friend Holly who is an ardent and gifted bookseller of children’s literature put The Boy in the Striped Pajamas into my hands when I asked her which recently-read children’s book resonated and lingered with her long after she had put it down. She is a woman whose taste is beyond impeccable so I took her recommendation home with me, read it, and months later am still haunted by it.

Because it is a book that falls outside of the usual geographical boundaries that mark books recommended and reviewed by Papertigers, and because it is a disturbing work of fiction, I didn’t immediately feature it as a Tiger’s Choice for children and adults to read together. Then I talked to my friend and colleague Corinne about it. She immediately read it and gave it to her eleven-year-old son, so they could discuss it, and I begged to be part of their conversation when it took place.

And that clinched it–if this book had this effect on Holly, Corinne and me, all women of different ages and backgrounds, and if Corinne instantly passed it on to her son, it is a book that merits discussion by a wider audience–and here we are.

I think the author would be happy to know that it has been chosen as a book for both adults and children to talk about in a forum where everyone has equal footing. John Boyne remarked in the interview at the end of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, “I’m not entirely sure I know what the difference is between a children’s book and an adults’ book,” and then quotes a friend’s question, “What is Treasure Island?”

There will be no questions posed about this book until we begin to discuss it after June 15th because it is crucial that we all come to our own conclusions in our very own ways. In explaining why it is a book that has world-wide importance, John Boyne says, “Fences such as the one in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas still exist; it is unlikely that they will ever fully disappear.” Perhaps if enough people talk about this book, and other novels that address the same issue, we may someday live in a world without fences.