For a couple of decades The Hartford Courant, central Connecticut's major daily newspaper, acted as if children's literature didn't exist. Reviews were extremely rare, and far between. After it gave up its book editor, it begin running one of those "group" review syndicated columns every now and then. Sometimes it was one person's column, sometimes another.
For the last month, give or take, it has been running Mary Harris Russell's syndicated column, For Young Readers. Now, this column probably appears in many Tribune papers, which means the three books she covers in any particular week get coverage all over the place. Okay, it would be better if individual newspapers maintained their own reviewers who reviewed independently so there'd be a chance for more books to get press. But, come on, that's not going to happen right now, things being what they are.
I just can't get over the irony--while The Courant has cut back its reviews of adult books, because it's running a syndicated column for children's literature each week it has actually increased it's coverage of children's books because it was publishing nearly zero kidlit reviews back in the good old days.
Oh, because The Courant is carrying For Young Readers, I learned a couple of weeks ago that Loree Griffin Burns, whom I've actually sat next to a couple of times at NESCBWI events, has a new book out called The Hive Detectives: Chronicle of a Honey Bee Catastrophe. Cool title, eh?
Ms Gauthier,
ReplyDeleteI need a copy of Happy Kid in audio format. It is a required reading for her school. There is no text to speech option available and it is not on audible.com. Can you help?
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your question and your e-mail regarding this. Unfortunately, there are no plans for an audio version of In fact, I was just notified last week that the hard cover print version will be going out of print soon. I'm delighted to hear that the book is required reading somewhere, but, no, to my knowledge there is nothing available in audio format.
Gail