Interesting Reading From The March/April 2022 Horn Book

The March/April 2022 Horn Book carried a couple of articles that particularly interested me:

• The Shut Doors of Libraries by Jeannine Atkins. Libraries, it turns out, have not always been color blind and open to all. Jeannine is a Facebook friend and the author of, among other things, Little Woman in Blue.
• Graphic Memoirs: Why We Read Them. Why We Need Them by Sylvie Kantorovitz. The author discusses what the images in a graphic memoir should be doing, as well as how a memoir is based on memories and what that means in terms of fact.

Some interesting reviews:

• Cold by Mariko Tamaki, which I've read. 
• Ironhead, or, Once a Young Lady by Jean-Claude van Rijckeghem, translated by Krisen Gehrman, which I have in a book bag in a closet next to me.
• Alone like Me by Rebecca Evans. I went to school with Rebecca's mother! From third to twelfth grade.

The Young Readers Edition Of A "Scary but True Story of the Poison that Made People Glow in the Dark"

Years ago, The Horn Book did a special issue on history books for children, describing how in days of old, such books were often children's versions of adult books while these days original historical
research and writing is being done for the children's audience. I can find neither my blog post on the subject nor links to The Horn Book articles I recall. Hey, but it happened.

My recollection of that Horn Book material lead me to pick up The Radium Girls: Young Readers' Edition, The Scary But True Story of the Poison that Made People Glow in the Dark by Kate Moore. It's the 'young readers' edition of her book, The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women. Both books might be described as horror history about the horrendous illnesses and early deaths among women painting clock faces with radium so their numbers would glow in the dark. They died or lived, some of them, seriously compromised lives so people could read a clock without turning on a light.

This is an important story not just because of the misery endured, but because of the impact these women's experience had on labor law. And because many of these women were, indeed, adolescent girls when they began working in the factory that's practices killed them, you can definitely see why this story would be of interest to younger readers.

I read the YA version and skimmed sections of the adult version, trying to determine how the two books are different. 

• I had trouble keeping the different women covered in this work apart. The things that happened to them were terrible, but they tended to be a blur of terribleness for this reader. In skimming the adult version, I think there was more detail, something that would have helped with my reading problem.
• Some of these women had children over the course of the period covered. A couple of times I did briefly wonder when that happened or how, given their illnesses. While skimming the adult version I came upon a woman suffering severe gynecological problems. It came up in another area, as well. I don't believe any of that made it into the young readers' version. So could we say sex was cut for the young?
• In the adult version, a major player's wake and funeral are covered quite extensively, including a painful scene involving her young children. That doesn't appear in the young readers' version. Death certainly isn't left out of this book, as one woman after another dies. But what might be described as the survivors' experience of death was.
• The young readers' version had photographs. I didn't see any in the adult version. 
• The title change is interesting. The adult book is called  The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women, suggesting the women involved will be the focus of the story. The young readers' version is called The Radium Girls: Young Readers' Edition, The Scary But True Story of the Poison that Made People Glow in the Dark, suggesting the radium will be the focus of the story. I didn't notice the subtitle until after I read the book. I definitely didn't feel it had been about radium, and my skimming of the adult book suggests that the major difference between the two is material that was dropped, not a shift in subject matter. What was the purpose of the title switch? To try to make the book less threatening by trying to put the burden of the story on the radium rather than the women whose lives it destroyed?

The writing style isn't difficult, so if I were a teacher, I'd recommend teenagers just go ahead and read the adult book. I don't know at what point even younger readers start reading material like this, though I saw a couple of reviews at Amazon that said children as young as 8 and 9 have read the young readers' version.

While reading The Radium Girls, I began to wonder if it was history or a journalistic treatment of an event that occurred in the past. Sadly, I am not knowledgeable enough to answer the question.

Jerry Craft's Award Acceptance Speeches

While I was retreating in place last week, I read three back issues of The Horn Book. (The most recent one just arrived a couple of days ago.) The July/August 2020 magazine was the special issue that carried acceptance speeches for last year's ALA Awards.

I am not a fan of reading speeches, something I know I've mentioned here many times. Reading the ALA acceptance speeches is not something I look forward to, though I make an attempt to at least skim some. Which is why I got hooked on Jerry Craft's acceptance speeches for the Coretta Scott King Author Award and the Newbery Medal. I liked them both. Reading them also helped me work out why I have trouble appreciating other acceptance speeches.

As a general rule, I find that the ALA acceptance speeches (probably the only ones I read) include a lot of talk of agents and editors and how the speaker worked with them and things they've done together. The speeches often include the same kinds of things--talk of "how I got the call," in addition to those agents and editors. There's also an insider aspect to them that must be really meaningful to other writers and illustrators with agents who are on close terms with their editors. But it's hard for the rest of us, by which I mean, of course, me, to feel much connection to all that. 

Jerry Craft doesn't come across as a publishing insider. He writes about having breakfast with a couple of well-known writers who he thought seemed like nice people, though he didn't actually know who they were until later. At one point in his career, he had to ask Siri what the Newbery Medal was.

This is a guy who outsider speech readers can understand and relate to. If you're not a fan of reading acceptance speeches, you might want to try his, anyway.

Black History Month: 50 Years Of The Coretta Scott King Award

My more rabid followers may recall that last month I took a year's worth of Horn Books with me on retreat, because I had fallen a year behind in my reading. As a result, I've only recently read The Horn Book's special issue from last year on the 50th anniversary of the Coretta Scott King Award.

The Coretta Scott King Award is given each year "to outstanding African American authors and illustrators of books for children and young adults that demonstrate an appreciation of African American culture and universal human values." I think the focus on "appreciation of African American culture and universal human values" gives this award a much different spin than the Newbery Medal, which is "awarded annually to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children published by an American publisher in the United States in English during the preceding year." Because...what's that?

Which brings us to The Horn Book tribute issue. It covers a number of different aspects of the Coretta Scott King Award.

Rudine Sims Bishop's Let Our Rejoicing Rise: Celebrating Fifty Years of the Coretta Scott King Book Awards is an excellent overview on the subject and gets right to the point in its first sentence. "The Coretta Scott King Book Awards originated as a response to the failure of the children’s literature establishment to acknowledge the talents and contributions of African American writers and illustrators."  A publisher at the 1969 ALA conference overheard two librarians discussing that in the 47 years the Newbery Medal and the 31 years the Caldecott Medal had existed, neither had been awarded to an African American writer or illustrator. The publisher suggested the librarians establish an award that would do just that, so they did.

Editor Roger Sutton's interview with George and Bernette Ford, the winner of the first Coretta Scott King illustrator award and the first African American vice president of a children's publishing, respectively, has a "they-were-there-on-the-barricades" vibe that I always enjoy. George Ford says that pre-CSK, " Publishers did not even think Black people did any reading, so the notion of winning prizes was not on the radar."

In A Vision for the CSK: Past, Present, and Future, Kekla Magoon writes about the types of books that are recognized with the Coretta Scott King Award--a variety of books about young black life and not just stories with obvious racial themes. Nor do the judges limit the award to books that just support a traditional, "approved" narrative about civil-rights history.

"After the initial shock and ebullience of my first award call wore off, I was able to reflect on how remarkable it was for the Coretta Scott King Jury to so open-mindedly embrace a text that expands readers’ understanding of the civil rights era. And how important a statement it was for the jury to emphasize that my voice — as a debut author trying to expand young readers’ understanding of Black history — mattered to the powers-that-be of children’s literature."

Magoon also reminded me that two hits from my reading past are Coretta Scott King books. Mare's War by Tanita Davis is an Honor Book (2010) and Bad News for Outlaws: The Remarkable Life of Bass Reeves, Deputy U.S. Marshall by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson won the award the same year. 

This Horn Book issue is also peppered with marvelous brief personal essays by authors and illustrators who have been CSK winners.

Looking for a copy of this Coretta Scott King Award Horn Book tribute issue would be well worth your time.

Some Thoughts On Ethnic Characters in "The Horn Book Magazine"

I read a great article today in the March/April The Horn Book by Sayantani DasGupta. My Characters Don't Wear Shoes in the House deals with whether authors from immigrant backgrounds need to write stories about their communities that "perform a certain kind of pain for others' voyeuristic pleasure, or...center and 'teach' mainstream readers about my background and experience." Or can they write about positive experiences they've known? Or just any experience they've known? Does everything need to be about oppression, even if the writers haven't experienced that?

This essay hit me at a great moment, because before getting out of bed this morning, I finished reading The Wangs vs. The World by Jade Chang. This is an adult book, but I think it illustrates what DasGupta is writing about. It's not a stereotypical suffering immigrant story, by any means. Charles Wang comes to this country and becomes successful beyond most of our dreams. Then he loses it all in 2008, not because of his ethnicity or some kind of immigrant oppression but because it's 2008. The Wang children go out into the world of fashion blogs, private secondary schools, stand-up comedy, and art but still maintain a connection to their culture, able to speak Chinese, particularly within the family, and eat Chinese food beyond what's offered at Panda Express.

These Chinese-American family members exist in a truly Chinese-American world of their own making, not a cliched one imposed upon them. Theirs is the kind of immigrant story I think Sayantani DasGupta was writing about.

By the way, an excerpt from Ebony Elizabeth Thomas's The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games appears in this issue of The Horn Book. It's very good, too.

Environmental Book Club

Haven't heard about the ol' EBC in a long time, have you? Yeah, I just made that up...EBC. Environmental books, particularly fiction, which is my big interest, aren't something I stumble upon regularly, though I have my eye on one now.

What I'm directing you to today, people, is an article in the January/February issue of The Horn Book by Kathleen T. Isaacs. Featuring Wonder deals with encouraging "children's enthusiasm for and connection to nature through the sharing of well-crafted picture books." Isaacs covers specific criteria.

I was particularly interested in some material toward the end of the article. Isaacs writes about the general concern about the environment that "has filtered down from adults to children who learn about environmental issues in well-meant books that sometimes stress the losses more than the wonder that can still be found in nature." She also writes about "'ecophobia,' in which people distance themselves from the depressing news..."

That's the kind of environmental writing I'm not looking for.

Featuring Wonder isn't on-line, so look for the magazine.

In Case You Need Some Encouragement To Read The Latest "Horn Book"

I have Facebook/NESCBWI friends all over the November/December issue of the Horn Book.

Articles

Saving Sisters: Little Women, The Hunger Games, and Frozen by Jeannine Atkins.

Reviews

Truth or Dare by Barbara Dee 

Shy by Deborah Feedman

Wish by Barbara O'Connor

Hundred Percent by Karen Romano Young  

A Kids' Guide to America's Bill of Rights: Revised and Updated Edition by Kathleen Krull

Interesting Bits By People I Don't Know

Decolonizing Nostalgia: When Historical Fiction Betrays Readers of Color by Sarah Hannah Gomez. 

Mommy, Do I Have White Skin?: Skin Color, Family, and Picture Books by Julie Hakim Azzam 

Wolf in the Snow by Matthew Cordell Review. An interesting twist on Red Riding Hood.

Sleep Tight Farm: A Farm Prepares for Winter by Eugenie Doyle with illustrations by Becca Stadtlander. This sounds like Ox-Cart Man to me. I love Ox-Cart Man.

Nanette's Baguette by Mo Willems. Willems does another book set in France. 

To Stay Alive: Mary Ann Graves and the Tragic Journey of the Donner Party by Skila Brown.Donner Party! I'm sorry. That was in bad taste. Donner Party! 

Cloud and Wallfish by Anne Nesbet. No one really knows their parents, but when they drag you off to East Germany before the Iron Curtain falls, you may not want to know them. This definitely doesn't sound like formulaic YA. By the way, the review was written by another Facebook friend.





 

Reading "Poets & Writers" & "The Horn Book"

During Monkey Mind Summer, I am managing to keep up better with professional reading than I usually do. No, I don't know what that's about.

What to read in the July/August Poets & Writers

The four articles on literary agents. They make clear the value of agents and the array of things they can do. While I've known writers who didn't have these kinds of experiences with agents, this cover story describes the writer agent dream. Forget princes. "Some day my agent will come..."

How to Pitch Yourself to Bookstores: What Booksellers Want From An Author by Lynn Rosen. Oh, my gosh.

Superpowered Storytelling: What I've Learned From Writing Comics by Benjamin Percy. Favorite bits: Treating outlines like rehearsals  (Remember that, Gail) and "Every story is about the thing and the other thing."

Look What The July/August Horn Book Included!

On Sunday, a family member and I were talking about how there are a lot of childlit bullying books out there. It will be hard for a self-published bullying book, or even one from a small publisher, to get much attention.

"You know what I want to see?" I asked. "I want to see a bullying book from a bully's point of view. Do these people know they are bullies? Do they care?"

Well, the July/August Horn Book carries a review for Patrice Kindl's Don't You Trust Me? that doesn't make it sound like an actual bully book. But the reviewer does say it involves a protagonist who can "lie, cheat, and steal without sparing a thought for the impact on anyone else." The book is described as "a fast-moving tale of unapologetic self-interest." The word "amoral" is tossed in.

While Don't You Trust Me? may not be the bully book I was hoping for, it sounds absolutely refreshing.

Horn Book Stuff

I'm actually caught up on my Horn Book reading. What I am is behind in telling the world about it. So I'm just going to take a quick dip into all my Horn Book thoughts. Too much of a good thing and all that.

March/April 2016 Issue

The Beverly Cleary Birthday issue also had a very interesting article by Betty Carter called Escaping Series Mania. (Oh, wow. I just realized. Cleary wrote series.) Carter suggests that "An exclusive diet of early series books might limit rather than expand reading competence." Because series books are so predictable--same narrative voice, same characters, same situations--readers aren't being exposed to much that's new, to much that will push them as readers. Instead of using their reading skills to help them comprehend what they're reading, they use what they already know about the series to do that.

Well, I thought that was fascinating.

At the back of this issue is a two-page selection of reviews of narrative nonfiction from The Horn Book Guide. Included is Big Top Burning: The True Story of an Arsonist, a Missing Girl, and the Greatest Show on Earth by Laura A. Woolett. Woolett is writing about what's known in these parts as the Hartford Circus Fire. It is impossible to exaggerate how large that disaster has loomed in central Connecticut history. And I'm speaking as someone who wasn't born when this happened and didn't move to the area until 35 years later. Just sayin'.

May/June 2016

My favorite article from the collaboration issue was Translator: Trafficking Between Cultures by Elena Abos. When you consider that it's all I can do to read the French jokes my cousin e-mails me, I seem to have a bizarre interest in translation right now.

In the Of Professional Interest section of the magazine: Patty Campbell (with Chris Crowe) has written Spirituality in Young Adult Literature: The Last Taboo. Campbell used to write regularly for The Horn Book. I loved her columns.

The Horn Book Podcast

 

Roger Sutton and Sian Gaetano have a podcast. I listened to one during a cooking binge. I don't know which podcast, I'm sorry to say. I made a couple of notes that don't include that information.

Here's the information I did take down: Sutton said that book reviews are news. A newly published book is news because...it is new. The reviewer is reporting on news.

I have never thought of reviews that way, but this makes the incredibly narrow window for getting attention for new books make sense. That is the period of time when those books are new and news.

It still stinks for the hundreds, if not thousands, of books that won't be considered newsworthy enough (due to content, the writer's history, etc.) to be professionally reviewed. But at least now I have a better understanding of the stinkage.

I'm Caught Up On My "Horn Book" Reading!

I'm afraid the next issue of The Horn Book will come before I have a chance to post about this one. Hurry, hurry, hurry.

Material At The Front Of The Book

This was one of those issues filled with speeches by book award winners. I'm not that fond of reading those. I wonder if speeches are like sermons--meant to be heard. Nonetheless, Candace Fleming's talk about The Family Romanov caught my eye. First what struck me was that Fleming said she read Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie when she was young. Well, guess what! So did I! She also talks about the difference between listing facts in a piece of writing and telling the truth. The business about facts not being enough is something I've tried to explain to others, without much success I have to admit. With me it's more a matter of facts and what they actually mean.

I also liked On Writing the American Familia by Meg Medina, which was an article, not a speech. One of the interesting bits was her contention that language is a "dilemma" for multicultural families and books about them because in many ethnic families, the language is no longer spoken. We saw that first with the "old" ethnic families in this country. Polish, Italian, German, French were all lost. Yup. I saw it happen. I mentioned this article in relation to Listen, Slowly.

Reviews I Liked

Dylan the Villain by K. G. Campbell. Picture book. First line of review: "'Congratulations,' said the doctor. 'It's a healthy little super-villain!'" I'm in!

Emma and Julia Love Ballet by Barbara McClintock. Picture book. I got over my child interest in ballet really young. But this parallel story of two ballerinas, one child, one adult, sounds good.

I Don't Know How the Story Ends by J. B. Cheaney. Fiction. Kids in Hollywood during the WWI era, one of my favorite historical periods.

The Shepherd's Crown by Terry Pratchett. Fiction. This is Pratchett's last Tiffany Aching book. I'll probably read it hoping for a Wee Free Men sighting. I'm also hoping this isn't Pratchett's honest-to-goodness last book. I'd like a final Sam Vines and the nightwatch story.

The Hollow Boy by Jonathan Stroud. Fiction. I just read the first two books in this series. I have The Hollow Boy on order from Interlibrary Loan.

I'll try to post this tomorrow before the mail comes. I've got to beat that next issue.

The Weekend Writer: Have You Done This Yet?

When I started the Weekend Writer feature, what...two years and ten months ago?...I was concerned for a friend who was getting a hard sell from a self-publishing company she'd contacted about a story she'd written. I went on for quite some time about what people wanting to write needed to know. One of the things I wrote was, "I don't think a lot of people outside the writing world realize that you ought to actually know something and go out and learn it before you even try to publish whatever it is you think you've written."

Roger Sutton said something similar in an editorial in the September/October issue of The Horn Book. He's talking specifically about writing children's literature, and he has a specific recommendation for those wanting to get started in the field. Also, he's more comfortable with harshing his readers' buzz than I am, so he's much better about laying his cards on the table.

"Don’t even think about publishing until you’ve actually started writing, and don’t even think about writing until you’ve done a whole lot of reading...Deal with it and dig out your library card."

Yes, there's a lot to do.

Okay. Let's Talk Some Professional Reading

Yes, as usual I am behind reading The Horn Book. The July/August issue is floating around here somewhere. I've finished the May/June special Transformations issue, though.

I'm not a big fan of theme issues of anything. However, there were some articles that grabbed my attention in this one.

• From Series to Serious by Thom Barthelmess. This made me understand the value of series fiction, the kind I haven't paid that much attention to in the past.
• What Makes a Good Nonfiction Adaptation? by Betty Carter. This was about creating childlit adaptations of adult nonfiction.
• Alice, the Transformer by Monica Edinger. This is a neat account of using Alice in Wonderland in the classroom.

Among the magazine's reviews were many for books by authors whose names we see a lot in children's publishing. Among the reviews for authors I hadn't heard of, one I found particularly interesting was the review for Nimona, a graphic novel written and illustrated by Noelle Stevenson. It "tweaks both the science fiction and fantasy genres."  And look! You can read the first three chapters on-line.

Okay, people. You are ready to move on to the new issue of Horn Book.

A "Horn Book"...Postview?

The May/June Horn Book has arrived in my home. Yes, I am still reading the March/April issue. You know me so well. So this is hardly a preview.

Some Favorite Horn Book Articles

Mind the Gaps: Books for All Young Readers by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson This was Nelson's keynote address at a Horn Book at Simmons colloquium last fall. It deals with the issue of diversity in children's literature. Why is it needed? "Children believe in story only if they've experienced the magic of living in one. This may never happen to young readers with few opportunities to see themselves in the books they read." Nelson raises a wonderful point. It's not enough to publish diverse books. Those books need to get to child readers. Do they? (I'm asking that last question.)

Designing Woman: The Achievement of Atha Tehon by Leonad S. Marcus This is another one of those "women in children's publishing" articles that The Horn Book does from time to time. I sometimes find them a little, well, Cult of the Childlit Woman Warrior for my taste. But this one was written by Leonard Marcus, who should be the center of a cult himself. He does more than just place Tehon on a pedestal. While writing about her, he writes about why book design matters.

Some Favorite Horn Book Reviews

 

Wolfie the Bunny by Ame Dyckman

I Don't Like Koala by Sean Ferrell with illustrations by Charles Santoso

Grandma in Blue with Red Hat by Scott Menchin with illustrations by Harry Bliss 

The Tight Rope Walkers by David Almond

 

And that is as far as I've gone with my reading.

 

Waiting On Everyday

I've never taken part in one of those Waiting on Wednesday type meme things, though a great many people do. Recently I've actually been taking Wednesdays off from blogging. Time Management Tuesday can be exhausting. But I saw a number of books I found interesting in the most recent Horn Book. Waiting on Wednesday seemed a good opportunity to mention them here.

• A Fine Dessert: Four Centuries, Four Families, One Delicious Treat by Emily Jenkins with illustrations by Sophie Blackall. When I was a teenager, I read substantial historical novels that covered generations of the same family. This picture book covers families making the same dessert over four hundred years. Not exactly the same, but you can see the attraction for me. In addition, the reviewer says the book is "an effective introduction to the very idea of history." 
• No Parking at the End Times by Bryan Bliss. This one sounds as if it's going to be a post-Rapture story. But then where's the Rapture?
• The Cottage in the Woods by Katherine Coville. Jane Eyre with bears.
• Tales of Bunjitsu Bunny by John Himmelman. Martial arts with bunnies.
• In Search of the Little Prince: The Story of Antoine de Saint-Exupery by Bimba Landmann. I'm game for another Saint-Exupery book.

Vacation Reading

I blew through the two most recent issues of The Horn Book while riding in the car off and on for more than two weeks last month.

The July/August issue was also the annual awards issue. This is never one of my favorites, but this year it ran an article by Elissa Gershowitz called Newbery 2014 that was essentially about books that didn't make the cut. It has just a little bit of the tone I saw this past year in articles about why the hell Tatiana Maslany didn't get an Emmy nomination for every clone she plays on Orphan Black. Usually the awards coverage in The Horn Book is incredibly respectful and, um, maybe just a little bit warm and fuzzy? I liked this change of pace.

Reviews I found interesting:

A Girl Called Fearless by Catherine Linka. I was reading the review and thought, Gee, this sounds like The Handmaid's Tale. The reviewer thought so, too. That's not a bad thing.

The Shadow Hero by Gene Luen Yang. Because it's by Gene Luen Yang.

Hi, Koo! by Jon J. Muth. I liked the panda.

The September/October Horn Book carried a story on Robert McCloskey by Leonard Marcus and Folklore vs. Fakelore by Jane Yolen.

Reviews:

The Misadventures of the Family Fletcher by Dana Alison Levy. Maybe The Penderwicks for guys?

Very Little Red Riding Hood by Teresa Heapy, illustrations by Sue Heap.  A toddler Red Riding Hood. Hahahahahah.

Edward Hopper Paints His World by Robert Burleigh, illustrations by Wendell Minor. I like art books. I saw a couple of Hoppers at the Carnegie Museum of Art, though, and I was kind of disappointed. Does Minor do him better?

Time For A Horn Book Post

The Horn Books are piling up around here, so it's time to review one of these review journals. In this case, the May/June 2014 issue. I didn't rush to get to May/June because it was dedicated to Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh. I am a member of that minority of people who are not Harriet fans. I didn't read it until I was well into adulthood, which may have been too late. I can't recall whether I read it aloud to my sons or not. What I do remember is reading the last page and thinking, What? I may have found the book overtly literary. But I'm talking a long time ago, so don't hold me to that.

You can understand why my favorite article in this issue was Becoming a Book Detective by Cathryn M. Mercier. She wasn't crazy about Harriet, either. Plus, both Mercier and I read Reader's Digest Condensed Books when we were kids. Hmm. Is this nostalgia I am suddenly feeling? I have so little experience of it, I don't know.

Horn Book Reviews That Caught My Eye

The Islands of Chaldea by Diana Wynne Jones, completed by Ursula Jones. Because I have a thing now for Diana Wynne Jones.

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart.  The reviewer calls this a "taut psychological mystery" and says "The ultimate reveal is shocking..." I like being shocked.

Dreams of Gods & Monsters by Laini Taylor. I've read the first two books in this trilogy. This review explains why I wasn't crazy about book two. It moved from urban fantasy to high fantasy. I was hoping the end of that volume suggested that book three would be back to urban fantasy. But, no, reviewer says we'll be going on to "epic fantasy."  I'll try it, anyway.

The Boundless by Kenneth Oppel. I'm reading this now.

Fighting Fire!: Ten of the Deadliest Fires in American History and How We Fought Them by Michael L. Cooper. Fire. History.

Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker by Patricia Hruby Powell.  Read it.

The Pilot and the Little Prince: The Life of Antoine de Saint-Exupery by Peter Sis. I'm a Saint-Exupery groupie, and I've liked Peter Sis's work.

Boundaries: How the Mason-Dixon Line Settled a Family Feud & Divided a Nation by Sally M. Walker.  A feud. History.

The Horn Book's Illustration Issue

Yes, the May/June issue of The Horn Book is out. But I'm writing about the March/April issue, because I'm not comfortable being up-to-date.

I'm talking about The HB's illustration issue. I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did. My interest in art is historical and cultural. I'm interested in what art says. How it's created is another thing, and I have little knowledge of technique. Less than little knowledge. Nonetheless, I found lots of good stuff in this particular issue, much of it written by illustrators.

First off, I loved Leonard Marcus's An Interview with Neal Porter, probably because I love everything Marcus does. Porter is a founder of Roaring Brook Press, and the interview deals with picture books.

Julie Danielson, of Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, has an article in which she introduces the idea of illustrators working with both "hand-crafted" and digital techniques. Gareth Hinds picked up on this thought in his Paint & Pixels.

A number of illustrators wrote about how the way they work changes over time. Brian Selznik was influenced by an exhibit of another artist's work. Yuyi Morales's favorite medium is the one she's about to try next. And Gene Luen Yang moved on from How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way.

Then Thom Barthelmess goes at illustration from another angle with What Makes a Good Book Cover?

Even The Horn Book's From the Guide section deals with picture books, wordless picture books.

Whew. Yes, there are reviews in this issue, too. Check them out when you get hold of the issue.

Usually I pass my Horn Books on to a relative who is a middle school librarian. This one is going to one of the artists in the family.

Environmental Book Club

Earth Day is over, but that's no reason to stop reading environmentally themed books. The Horn Book's Recommended Reading For Earth Day list is interesting because it's so long on nonfiction. Plus, the fiction books for older readers all have a post-apocalyptic or at least dystopian thing going on. Monument 14 sounds intriguing, but in a disaster movie sort of way, not an environmental sort of way.

I've Been Reading The Horn Book

Okay, I'm talking about the January/February issue and not the current one. But if you haven't read it, you're going to have trouble finding it now. Not to worry. I will share favorite bits and and a few thoughts.

The Articles

What's New About New Adult?, which you can read. I would probably have at least taken a look at this particular piece even if blogging colleague Liz Burns wasn't one of the authors. (Along with Sophie Brookover and Kelly Jensen.) A concise description of NA from their article: "New Adult — aimed at an adult audience but with strong appeal for teen readers — has recently garnered much buzz. Story lines tend to follow the contours of contemporary genre romance novels, but starring younger characters." They also say that NA has "more drama and explicit sexuality than even the most daring YA."

I heard muttering about some kind of new category of book for older than YA readers for years before New Adult turned up on the scene. I was expecting it to be rooted in college-age and twenty-something experience of starting jobs and being out in the world, though, and not limited to romance and sexuality, which is all I'm hearing now. I was thinking things like Lonely Werewolf Girl. Yeah, I got that wrong.

Owl Moon Redux by Jane Yolen. I am not a poetry person, but I found this article on different ways Yolen could have gone with the text of her book Owl Moon fascinating.

What Makes a Good Horse Book? by Anita L. Burkam, which is also on-line. Guess what? I was a horsey girl. Billy and Blaze. The Black Stallion. Gaudenzia, Pride of the Palio, which I remembered as Queen of the Palio. Another article I just had to dip into. And what did I find? Maxine Kumin wrote a horse book for kids!

The Reviews

A lot of Horn Book reviews deal with  apocalyptic, paranormal, and fantasy titles or some variation of same. As a general rule, there are also a lot of dead parent or dead somebody stories. This probably reflects what's being published rather than any kind of direction from the magazine. There's a limit to how much the-future-is-a-dreadful place and dead Dad reading I can do.

Some other types of titles that caught my eye:

Year of the Jungle, Suzanne Collins' picture book about her father's tour in Vietnam.

Jane, the Fox & Me by Fanny Britt. A graphic novel with a character who is into Jane Eyre.

The Day My Father Became a Bush by Joke van Leeuwen. This book actually sounds a little over my head, but I was grabbed by this line--"...then she meets a captain who's AWOL because he's unable to use the imperative mood." He couldn't give orders?

The Mad Potter: George E. Ohr, Eccentric Genius by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan. Eccentric art genius.

No Monkeys, No Chocolate by NESCBWI colleague Melissa Stewart

A Picture Book Artist's Obsession

The new issue of The Horn Book includes an article by Leonard Marcus called Northward Bound: The Picture Book Art of Isol. Isol recently won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in children's and young adult literature.

Yes, she's notable for that reason. But what I found interesting about her was this bit from Marcus: "The two most celebrated Argentinian writers of the twentieth century--Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortazar--share with Isol what the artist, in a conversation I had with her in Stockholm this May, spoke of as an Argentinian obsession with the role of chance in every aspect of life."

There's something I don't hear about at many SCBWI events.