Where Is Gail?

We're having a rough week at Chez Gauthier, so I don't expect to be posting until the weekend or even later.

My Family Thinks I've Made It

I have some science fiction lovers in my family, and they were delighted to see that my last post was mentioned at io9 in a piece called Is The Golden Age Of YA Science Fiction Already Over?. I know I said I would stop talking about Tanita, but she's mentioned, too.

Be sure to read the comments.

Perhaps This Is Why We're Not Seeing More Science Fiction

Earlier this month, Tanita said at Finding Wonderland that real science fiction is getting harder to find in YA. That was her experience after serving on the fantasy and science fiction panel for the Cybils. I served on that panel four (?) years ago and found the same thing to be true at that time in both YA and middle grade.

This past year while I've been doing agent research, I've found that quite a few of them aren't looking for science fiction. They don't say why, and it isn't necessary for them to do so. I, however, will be happy to speculate.

1. Perhaps they are already representing authors with science fiction material to sell and feel there is only so much of the stuff they can find a home for. This would make sense. However, since we're not seeing much science fiction being published, it seems unlikely that they already have their plates full of scifi that they're placing.

2. Perhaps they don't believe they can sell science fiction, so it would be foolhardy to accept new authors with scifi books to market. This would also make sense.

3. Perhaps they just don't like the genre, and not everyone can sell things they don't like. This is certainly understandable. I can think of several types of books I'd hate to have to promote to absolutely anyone, forget about editors.

Whatever the reason, agents are among the literary gatekeepers who control what is published. If they aren't interested in a genre, how is it going to get out into the marketplace?

Of course, all it's going to take is for one unknown writer to do for science fiction what Harry Potter did for fantasy and Twilight did for vampire romances and we'll be swimming in the stuff.

NOTE: I am not really Tanita's best friend. I've just been mentioning her a lot lately. I will go on to someone else soon.

Where Are The Village Criminals In Contemporary Kids' Lit?

While on that retreat that I will be fondly recalling for months to come, I read another terrific book by Castle Freeman Jr (I've mentioned him before), this one called Go With Me. Go With Me was about three unlikely people banding together against what a minor character calls the "village criminal."

Now, Freeman's books are set in Vermont, and though they are contemporary books, they deal with a Vermont I knew growing up, not the arty-farty, bohemian bourgeois Vermont I experience while on retreat. Not that there's anything wrong with arty-farty, bohemian bourgeois. It's just my people are not arty-farty, bohemian bourgeois. We're the kind of people who say, "arty farty" (though not so much bohemian bourgeois).

I mention all that to explain why the "village criminal" thing struck a chord with me. I knew of village criminals when I was a kid. There were a couple of teenage village criminal drug dealers when I was a teenager and a truly legendary guy a few towns over who I believe was what would be described as a life-long offender of the petty theft type. My Uncle Mickey went to school with him.

A village criminal seems like a perfect character for a gothic or, perhaps comic, kids' book. But I can't think of any.

This may be because generic suburbs are the settings for so many kids' books, and in all the years I've lived in suburbia, I can't recall hearing about any village criminals. Crime isn't reserved for the "village criminal" in these parts. Town hall and insurance company employees are always getting arrested for embezzlement here, to say nothing of doctors ripping off Medicare if not committing far more unsavory crimes against their patients. We had some counterfeiters at the high school a few years ago. They were all nice eighth grade boys from good families, which was not how the village criminals I remember would be described.

I suspect village criminals don't appear in contemporary kids' books because no one would believe a town would produce just one.

I Can't Believe It! I Know Another Award Winner!

Day-Glo Brothers by Chris Barton is a Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal (pause and take a breath) Honor Book.

I am doubly excited now.

Thank goodness Camille at BookMoot wrote a post that finally caught my eye. I had been flipping through all the award announcement posts at other blogs thinking, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Heard that...heard that... Until I got to BookMoot and realized, No, I hadn't heard that.

Oh, My Gosh! Tanita! It's Your Year!

I just this minute learned that Mare's War by Tanita S. Davis was named a Coretta Scott King Award honor book. Or, I should say, the honor book, since only one was chosen this year, and it was Tanita's.

I am excited.

Thanks to Book Moot for the news.

Coming Soon

I received some catalogs from Chronicle Books this past week. Thus I can now tell you that soon you will be able to buy a Pride and Prejudice and Zombies wall calendar for 2011, a Pride and Prejudice and Zombies journal ("The ideal accessory for the literary undead, this journal features beautiful, elegant pages—smattered with blood.") and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies postcards.

Run right out and up-date your wish lists, everybody!

Get Your Dose Of Musings On Historical Fiction

One of the good things about falling way behind on your blog reading--maybe the only good thing--is that when a blogger is doing a series on a subject, you can sit down and read them all at once. You can do a study, so to speak.

I just finished one over at Oz and Ends on the subject of historical fiction. J.L. Bell began writing about it on January 8th and appears to have wrapped it up on January 15th. The Storm in the Barn, which just won the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction, got the ball rolling.

Some Academic Sounding Stuff

The Ezra Jack Keats Foundation is accepting applications for its Minigrant Program for Public Schools and Public Libraries. Note that the deadline for applications is September 15th.

The Malka Penn Children's Book Collection on Human Rights (scroll down) was established in 2005 as part of the Northeast Children's Literature Collection at The University of Connecticut. Michele Palmer, who writes under the name Malka Penn, has donated more than 160 books on human rights topics to the collection.

Michelle and I were in the same writers' group years ago.

A Mature Cinderella

Back in my youth, it wasn't unusual to see feminist variations on Cinderella, in which we were treated to what happened after the heroine got the prince and was stuck with the reality of dealing with a man every day of her life. The point was that women couldn't rely on princes. So true, so true, but the tales tended to be a little strident and pedantic.

Cinderella in Autumn by Hilary Mantel is much better done and brings Cinderella into the reality of our celebrity obsessed world. Without giving anything away, I can say that the ending is terrific because, indeed, there's no convincing some people that a prince isn't the answer. You'd think they would learn, but no.

Today was child_lit day with my listserv reading, and that's where I found this link.