Blog Archive: July 2008

I want to highlight a few blogs I've been enjoying lately. These blogs don't appear in this site's blogroll (which desperately needs to be updated again...sigh) because they aren't children's/YA book-related, but they're fun/interesting sites that might interest you, the reader, just the same!

• The Big Picture - This photo blog by The Boston Globe is a treasure. Three days a week, they post about 10-20ish high-res (for the web) photos on a given timely theme. One of my favorite entries was last week's Beating the Heat, 22 photos of people around the world cooling off this summer, from the claustrophobic throng in a Chinese swimming pool to Palestinian women bathing fully dressed to children playing in an Oklahoma water park. Some topics are sobering, others celebrate life, but all of them are a window to life around the world.
• Library Praxis - My associate (for lack of a better term) Emily and some of her cohorts write this blog on the politics and theory of librarianship. They're usually talking about academic libraries, but many of the principles apply to public and school libraries as well. I enjoy the discussions there.
• Ray the Singing Cab Driver - Ray is something of a fixture in Chicago. He's a singer-songwriter who literally takes his show on the road. He also has a stage band, for which my husband is the drummer. Ray is an eccentric character; his life philosophy is to lead the kind of life he'd like to read a book or see a movie about. He's had a boatload of interesting experiences and is also a damn fine storyteller. I greatly enjoyed his recent story about the one and only time he's been arrested.

My blog reading has improved about a hundred fold since I switched from Bloglines to Google Reader. Why did I never know how much better Google Reader is before? Posts don't vanish after I read them. I can "star" posts I want to read or return to later, making it SO much easier to track posts on which I've commented! I can search the contents of one, some, or all of the blogs I read, making it SO much easier to find that post that talked about X but I can't remember when or where I read it! Yay, Google Reader!

In fact, I'm going to use Google Reader's "starred item" feature RIGHT NOW and pull up the link to July's Carnival of Children's Literature, hosted by Read-Imagine-Talk. There are a lot of fun and interesting kidlit-related posts up there, and it's always fun to see what blogs I've been missing all this time.

Did I mention that Google Reader makes it easier to add a new feed than Bloglines does? It's true!

On a completely different note: for all I pick on Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series (I'm on Team None-of-the-Above / Get-a-Life-Bella), I've placed my reserve at the library on Breaking Dawn. Like the Elephant's Child, I have insatiable curiosity. I shudder to think how many hundreds of people may be ahead of me.

I've read quite a few very good books the past couple months, but I'd feel silly reviewing them here. These days, I choose the vast majority of my books based on blog recommendations—i.e., books that have probably been reviewed multiple times on various widely read blogs. I feel like I'd just be saying, "Ditto, ditto, ditto."

Well, here is a post to do just that. Some of my favorite reads from the past couple months. Links to other people's reviews. And me saying, "Yeah, uh huh, yeah."

Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow
"While the price of security and freedom is high, it is never too high." But what about when the price of security is freedom? In this frighteningly plausible tale of homeland security v. personal freedom, teenager Marcus, after being detained in a secret prison for suspected terrorism, starts a freedom-fighting movement among his fellow teens in San Francisco, taking advantage of the Internet's culture and (if you do it right) anonymity. But can a bunch of kids really take on the U.S. government and win? Words of wisdom: "Don't trust anyone over 25."

Reviewed by every blogger and her cousin, including...

• Confessions of a Bibliovore
• Jen Robinson's Book Page
• The Reading Zone

The Shape of Water, by Anne Spollen
Andrew Karre mentioned this one in the comments to my post about teen books dealing with depression, and then it snagged a starred review from Kirkus (no mean feat), officially putting it on my radar. That was all I knew going into it, so I wasn't sure what to expect. And even if I'd been told what to expect, I don't think it would have prepared me for what I found. To say that this book is about grief and moving beyond grief isn't sufficient. It took me by surprise with its strangeness and beauty and glimpses of humor amid the darkness.

Reviewed more coherently at:

• Confessions of a Bibliovore

Set in Stone, by Linda Newbery
Actually, having searched Google Reader, I'm not sure where I got the rec for this one, but this was another book that swept me away. Though a challenging read due to its formal early 1900s language, it manages to be quite the page-turner! Fresh university graduate Samuel Godwin arrives at the Four Winds to tutor the estate's two teenage girls in art, where he soon senses that all is not as it seems. Meanwhile, the girls' young governess, Charlotte Agnew, is reluctantly reaching similar conclusions. What lurid secret drove away the last art tutor and last governess in quick succession? Did it have anything to do with the girls' mother's tragic death? I know I said I'm something of a callous soul when it comes to crying over books, but the beauty and power of this book brought tears to my eyes in the closing pages.

Unfortunately, every review I've seen of Set in Stone contains spoilers I wish I'd missed, so as to better enjoy the mystery. But if you want to know what you're getting into, it was reviewed at:

• Big A little a

Twelve Long Months, by Brian Malloy
Unrequited love is a familiar theme in coming-of-age novels, but it never feels stale in this book. Molly has left small-town Minnesota for Columbia University; as it happens, Mark, the object of her affection, is headed the same way to work for his uncle's painting business. Mark, Molly learns before completely humiliating herself, is gay. If it only it were that easy to shut off her feelings for him! Malloy avoids stereotypes, cliches, and the Hollywood version of college, and the last lines are so perfect for the story I have to share them: "I guess you could call this a love story. Not the one I wanted or imagined, but a love story, all the same."

Falling into the recent discussion of class in YA lit, Molly comes from a family without much money, her parents did not go to college, she attends Columbia on a full scholarship, and she often has to let her more affluent friends pay for their nights out. In turn, Molly has more money than Mark, who supports himself working in a drugstore, and when she returns to Minnesota views the town's low to low-middle income circumstances with fresh eyes.

More extensively reviewed at:

• Worth the Trip
• YA New York

Black Rabbit Summer, by Kevin Brooks
I tore through this loosely (but never shlockily) written, somewhat psychedelic thriller at breakneck pace. Pete, his sensitive but socially-off friend Raymond, and several other old friends meet up for a drink and a night at the carnival. Cue the off-key carousel music and scary clowns! By the end of the night, Raymond has disappeared—and so has the town's pop starlet. When the police and media focus all the attention on saving her case, treating Raymond only as a suspect, Pete delves into an investigation of his own. The book reads like a cross between Donnie Darko and Brick would watch: dark, violent, weird, yet thoughtful.

Reviewed at:

Worth the Trip

Everything You Want, by Barbara Shoup
So often we see money as the great problem solver. But after Emma's family wins a lotto jackpot, Emma begins to wonder if it actually creates more problems than it solves. We all know the truisms "the best things in life aren't things" and "money can't buy me love", etc., but this book never becomes a morality play (or the Beverly Hillbillies). It's about each character searching out what they truly want in spite of—rather than because of—the new money in their lives. For Emma, a college freshman who's never dated (her closest experience hither-to resulted in her getting punched in the face), it's about groping her way into the future and, she hopes, finding love along the way—universal themes in spite of extraordinary circumstances. Also, did I mention that much of the dialogue is downright hilarious?

Reviewed at:

• Bookshelves of Doom

No Cream Puffs, by Karen Day
In the year 1980, Maddie will be the first girl to play baseball in her town's middle school league. Problem is, she doesn't want to be a celebrity or viewed as a trailblazer; she just wants to play ball (and hopefully attract the attention of cute teammate Tommy). This is a gently humorous upper-middle-grade novel dealing with typical family, friendship, and crush concerns in the context of sports. Its execution, with fine writing and well-rounded characters, is what makes it stand out.

My only quibble worth mentioning was the use of "feminist" as a dirty word. I understand that Maddie doesn't view herself as a feminist, but I wish a knowledgeable adult (Mom, maybe?) could have explained that yes, actually, she is—that feminism doesn't mean bra-burning or man-hating but, y'know, pursuing your dreams on the assumption that your gender shouldn't matter to the world at large. There's too many people in 2008 who still don't understand that. Can we please set the next generation straight?

Reviewed at:

• Jen Robinson's Book Page

As if we needed more ways to waste time: Spell with Flickr!

(Via The Reading Zone)

The local rag did a nice feature on my library's summer literary magazine programs: Library publishes young writers through Lit Mag program.

I don't sound like an idiot in my quotes. Most of the facts are right (though I have 7-year-olds and 5th graders in my group), and there's only one egregious typo I can spot as of this writing. And, best of all, the kids sound enthusiastic about the program. That makes me extraordinarily happy.

Over the course of the summer so far, I've had 58 kids show up. Two thirds have been repeat participants, and more than one-third have come to at least half the meetings, ensuring their work's spot in the magazine.

We've got just one more meeting, and then I've got to bust my buns getting the print layout done for my group and the web sites together for both my group and the older group. Since I'm doing all the web stuff, I'm hoping I can foist dealing with the print shop off on my colleague...

Recently, both Fuse #8 and PRINT magazine in its article "Cover Girls" discussed the covers of particular children's and YA as they've been redesigned over the years. Jacket Why and Collecting Children's Books are two more of my favorite blogs that address the trends and changes in children's/YA book cover design.

I love this kind of stuff. Book jackets are the clothes books wear; they grab your attention and make you give that book the sly up-and-down look. It's interesting to see what fashions (if any) hold up over time and which are as hopelessly out of date as that orange and avocado flowered sofa you picked up at a yard sale for $10. (I really did once buy a sofa of said description, back in college. It was six feet long and the most comfortable piece of furniture EVER. But boy, it was ugly as sin.) I believe an unattractive cover can staggeringly reduce a book's readership. It doesn't matter how often we say not to judge a book by its cover; readers of all ages will.

Something I haven't seen discussed, though, is the face books present to potential readers once they're on the shelf. In libraries and bookstores, where face-out shelving is at a premium, readers' first impression of a book isn't the cover. It's the spine.

My general impression is that books have improved immeasurably in spine design in the past couple decades. When I think back to my childhood, most of the hardcover spines I remember had plain printing in a stately serif font; the paperbacks bore the title and author's name in simple, black caps. I think we're seeing many more wrap-around jacket designs now, more artistic typography, and generally more creativity in book jacket design, spines included.

When readers are faced with rows upon rows of spine-out books, what draws them to a particular volume, causes them to pull it off the shelf so they can then be enticed by the cover design and the jacket copy?

I believe it's two interrelated variables: the title and the spine design. The title is the spine's most important content. First and foremost, the title should be easy to read. Readers should be able to identify the book without squinting or pulling it off the shelf. That's something the old-style, no-nonsense, K.I.S.S. spines had going for them: pure functionality. Artistry is important, but it should come in a rather distant second.

Here are book spines that score high on both title legibility and artistic design, making them magnets when I was looking through the stacks:

In contrast, here are some things I don't like to see:

• Print that wears off the binding after a few reads. Yes, Series of Unfortunate Events, I'm looking at you.
• Low contrast between title and background.
• Highly stylized writing, whether it's print or cursive.
• Gold or silver foil, which is very susceptible to shadow and glare. (Orphan of the Sun actually liked the light in my office, but I no longer have a bloody clue what the foil-lettered book beneath it is.)

Another thing that drives me crazy, from my library-centric point of view, is titles that are placed near the bottom, rather than the top, of the spine:

Most libraries place books' location stickers within the two bottom inches of the spine. For functionality's sake, libraries cannot simply move those stickers around on a book-by-book basis. The only exceptions we'll make are for a book like, say, The Invention of Hugo Cabret.

It would be far better if publishers simply avoided placing vital information in those bottom two inches of spine. From readers' point of view, I'd say the least vital spine information is the publisher's seal. If that's a blow to the publisher's ego, too bad. From the library's point of view, the author's name is second-least important, since the location sticker—especially for fiction books—generally includes the author's name. If one thing should be legible, without a question, it is the title.

The situation worsens when you take genre stickers into account. Now, genre stickering is a discussion piece of its own (do genre stickers ghettoize the collection?), but a great many libraries use them. My library's practice is to place the genre sticker immediately above the location sticker, effectively covering the bottom three inches of spine. We could reduce that space by placing genre stickers below the location stickers, but that's where our "new book" labels go:

But even when we switch the stickers around, we still run into problems with many books:

I've suggested that my department reduce the problem by adopting a different stickering practice for its fiction collections, something more like this:

But in general, I think the world of books would be better if publishers simply kept titles higher on the spine. Even a long title can be made to fit in a compact space, with high points for legibility and artistic design:

That's my soapbox rant, a week late and, as promised, not particularly controversial. But again, it's something I haven't seen discussed, and it bears consideration.