Blog Archive: August 2008

Up-and-coming author Jackson Pearce's video Imaginary Writing Process (embedded below) cracked me up as well as hitting home.

No matter how many stories you hear about the years of writing, rewriting, and rejection that lead up to publication, you always think it will be different for you—that you'll be the one writer whose manuscript everyone loves on first sight. (Admittedly, I've heard a few author success stories that do make it sound almost that easy.) As the months pass, you learn the terrible truth. You are not that writer. You've got that same long row to hoe as (almost) everyone else.

But chin up! Don't give up. And watch this video:

Pearce also has a number of other videos taking a humorous look at the writer's life. Check 'em out when you need a smile (and when don't we all need a smile)?

Two exciting, new exhibits for children's book lovers who happen to find themselves in the Chicago area in the next few months:

1. Artifacts of Childhood: 700 Years of Children's Books
   Newberry Library, September 28, 2008—January 17, 2009
   Co-curated by Jenny of Jenny's Wonderland of Books, this collection of 65 works created for and by children promises to be fascinating. After the horn book bit on Collecting Children's Books, I'm eager to see the abecedaria dating from 1544.
2. The Bill Peet Storybook Menagerie
   The Art Institute of Chicago, August 23, 2008—May 24, 2009
   Bill Peet was one of my favorite author/illustrators when I was in elementary school. I repeatedly checked out The Whingdingdilly and was also fond of Fly, Homer, Fly!, The Wump World, and Chester the Worldly Pig. I wanted to write and draw like him. I could give you proof of this from my elementary school notebooks.

   I somehow missed until Fuse #8's post last week Peet's career as a "storyman" for Disney. Not that it was all giggles; there's a fascinating—and scathing—interview at Hogan's Alley about his time as a continually unrecognized creative mastermind. The exhibit promises examples of Peet's Disney art as well as original art from many of his picture books.

It's an exciting day at the library! Where to start?

1. Tonight is our literary magazine reception. The magazines turned out beautiful! If you're curious how they turned out, you can download my group's magazine as a PDF (2.7 MB), or visit my department's scrapbook page. (The image quality isn't fantastic because, uncompressed, the file clocked in at 10 megs. But it'll give you a good idea, anyway.) If you're going to read just one story, make it "Night of the Living Food," about the ingenious inventor Doctor Bob, his equally clever son Billy, and a town full of evil, mutant food. If this kid (who was incredibly prolific this summer) doesn't continue in the footsteps of Dav Pilkey, I will be very sad.
2. In November I get to work the day there's an OSTRICH at the library! A live ostrich! They're going to keep him in the storage closet beforehand so he doesn't get overstimulated! I can't wait!!!
3. We got our latest shipment from the ALA Store, including Babymouse and Wimpy Kid posters and bookmarks, a Danica Patrick poster (one of my coworkers loves race cars), and a Cesar Millan poster (which that same coworker sweetly ordered with me in mind)! So now I'll have the Dog Whisperer and Daddy (Millan's tried and true rock of a pit bull) staring out from my office window. Did you know there's a Twilight READ poster, too? There is, truly, no escape.

There's been plenty of talk about the "headless" trend in kids'/YA book covers, but I've never seen a post quite so snarky as Peter's at Collecting Children's Books. On How to Build a House, by Dana Reinhardt:

A group of teenagers converge on a small Tennesse town to rebuild a house that was destroyed in a tornado. By the time the summer is over, the house will be completely built—but several of the young adults will have lost their heads. This novel is a testament to the importance of volunteer work...and the dangers of untrained teens using power tools.

Get lots more snark, and some really awful puns, here!

When I wrote my post about book spine design last month, I thought I was doing nothing more than griping to the ether. Then yesterday I received a comment from the marketing manager of Center Point Large Print, a small publisher based in Thorndike, Maine (that town should ring a bell for anyone who works with large type books). He said that as of this fall, they’ll be leaving the bottoms of their books’ spines blank to leave room for library cataloging information! How about that? Special thanks to my friend Dan for spreading the word to all those ALA members, transforming my rant into an instrument of actual change.

Continuing the theme of book design, editor Alvina Ling posted some interesting thoughts about the challenge of designing books to please everyone, over at Blue Rose Girls. All the book jackets she shows in her post are, of course, highly attractive. But don’t you wonder how some of the covers out there slip through?

As anyone who’s worked in a library knows, weeding the collection (or pruning, withdrawal, deselection, [your euphemism here]) is a bittersweet fact of life. With limited shelf and storage space, we simply cannot keep every book we buy indefinitely. Books that are out-of-date or in poor condition are the first to go. But if the shelves are still too crowded, the less popular books have to go, too. That’s the bitter part: saying goodbye to books that are in good condition and got good reviews (presumably, or we wouldn’t have bought them to begin with) but have sat unmoving on the shelf for years at a time. The sweet part, of course, is having room for new good books.

One of my colleagues is weeding our junior high fiction section right now. The impact of a book’s cover is never more glaring than when you see dozens of noncirculating books all together on a cart. The vast majority of these books have covers that are dark, drab, low-contrast, and/or generally unattractive (blah landscapes, ugly people, too old-fashioned, etc.). They are books that you know even if they were the most amazing stories in the world, you’d never get a kid to crack them without the smoothest hand-selling job in history.

Unappealing covers are enough to strike fear into the hearts of any author who wants people to, you know, actually pick up their books. But it gets worse. Over at the Longstockings blog, Coe Booth has posted about not one, but two, instances of author friends’ books being blocked by a major bookselling chain because of their covers. Apparently, this isn’t an uncommon phenomenon. Yikes! (Of course, I am madly curious what it was about the covers that made them contentious…)

Coincidentally, my husband is currently enjoying Chip Kidd’s not-quite-coffee-table book Chip Kidd: Work 1986–2006. Book One (Rizzoli, 2005), and I’ve been reading over his shoulder a bit. Chip Kidd, as well as being a novelist in his own right, has designed hundreds of book covers, including the iconic cover of Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park. (Ironically, Kidd's book was bound as a strange hardcover/paperback hybrid. Repeated—i.e., library—use has cause the wide, flimsy pages to tear away from the binding. Clever-looking design, but low on usability and durability.)

Finally, interested in book design of yore? How about books that were basically Ping Pong paddles covered with ox horn? I loved Collecting Children’s Books’ post about horn books and battledores, those centuries-old tools for teaching children to read. Peter’s got some great photos and trivia there. For example, did you know that “xylophone,” that classic X-word of alphabet books, wasn’t coined until 1866? (And forget about X-rays, of course!) Follow the link to learn what authors did for letter X prior to that, and more...