not · so · easy · to · fool

I've been devouring graphic novels recently, because I don't feel nearly as guilty when I read them (instead of books I'm supposed to be reviewing) as I do when I read anything else.

So here's a quick run-down:
--Babymouse #8: Puppy Love!, by Jennifer and Matthew Holm -- fun as always.
--Bone Vols. 1-5, by Jeff Smith, and Rose, by Jeff Smith & Charles Vess -- NEED MORE NOW!!!
--Amulet, Book One: The Stonekeeper and Flight: Volume One, by Kazu Kibuishi -- the man's marvelous.
--Angel: Strange Bedfellows and Other Stories, by Christopher Golden -- old-school Angel comics, but still pretty good considering.
--Spike: Asylum, by Brian Lynch and Franco Urru -- notable because I've been reading the new "Season 6" Angel comics, After the Fall, which are also written and drawn by Lynch and Urru. Spike: Asylum isn't canon, but it was good enough to impress Joss and get them the Angel Season 6 comic book gig. Obviously, I've also been keeping up with the new Serenity and Buffy comics. Because it makes me happy.

Also, a couple of picture books:
--A Kitten Tale, by Eric Rohmann -- it was cute.
--The Arrival, Shaun Tan -- an immigrant's story in a fantastical metaphorical world, told entirely in pictures. Impressive.

But the real reason I wanted to post was that I have finished one novel lately, because it was due back at the library and couldn't be renewed (which was how I justified reading it instead of review books):
--A Curse Dark as Gold, by Elizabeth C. Bunce. This was a beautifully realized Rumpelstiltskin retelling, set in a society on the cusp of something resembling England's Industrial Revolution. Bunce's writing was engaging, her characters compelling, her romance endearing, and her magic stirring, frightening, and lovely all at once. She draws you into the day-to-day life of running the mill, and suddenly you find yourself utterly caught up in the characters' misfortunes as event spin themselves towards darker and darker disasters. A triumph.

It's that time again -- I'm giving books away! And this time, I've made it super easy by putting them in my LibraryThing catalog. Assuming I've done it right, the widget below will show 10 random books from the 50+ I'm giving away, and if you click on the image, it will take you to my librarything and display a search of my catalog for the tag "giveaway." You can see covers, bibliographic information, anything you could possibly want to know. (In the catalog, clicking on the covers gives you an option to look up the book on Amazon.com.) Want anything? Just let me know -- comments, e-mail, whatever works!!!

EDIT: Claimed books have had their tag changed from "giveaway" to "claimed," so they no longer appear on the list. If you want to see what they are, you can search my catalog for the tag "claimed"... Also, if I've borrowed anything from you, it might be worth searching my catalog for the word "borrowed." It ought to be there!

Book of A Thousand Days, by Shannon Hale. I thought this was even better than Princess Academy -- in fact I think it's my favorite of all her books so far. A really, really well-done retelling of a little-known Grimms tale (Maid Maleen), set on the Mongolian steppes -- and it certainly seems well-researched, very believable and engaging. LOVED it.
--Keturah and Lord Death, by Martine Leavitt. I very much enjoyed the way it was told. There was something a little self-conscious about the first few chapters that meant I was not surprised to hear she began the project in a writing class (I remember thinking that about An Na's A Step From Heaven, as well) but soon enough I got into it and stopped noticing. All in all, a very pretty story.
--The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie. Still cannot believe this was so totally snubbed by the ALA. Well, maybe I can believe it -- the material is pretty edgy. It's a truly excellent book.
--Wildwood Dancing, by Juliet Marillier. It's The Twelve Dancing Princesses meets The Frog Prince, in Transylvania. This is me we're talking about. How could I not love this? I loved this.

Picture Books:
--Cowboy & Octopus, by John Scieszka and Lane Smith. Aww, a friendship book for the post-George and Martha generation. I lurved it.
--Knuffle Bunny Too, by Mo Willems. Very cute, but the review I read of it described it in too much detail and kind of took all the fun away.
--Bearskinner, by Laura Amy Schlitz and Max Grafe. Loved it! Let's hear it for little-known Grimms tale retellings.
--Little Red Riding Hood, by Andrea Wisnewski. Passable.
--Little Red Riding Hood, by Jerry Pinkney. I like the art, but the retelling was meh.
--365 Penguins, by Jean-Luc Fromental and Joëlle Jolivet. This was hilarious. Mostly I just loved all the illustrations of the OMG PENGUINS, though the math problems were fun too. The environmental message didn't seem too heavy-handed to me.
--How Big Is It? A BIG Book All About Bigness, by Ben Hillman. The book superimposes images of large things (a train running down the side of the Great Pyramid of Giza; a polar bear on its hind legs towering over a professional basketball player in midair slam-dunking the ball) to give a sense of scale. The tongue-in-cheek descriptions that accompany the pictures are fun too. Very cool!

Read for the Horn Book Guide (you can look up the reviews if you like; they're not anonymous):
--Snowbone, by Cat Weatherill
--The Tapestry Book 1: Hound of Rowan, by Henry H. Neff
--An Unexpected Apprentice, by Jody Lynn Nye
--The Mortal Instruments: City of Ashes, by Cassandra Clare

Special Consideration:
--The Rope Trick, by Lloyd Alexander
--The Golden Dream of Carlo Chuchio, by Lloyd Alexander
Lloyd Alexander died in 2007, at the age of 83, and these are his last books. (Technically, The Xanadu Adventure and Dream-of-Jade came in between, but I still see them as part of the same final artistic movement.) He said, before he died, that with Carlo Chuchio, he felt he had completed his life's work. Such a wonderful thing for a creator to be able to say. As far as I could tell, both of these took place in a newly created world (the same world, though they took place in different countries) -- not full of magic and idealism and deep mythological roots like Prydain, but not so grim as Westmark, either. Melancholy, rather. Possibly like Sebastian's world, perhaps (and I'll have to go back to check what kind of "world" Marvelous Misadventures took place in -- I also wonder, how many worlds did Alexander create, in all? Anyway). Both of these books were excellent. I was half in tears for most of Chuchio, though only some of that was the emotional resonance of the story itself; some of it was simply the awareness that I was reading my very favorite author's very last book, and not very so long after his death, either. It wasn't his greatest work (I think that's still probably The High King, despite the many amazing books he wrote after that one), but it was very beautiful, utterly Alexanderian, and, I think after some reflection, yes, a fitting end to his writing career.

He's in the Summer Country now -- or perhaps he's become a part of Carlo's beautiful golden dream. Thank you, Lloyd.

How many books would you estimate you've read in your lifetime?

I know this is difficult or impossible to do. But... I'm going to give it a shot. I've been keeping track since 2005, and the numbers have been dramatically different in different years (which has a lot to do with grad school, I imagine). Let's say I started reading books at age six; I'm 28 and a half. Between the ages of eight and eighteen I read A LOT more than I did at any other time besides grad school -- but I also did a lot of rereading. I read much longer books when I was in high school and college than I did when I was younger or when I was in grad school (I wouldn't be surprised to find I read something like 150 picturebooks when I took a class in Picturebook, which all by itself is enough to skew a lifetime average if counted the same way as other books). Not counting picturebooks I was generally required to read about 2-6 books a week, of varying lengths. Sometimes more; on the other hand, when I had time off, I read less than I would have had I not been exhausted of reading.

According to my records:

So far I've read 8 books in 2008 (children's and YA books, but none particularly short). I may or may not finish #9 before Friday (probably yes). At this rate, my average for the year 2008 will be around a hundred; I may or may not keep that rate up. Probably not.

I read ~75 books in 2007.

I read ~115 books in 2006 (half of this is a grad school year; it's also the year I listened to audiobooks almost every waking moment).

I read ~125 books in 2005 (another grad school year, and this includes the Picturebook class -- I clearly wasn't counting them as "whole" books, or I'd have easily passed two hundred, but I know they still figured into that average somehow).

Okay, so, based on this and the abovementioned caveats, let's say on average, I read about 75 books a year. That's about six a month, or one and a half a week, which sounds reasonable as an overall average. I definitely spent more time reading when I was young than I do now (I had virtually no life outside of books), and read more quickly, but I also reread a lot more.

So, if I started at age six, we come up with 1,650 individual books (probably not counting picturebooks at all). Huh. If anything, I'd guess that's a low estimate (keeping in mind that the large majority of all the books I've ever read are children's/YA books). And this doesn't factor in newspaper or magazine reading, or almost any kind of online reading.

Going by those numbers, if I live to be 90, I'll probably read fewer than 5,000 additional books. Given how many wonderful books there are in the world, that's kind of disheartening... makes me want to be even more choosy than I already am. Maybe the number will go up if I go back to grad school? Anyway, when I was a little kid, I'd finish every book I started whether I liked it or not, perhaps out of a misguided sense of loyalty. I don't do that anymore. I don't reread very often, either. There's just not TIME...

What about YOU? How many do you think you've read? How many more would you like to read before you die?

Based on this list I estimate it at about 75 books (more than thirty fewer than last year! ack! clearly I need to be back in school), but there are probably a number missing. I know for sure I reviewed a more books than I have listed here; and I almost certainly also read some more books for pleasure that I've forgotten.

( The List: middle grade, young adult, poetry, plays, picture/comic/graphic books of all kinds, nonfiction, adult books, review books. )

So this line of thought was prompted by The Edge Annual Question of 2008. The headline was followed by the quote: "When thinking changes your mind, that's philosophy. When God changes your mind, that's faith. When facts change your mind, that's science." The question: What have your changed your mind about in 2007, and why?

My change of mind probably falls under the "philosophy" category. I was motivated to seriously reconsider two of my long-held assumptions by a discussion on the same listserv that provided me with the link to The Edge question, child_lit. Censorship (specifically, the "censorship vs. selection" debate) in children's literature is a very messy issue. What's censorship -- repressing texts you object to -- and what's selection -- choosing the best texts for your child to encounter? After all, a library can't hold, nor can a parent purchase, nor a bookstore sell, nor a teacher assign, every book. So no matter how you feel about censorship, selection is going to be necessary, and these processes are two ends of the same spectrum. So where do you draw the line?

In children's lit these arguments continually resurface and have a tendency to go round and round and round. But for the most part, two basic assumptions underlie all discussions of censorship vs. selection of books and other material for children:

1. Children should not read things that will cause them anguish, fear, or despair, unless it is necessary for them to encounter these ideas and feelings for educational purposes (i.e. learning about the Holocaust, terrorists, the massacre of the Native Americans, etc).

2. Parents have the ultimate right to decide what their own children should and shouldn't read.

Nearly everybody takes these assumptions for granted when discussing censorship/selection. I dare say many of you do. I did. But like all obvious, common-sense, who-could-possibly-disagree assumptions, these two need to be articulated, examined, and questioned.

( Question One. )

( Question Two. )

Now, I'm not saying I think these arguments ought to convince you, or anyone; I'm not even saying I've totally convinced myself. What I'm trying to get at here is not that the two assumptions ARE WRONG, but that I think questions need to be asked, thought about, and talked about.

( Comment Thread )

So I was pleased to find that I've already read the Newbery (Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices From a Medieval Village), Caldecott (The Invention of Hugo Cabret) and Printz (The White Darkness) medal winners this year, as well as a couple of the honor books (The Wednesday Wars, Your Own Sylvia). I really loved the Newbery winner, and it is a mold-breaker -- a collection of dramatic monologues -- and the Printz winner and the honor books were also favorites of mine, all real gems.

But while I did like Cabret, I'm dealing with the vague irritability that comes when you liked something, and perhaps even thought it was groundbreaking -- but not quite as much as everybody else seems to, and you're not quite sure why. On the other hand, it's not like I had another favorite I was championing (I haven't been keeping up with picturebooks at all). And I suppose it is nice to see them honoring something really different -- last year's winner, Flotsam, was certainly wonderful, but not so stunningly different from the 3 or 4 other books Wiesner had already won Caldecott medals for.

Irritating mainstream media quote of the week, from Newsweek's interview with Brian Selznick:

NW: In "Hugo," your pictures give new information, rather than just illustrating what the words have already told the reader. Is that a first, and how did you come up with the idea?

BS: I can't say if it's a first. It's not something specifically that I had seen myself. I was trying to figure out how to tell the story in a way that would be best for the story itself. It came out of the movies that I watched and out of the picture books that I've made, and because I wanted the book to really be like a movie.

The degree of cluelessness demonstrated here by the Newsweek interviewer is stunning. As for Selznick, who is certainly not clueless when it comes to discussing children's books, I can only hope he assumed that the reviewer meant to add "Other than in virtually every picturebook ever written, of course -- I just mean a 'first' in terms of illustrated books for older readers," and answered the question accordingly.

I did find out from this article they're planning to make a movie of it. Should be interesting, as it essentially already is one. And Scorsese to direct? Really? I hope he has the same admiration for silent films that Selznick does, or it's sure to be shite.

There's a debate on a listserv I read about whether or not children who listen to audiobooks (full, unabridged books, mind you!) instead of reading ought to be disqualified from a summer library "reading race" program, on the grounds that they are "cheating." Some posters have made reference to a New York Times article about people who were enraged to find that members of their book clubs were "cheating" by listening to audiobooks instead of slogging through the printed text like everybody else.

Early on, the quite legitimate point is raised that listening and reading are interrelated yet nevertheless two different skills, and schools (schools, note, not libraries!) have a responsibility to teach children to read. (But no responsibility to teach them to listen, I guess? Or is it assumed that everyone automatically does that well, without having to learn it?)

But so many of the other arguments being raised seem to totally miss that point. There's the assertion that listening leads to inferior comprehension. The declaration that if audiobooks are allowed in summer reading programs, they might as well allow TV and video games too. The comparison that listening to book is like appreciating music (important but easier), while reading books is like playing music (ultimately leading to a superior understanding of music, but harder). The odd suggestion that listening to books is necessarily a passive experience, as opposed to reading, an active experience. And the almost unchallenged assumption that listening is simply an inferior, less vital skill. Oh, and kids don't learn to spell. And couldn't possibly understand concrete poetry that way!

People make that first point about reading and listening being related but different skills, and then their arguments go off in random directions that seem to fail to take that point into account. Okay, so, I love to read print, have always devoured books that way, ever since I was eensy. I stopped wanting my parents to read aloud to me because I could read silently much faster. But in my adult life, I decided to learn to listen to audiobooks (because I desperately needed to fit in even more book time!). I began training myself by listening to books I'd already read (Charlotte's Web narrated by the author; The Series of Unfortunate Events with the marvelous Tim Curry). As I developed the ability to concentrate, I graduated to unfamiliar books -- short, fluffy ones at first, but eventually moving on to massive works like His Dark Materials and The Book Thief. And I got better and better at it as I went along.

Yeah, it took work. It wasn't something I'd ever been taught to do, not formally. But now that my listening skills have really improved, I think my comprehension and appreciation of books via each method is virtually identical. I tend to have slightly different emotional responses depending on how I receive the books (I feel more personally connected to characters who are talking directly to me), but my ability to understand and analyze them is the same. I got through the last year of grad school reading about half the books and listening to the other half, and I can assure you, it didn't make much of a difference as to how well I was able to use the book academically or discuss it in class (except that I'd sometimes have trouble finding page numbers to make a point). In both cases, I'd engage with the words actively, and create my own interpretation.

Now, many people don't process audiobooks as well as print, and for them listening is a subpar experience. But to then extrapolate that of course that means that listening is simply an inferior method of digesting a book for everyone is unwarranted. Because there are also people out there who process audio much better than print -- have better comprehension, better retention, significantly more enjoyment that way. To a certain extent, both skills need to be learned and practiced, neither is inborn; I honestly feel like I can do both equally well by this point (which did NOT used to be the case). However, I also can believe that many people have strong natural inclinations in one direction or the other, and can't learn to do both equally well. And that's fine! I don't think being unbalanced in that way is a fault or a problem, as long as you can do both well enough to function in society.

But somehow, society's decided that the people who process print well (and audio less well) are "readers," while people who process audio well and print less well are not. As it is, I know a lot of readers who feel strongly that audiobooks are a fluffy, lazy, inferior way of receiving books (even when they do enjoy listening to them), and relatively few people who would claim the opposite, that listening is superior. But is that because more people process print better than audio -- or is that because audio processors have all been convinced, since childhood, that they aren't "readers" and never will be?

Sure, kids can listen to audiobooks, not really take them in, and claim they've "read" them. But they can do that reading print as well -- it's called skimming. If you want to know how well a kid understands a book, quiz 'em on it (or have a conversation). And of course it's true that you can't understand concrete poetry through listening; but on the other hand many people argue you can't really appreciate most poetry (or plays) simply through reading. Different texts seem to be more or less complemented by different methods of delivery -- I can name a couple books that are particularly enriched by listening, like M. T. Anderson's Feed (which takes place in a world where people have lost the ability to read)... or Paul Fleischman's Seek, which is really a radio play, and reading the text just doesn't cut it (I mourned not being able to listen to that one, but it was only available on cassette). Also, many audiobooks find quite ingenious ways of creating an equivalent audio experience to match illustrations and other visual-only aspects of books, a substitution process I find quite fascinating in and of itself. Though I wouldn't want to try to listen to The Invention of Hugo Cabret, no matter how ingenious its substitutions are -- it seems to defeat the point.

( And here's the lively discussion -- 43+ comments! -- the post inspired. )