Maternal Feelings and my Poor Little Maggot

Colleen Mondor and I don't intersect very often in the blogosphere. She dwells on adult and YA topics. I stick to kidlit with the occasional YA aside if I'm feeling distractable. But when it comes to insightful analysis from a cool clever head, there are few places better to head towards than Chasing Ray. Colleen recently wrote out a rather beautiful piece entitled A Question About the Big Picture which takes in hand the recent kerfuffle surrounding the notion of blog reviews vs. print reviews. The focus of the article is a Critical Mass entry that seemingly came out of the blue by a less than wholly talented critic. I read Critical Mass when I've a chance but I missed this particular smackeral of tripe when it aired. Take a glance at Ms. Mondor's piece if you've a chance to do so. One of the finest pieces of writing I've seen in quite a while.

Horn Book - Now in Paper!

Roger Sutton poses the following query:

What could the Horn Book Magazine do better, or more of, or more interestingly? I always have this question running around in my mind (this is not necessarily a sign of dedication; it stems as much from my default anxiety as anything else) and I've come up with plenty of ideas that usually involve money we don't have. Like becoming a monthly, or printing in color, for example. Some ideas don't cost anything, but they do collide with Tradition: changing the logo, say, or making the magazine a standard size (which would actually save money).

Ix-nay on the ize-say ange-chay, I say.

Got me thinking though. What's a literary mag to do in this era of digital updates? In many ways Horn Book was ahead of the pack by having their own resident blogger. Publisher's Weekly and School Library Journal are following suit, but HB was the first of its kind in this respect. One wonders if Kirkus has thought much on the subject. What a blog THAT could be!

But in terms of the actual physical magazine you hold in your hand, I like how Roger has phrased this question. What can they do, "more of, or more interestingly?" You'd have to look to the adult equivalent of Horn Book to find an answer to this, perhaps. Worth thinking about, just the same. Brian Kenney of SLJ recently gave a talk at Dominican University (yay, my graduate degree's pseudo-alma mater!) entitled Does Print Still Matter?. Spoiler Alert: It does. His talk didn't concern itself specifically with SLJ's status in print, but in terms of the immediate future it may tie in nicely with Roger's query. And back and forth it goes.