Horn Book's Summer Reading

Bad new, folks. Apparently Horn Book Magazine has acquired a way to see into my very brain. Look at this magnificent Summer Reading List they just put out. It's like we're soul mates or something.



Beach - Beach? Someone else on this planet read and loved Beach? *sob* I'm not alone!

The Chicken Chasing Queen of Lamar County - Excellent. The buzz starts low, but if I can keep it up then this book will be causing a veritable blaze of glory by the time the award season circles through.

Aggie and Ben - Awwwww. Just... awwwww.

The Green Glass Sea - Look, Ellen! They included your book!

Larklight - Suh-weet. Now please to find me a child who likes it. I love it, but I want some confirmation that there's a kid somewhere anywhere that digs horrible white space spiders.

A Drowned Maiden's Hair - Look, Laura! They included your book too!

To Dance - This makes me happy.



I'm really going to have to read this Rex Zero and the End of the World book aren't I? It just keeps cropping up.


Please go to bookshelves of doom for a full encapsulation of all the further summer reading lists out there.

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.

Balls! says the Queen

See, Roger? I can purloin it and make it my own title. That's the beauty of blogging.

So. Funny story. I wrote an article for Horn Book aaaaaaaaand... they printed it. Really top drawer of them. I am now a "blogonatrix" according to Roger. I can live with this. It's easy to live with words that don't, but should, exist (though a Google search came up with at least two other people in the world who have used the term "blogonatrix" in the past). In related news, there's a cool new History portion on the Horn Book website at the moment. I'm kinda hooked on the letters section. Did you see the Roald Dahl exchange with Eleanor Cameron? Aw, snap!

Sutton Interview

And in case you missed it, there's a simply swell interview with Roger Sutton on Seven Impossible Things up and running. Apparently he could take down Seamus Heaney in a bar fight. Who knew?