With still doing the happy dance over SCOTT WESTERFELD being at the KidCon September 16-17, finding out that there IS a line that won’t be crossed for celebrity children’s books, hearing that SHANNON AWESOME HALE has sold novel rights to a film company (sadly not for one of her YA books, but it’s a start), and finding out that DANIEL RADCLIFFE has banished his dementors in real life, it’s been a good week in the children’s lit news.
The fact that author and lit advocate and generally hilarious woman MAUREEN JOHNSON is going to speak openly and intelligently with children’s book critic MEGHAN COX GURDON of the Wall Street Journal on NPR of all things — that makes today pretty well perfect.
Despite the fact that I don’t know that a lot of people are capable of meaningful discourse on this topic, I’m excited that YA and children’s books are once more being spotlighted.
Happy Wednesday!
UPDATE: Here’s Maureeeen! This was an intense, difficult conversation, and I cannot say that either side really came away with changed opinions. Certainly Ms. Gurdon seemed to dodge a lot of direct questions and talk around things – she sounded flustered and frustrated at times; at times she talked over Maureen, and didn’t let her finish sentences, which seemed unprofessional. What frustrated me the most, I think, is that Gurdon seemed to have this misapprehension that pain is something which is based on age – twelve year olds don’t need to know that, they need to never know that people hurt – but the callers were a treat, especially the authors and young adults.
Oh, I can't wait to listen to the podcast! (someday when I've dug myself out of this heap of work…) Thanks for posting it.
Ditto what Aquafortis said. Still that debate over YA novels has been extremely interesting. I read an excellent post by Scott Westerfield on the subject.
LOVED what Scott had to say – very funny.
About the Sarah Ferguson story: What am I missing? The story said, "‘The Duchess got her people to contact at least three publishers but none showed any interest because the Americans regard works of fiction about 9/11 as insulting.’"
Uh, since when? Didn't David Levithan publish a well-received novel about 9/11? And Peter Cameron's book Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You is a subtle 9/11 novel, and it's not insulting–in fact, it's one of my favorite books ever.
Ferguson's book is reportedly about the restoration of a pear tree near Ground Zero. Why is that supposedly insulting?