An entertaining discussion about the worth of a page came up in our office recently, when wonderful sales rep Adena Siegel was introducing Lorna to a book called Burdock (Yale University Press, August 2008) that features Janet Malcolm’s photographs of burdock leaves. The book retails for $65 and it’s 65 pages long.
 
The book is getting great praise and garnering rave reviews. Author Michael Pollan contributed a quote for the book’s cover in which he said, "Here is the heartbreaking particularity of nature, and the ravages of time made flesh. At once clinical and poignant, these photographs changed the way I look at the green world around me." (Wow.)

As a buyer, though, a book like this is a conundrum. It can get all the rave reviews in the world, but they won’t change the fact that this is ultimately a book featuring photos of burdock leaves that retails for $65. The question we buyers ask ourselves with every purchase is "Who is going to buy it?" and in the case of Janet Malcolm’s book, Lorna didn’t feel certain of the answer, which made her understandably more wary about buying it.

A great conversation sprung up in our office out of her moments of indecision in which Adena, Lorna, and I pondered the following: what is one page worth? This book weighs in at $1 per page, as cost to the consumer. Obviously "art books" like Janet Malcolm’s command a weightier sum in part because they are larger books printed on much higher quality paper using the best possible inks and more elaborate printing methods in much smaller print runs, all of which contributes to the higher price. I don’t doubt that a lot of readers will find $65 worth of inspiration, at least, in looking at Malcolm’s images, which do seem to tell their own unique and surprising stories. But, still, it’s interesting to ponder the question of whether or not most people would pay $1 per page, if the book were doled out to them in page-by-page fashion.

The question is do you think most books are worth that much? Do you think they’re worth MORE?

It’s a funny question, isn’t it? Pull one of your favorite books off the shelf and look at the page count. Would you have paid $323 to own To Kill a Mockingbird? How about $32 for Goodnight Moon?

Most picture books these days are 32 pages in length and have an average price, in hardcover, of $16 or $17. That’s 50 cents per page, for which you’re getting both art AND writing, in a larger trim size, usually full color, with a binding that will hold up moderately well over time. All things considered, that sounds pretty reasonable to me.

But then think what an amazing deal a novel turns out to be! Graceling by Kristin Cashore (Harcourt, October 2008), which I am POSITIVELY DEVOURING because it is such an incredible treat of a read, is 471 pages in length and retails for $17. That’s like paying just 4 cents for each page, which has got to be one of the year’s best bargains.

Now go back, though, and compare the price per page of a novel versus a picture book from their creators’ perspectives. Anyone who has ever tried to write a picture book will tell you that it is NOT AT ALL EASY, and looking at these numbers in part explains why — you’ve got to pack a lot more value into one page than a novelist does, using only a fraction of their word count.

Which sounds easier, writing/illustrating a page worth 50 cents, or writing/ illustrating one worth 4? Suddenly generating $1 of value per page seems almost impossible, so… I’ve no choice but to tip my hat to Janet Malcolm.

What are your thoughts on all this wacky math? What’s the most valuable book you own, given this pages-to-dollars comparison? And what’s the book for which you’d be willing to pay the most — is it worth more than a dollar per page to you?

Several months ago I did a complete double-take when a galley arrived at our store for a novel called How the Solider Repairs the Gramophone by Sasa Stanisic (Grove Press, June 2008). The cover showed a man on a beach, playing the accordion. But the man wasn’t/isn’t just any man. It’s Daniel Handler, a.k.a. Lemony Snicket. I recognized him immediately, but no information on the galley explained how or why his picture came to be on the cover, so I momentarily doubted myself. STILL, I thought, it just HAD to be Daniel Handler, a.k.a. Lemony Snicket. But… what if it wasn’t? What if it’s his doppleganger? Or a clone? Or just some guy who happens to look EXACTLY like him?

I was especially intrigued by this odd "sighting" because I’d seen Daniel Handler’s doppleganger once before, at a bus stop in Watertown, Massachusetts. It’s possible, of course, that it was, in fact, the real Daniel Handler I saw at that bus stop but the chances are soooooo absurdly thin that I believe it was his doppleganger. Or possibly a clone. OR some guy who looked EXACTLY like him (as best I could tell from my car as I drove by) waiting for the bus just a couple blocks from my apartment.

I have since learned that YES, indeed that IS Daniel Handler on the cover of that novel (though probably not at the bus stop), and that (here’s the best part) his appearance there is a complete coincidence, which I think is extremely funny. (The funniest bit is Daniel’s response to the question of whether or not he minded his photo appearing on the cover of the book.)

A few years ago Daniel apparently asked a photographer friend to take some photos of him but as he didn’t have much extra cash to punt her way at the time, he told her she could sell the images as stock photographs, which she did. The German publisher of Stanisic’s book just happened to pick one of THOSE photos for their edition of this book (with no idea as to the identity of the man in the picture), and Grove Press (who didn’t recognize Daniel either until a reader asked why he was on the cover of the book) liked it enough to want to use it too.

As remarkable and funny as that coincidence is, think how much more bizarre it might have been (for Daniel at least) if that WASN’T Daniel Handler on the cover of that book. Suppose it was a guy (maybe the one from the bus stop near my house) who just happened to look like Daniel Handler and who (okay, maybe this is less likely…) just happened to play the accordion too.

This possibility springs to mind namely because when I lived in New Hampshire I experienced a moment of complete awe and disbelief when it appeared (briefly, at least) that I was taking a tango class with Philip Pullman. SERIOUSLY. The first night of my tango class I walked through the door and spotted a man who was an absolute dead ringer for the author of The Amber Spyglass, which had just landed at bookstores everywhere, one of them The Dartmouth Bookstore, where I was then a children’s book buyer and where I’d seen Philip Pullman’s face staring back at me from many an Amber Spyglass promotional brochure. And now, here he was learning the basic steps of the tango, right across the room from me!!!

Of course, it wasn’t really Philip Pullman in my class. I knew it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. Philip Pullman lives in England, not New Hampshire. But knowing that didn’t stop me from staring at this guy who looked. EXACTLY. like him! It was so distracting! I could barely pay attention to the steps we were learning, because I was so bowled over by this man’s resemblance to one of my favorite authors. I glanced over at him so often that I worried that his very friendly-looking wife would notice and try to jump me in the parking lot after class, but thankfully she didn’t.

What she DID do, a week later, was completely validate my first week’s behavior. I had shown up for our second class with an Amber Spyglass promotional brochure in hand, awkwardly introduced myself to the two of them, and humbly apologized if they’d noticed me staring the week before (which they hadn’t). I explained about this hugely popular, truly remarkable trilogy of books and the fame of its author, then showed them the photo of the REAL Philip Pullman, at which point the look-a-like’s wife remarked, "Oh my gosh… You DO look exactly like him!" (score one for the bookseller) as he sat beside her shaking his head in recognition and disbelief. I then joked that maybe he’d want to come sign books at our store sometime (Philip Pullman’s books, of course)? We all laughed, he said he’d have to read His Dark Materials, I learned the couple’s names, and from then on we were good tango class friends. It was a relief to no longer have to think of them as "the other Philip Pullman, and wife," because that had just felt… creepy.

AND THEN IT HAPPENED TO ME! Yep. I was mistaken for a big-name children’s book author. But there were some odd steps that happened before I was out and out confused with her. The first was soon after I’d moved to Boston, when I was getting my hair cut at a new salon. During my first visit, Elena, my stylist, told me she had a client who looked a lot like me. She added that this was doubly odd because the woman also had a job in the children’s book business, working for a publisher, though Elena couldn’t remember which one. A few appointments later I arrive at the salon a bit early and see a woman sitting in Elena’s chair who looks VERY familiar to me, though I can’t initially figure out why or how. After she leaves Elena says, "That’s the client you remind me of!" I wrack my brain until eventually it comes me: the woman is Kara LaReau, then Kate DiCamillo’s editor at Candlewick, whom I’d met once before. When I saw Kara again at some book function or other we laughed about the coincidence.

In 2003, about a year after I was told I resembled Kate DiCamillo’s editor, I went to Bologna, where at a party Karen Lotz, president and publisher of Candlewick, introduced me to a British publisher who did a double-take when she saw me. Looking at Karen and sounding a bit befuddled she said, "Kate’s sister?" Karen and I exchanged a look of bewilderment and then the woman asked me directly, "Are you Kate DiCamillo’s sister??" After a pause Karen and I both laughed, awkwardly. "No!" I said, "Sorry." The woman shook her head, saying, "Wow… You just look so much like her…" Five months later, Kate and Kara and I laughed over this growing string of coincidences when Kate was touring to promote her newest novel, The Tale of Despereaux (soon to be a movie) and doing an event with our store. In my copy of Despereaux Kate wrote, "To Alison, from whom I was separated at birth."

Fast forward four years, during which time a few other people remarked that I looked like Kate. I’m at BEA in 2007, attending the ABC "New Voices" luncheon, when a VERY enthusiastic bookseller comes over to me and exclaims, "OHMYGOSH, HOW AAAARE YOU??!" ver
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excitedly. I smile and tell her I’m fine and ask how she is, all the while thinking, "Who is this woman? I’ve seen her before, but… Did we talk at BEA last year? I know she’s a bookseller, but I don’t know her name… Should I know her name??" "It’s SO good to see you!" she says, and I’m still floundering but trying to play along out of politeness and the certainty that I’ve forgotten some delightful conversation of a year ago that I should surely have remembered judging from how nice this woman is being to me. Then she says, "I saw your new book Great Joy!! It is SO WONDERFUL!!!" and suddenly the meaning of our exchange shifts into focus. "Oh… I’m so sorry," I stammer awkwardly. "But… I’m not actually Kate DiCamillo." I’m relieved when this lovely but mistaken bookseller registers no embarrassment, just laughs and says, "OHMYGOSH, you look EXACTLY like her!! That is SO FUNNY!" 

She says the same thing another time or two when we cross paths at other parties or functions during the convention. When Kate winds up signing books a few tables down from Gareth at the show and her line is cut off about the same time as his, I sidle over to her, and fill her in on the latest case of mistaken identity, and the two of us laugh about it. Again.

We took this (slightly blurry) picture that day, of the two of us looking either very much alike or not at all similar, depending on whom you ask.

I promise you, though, that if you see Kate DiCamillo’s photograph in the jacket of any of her books or in any of her promotional materials, you are actually seeing a picture of Kate. Not me. And photos of Daniel Handler are really photos of Daniel Handler.

When you see a picture of Philip Pullman, though…? I suppose it’s POSSIBLE you’re just seeing a guy from New Hampshire.

Time is running out to visit the First Book website, write about the book that got you hooked on reading, and vote for the state that you’d like to see receive 50,000 new books for low-income youth. The voting ends at midnight on September 15th, after which First Book will tally the results and post on their website the name of the winning state as well as a list of the Top 50 books that got readers hooked. This is the second year of First Book’s "What Book Got You Hooked?" literacy awareness campaign, and visitors are encouraged (though not required) to make a donation of $10 to support the non-profit’s work.

One of the things I’ve been enjoying on the WBGYH site this year are the answers from "celebrities" about what books got them hooked on reading. You’ll note that included under the "celebrity" heading, alongside the names of famous athletes and actors, are a number of children’s book authors and illustrators. When was the last time you saw children’s book creators named as "celebrities"? When was the last time you saw, for example, Eric Carle’s name mentioned alongside Stephen Colbert’s? (Which makes me wonder what it would look like to see a BOOK that was a collaboration by those two… Somehow I’m just not picturing it!)

Stephen Colbert’s quote about the book that "got him hooked" happens to be one of my favorites on the Celebrity Favorites page of the First Book website. Here’s the book he chose and the reason for it:

"The first chapter book I remember reading by myself was Swiss Family Robinson. It had it all — a shipwreck, a tropical paradise, a treehouse, pirates, home made bombs, a tiger pit, and the enviable freedom of those three Robinson boys who were seemingly on permanent Summer vacation. Oh! Plus, later they find this girl who they don’t know is a girl because her grandfather has dressed her up as a boy so the pirates won’t know, and the boys treat her like another boy until they find out she’s a girl, and she’s really pretty, and the older brothers fight over her, and they have to hold her hand and stuff to help her over rivers, and that seemed cool to me."

I also loved the answer given by Ira Glass, host and producer of NPR’s "This American Life," because it speaks to the fact that not all the adults I think of as being especially smart and well-read were actually avid readers as children and teens. (It’s a reminder that there’s still plenty of hope for those reluctant reader kids out there!) Here’s what Ira had to say:

"I’m afraid that I’m someone who didn’t read much as a kid. Or at least, I didn’t read books. Mostly when I read, it was comics, Peanuts and Spidey especially, and MAD magazine. That’s how old I am. To me, reading books was something you did for school. I read Catcher in the Rye and Dostoevsky and Gabriel Garcia Marquez the way I did math problems — looking for the information that would answer the teachers’ questions. My friends and I weren’t dummies or anything. We just didn’t look to books for entertainment. In the boring Baltimore suburbs where I grew up, that was normal. It did not occur to me to take a book to heart — to feel any connection with a character in a book, to think a book had anything to do with my life at all — until I was in college. It was there that I met people who seemed to think that reading could be intensely interesting. They felt about books the way people I knew felt about movies and TV shows. The way movies and TV shows can get under your skin and stay with you and have you thinking about them for days. One of the first books I read during this period was Franny and Zooey. I just reread it last summer and discovered that perhaps Franny was not the entirely 100% admirable person I thought she was when I was 21. What I loved about the book then and now was the world the people inhabited. Coincidentally they happened to have my same last name, but that only pointed to how unbelievably different they were from me and my family and anyone I’d ever met. They were insanely smart, and urbane, they’d been child geniuses and went to fancy schools in fancy New York, and their heads were filled with big ideas about how to live that seemed actually kind of cool and interesting, though they were also smokers and drinkers and always disagreeing with their mom. The best stories always contain at least a small answer to the question "how should I live my life?" and Franny and Zooey struggles with that question in spades, in a fantastically chatty, funny, hard-to-put-down way. Those characters still seem alive to me. I had a chance to visit Princeton for the first time recently and all I secretly wanted to do was see the train station there because that’s where Franny has a big early scene with her soon-to-be-dumped boyfriend. There’s something chemical about that book that still gets to me. I love the characters the way I love characters on my favorite TV and radio shows. I’m fascinated with everything good and bad in them and I wish I were their friend and I also wish I was them and they remind me of myself and they don’t remind me of myself at all. Parts of that I guess are part of any kind of love."

For the record, Ira isn’t the only kid in the bunch who was hooked on comics or cartoons before books. Others on the First Book site who mention them (and many cite Charles M. Schulz’s "Peanuts" in particular) include Mo Willems, Sandra Boynton, Patrick McDonnell, R.L. Stine and (not surprisingly) Art Spiegelman.

What got you hooked on reading? Share your thoughts here AND share them with First Book!

My nonfiction-work-in-progress is still a long way from seeing the light of day as a finished book, but even since its earliest stages I’ve intermittently pondered the question of what name I should use once I’m published. My instinct it to just use my first and last names, Alison Morris, and keep it simple. But, here’s the catch — there’s already an "Alison Morris" out there who has penned a couple of children’s books. One website had even attributed her books to me at one point, until I corrected their (understandable) mistake. The simple solution might be to go the middle initial route, but "Alison L. Morris" doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue, and I’m not sure it simplifies things enough. A very embarrassing case in point: just this week I learned, for the very first time, that Michael Rosen and Michael J. Rosen are NOT the same author! Anytime I’ve seen "Michael Rosen" with or without the "J" I have (I now realize) skipped over the step in which one reads the author’s bio. because I thought, "Yep. I know who he his and I know his books." But not so! It turns out Michael J.’s middle initial didn’t spare him 10 years of my idiocy, so perhaps "Alison L. Morris" isn’t a safe solution after all.

I could go with my full name, but "Alison Louise Morris" sounds… a bit more formal than I’d like or perhaps a bit too feminine for some of the topics I most want to write about. I’m not inclined to go either the "A. L.", "Ali" or "Al" route, so…? Hmm. This all feels a bit tricky.

Given the normalcy of being raised with a not-so-oddball name, I can’t imagine that my situation is all that unusual, but it’s not one I’ve heard authors and illustrators speak about before, so…? I’m asking. Those of you with books under your belts, how did you settle on your published name? And if you decided to shirk your workaday identity and use a pen name, why did you make that choice? How do you settle on the name you’re using?

If you haven’t got an answer to any of those questions, at least tell us what silly name you’re assigned by Professor Poopypants’ Name Change-o-Chart 2000 (thank you, Captain Underpants and Dav Pilkey, for giving the world this mindless form of entertainment). According to Professor Poopypants (and who wouldn’t trust a man with that name?) I could consider publishing as Stinky Bananafanny, which would CERTAINLY stand out on my book’s cover, I should think. Though perhaps not quite as much as Crescent Dragonwagon.

Where did you spend your Saturday night? Lucky you if you got to spend it at Pixar’s studios, as that’s where I’d like to have been! Last Saturday evening the place was home to the Totoro Forest Project, a fundraising exhibit and art auction to benefit the Totoro Forest Foundation, a non-profit has been greatly supported by filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki over the years.

 The motivation for last weekend’s fun is explained this way on the Project’s official website:

"Hayao Miyazaki has been actively supporting the preservation effort of Sayama Forest for more than ten years. This 8750 acre park in the outskirts of Tokyo is also known as Totoro Forest. It’s in these woods in fact that the concept for the film My Neighbor Totoro was born.

In the past few decades, the forest has been subject to urban development. Only continued support to the Totoro Trust Fund can help preserve this much needed island of green in the midst of Tokyo’s urban sprawl. We intend to donate the entire proceeds of the project to this worthy cause."

I found out about this event last Friday, thanks to an e-mail from Catia Chen, illustrator of The Sea Serpent and Me, one of my favorite picture books of the year. Catia contributed one of the 200 pieces of original art "especially created by internationally acclaimed artists in the fields of animation, comic books, illustration, and fine arts" that appeared in the auction.

I should say that I’m not using the term "art" loosely here. Looking through the gallery on the Totoro Project’s Website, I was slack-jawed. This grouping of pieces positively oozes talent, some of it from illustrators already working in children’s books and graphic novels, like Catia. For example, I was drooling over the piece by Jillian Tamaki, who illustrated the recent graphic novel Skim (Groundwood Books) and also loved the playful contribution by Greg Couch (illustrator of Nothing but Trouble: The Story of Althea Gibson by Sue Stauffacher, to name one). The majority of the contributions to the gallery, though, were made by artists and illustrators whose names have not yet graced the cover of illustrated books, but what I saw suggests that maybe they could. It seems to me that there is quite a pool of potential book illustration talent to be mined here. Art directors, grab your picks and shovels.

And speaking of talent… You don’t have to be a fan of Hayao Miyazaki’s films and/or have never seen My Neighbor Totoro to appreciate the art in The Totoro Forest Project, but you’re missing out if you don’t devote some time to both. Just like these things we call "children’s books," Miyazaki’s films are for "kids" of all ages, including yours!

Were any of you at the auction last weekend? Have any good stories to report or art to share? If so, PLEASE go ahead make the rest of us jealous by sharing all the glitzy details!

You can have this entertaining warning printed on a totebag, a t-shirt, or any other fine product at Your Mother Warned You‘s Café Press shop.

How do you feel about seeing an author or illustrator’s photo alongside their author bio? Do you like it? Hate it? Do you think it somehow helps sales, helps build their audience, gives you a personal connection to them?

I’m generally indifferent on this matter. Seeing the face behind the fiction (or nonfiction) generally doesn’t enhance a reading experience for me, nor does it detract from it. From the perspective of working with kids, I think author photos can be truly useful — they remind kids that, yes, there are real, live people who write these books and illustrate them. (Sometimes that’s a useful lesson for adults too.)

From the standpoint of a book industry professional, I like that author photos enable me to recognize people when I see them at conventions. I would think that most authors and illustrators would like them for this reason too. It’s much easier, after all, to reach a sort of "celebrity status" when people can recognize you long before they’re close enough to read your name tag.

However, if an author uses the same exact photo in their books for YEARS and YEARS, that sends a completely different message. A confusing and rather creepy one, in fact. Imagine what it’s like for readers to show up at a public event expecting you to look a particular age and then OH. WOW. You’ve suddenly leaped forward twenty years into the future — or at least that’s how it appears to everyone who knows you by that ONE photo you’ve been using since time immemorial. I think it’s best not to put your readers through that freaky type of time shift. Just as it’s best not to take up any habits that might be acceptable now but later be considered a "bad influence" and therefore digitally removed from your images when you’re no longer around to raise an objection. (Fun to predict what those might be!)

I think about these photo issues a lot as I’m thumbing through publisher catalogs, which often include pictures alongside authors’ and illustrators’ bios. Often I like seeing their smiling faces staring back at me, but every now and again a photo comes along that is just… CREEPY! Or such a bad, blurry photo that you can’t help wondering if anyone at the publisher thought to suggest that they have a professional do the job. In such cases I sometimes feel that the presence of an author’s picture is a bad thing.

I also think it can be a bad thing when a person’s appearance looks COMPLETELY unlike the type of characters they’re creating or the genre they’re writing. For example, readers of your sleek urban novel about rap stars and gang wars might be more likely to send you letters if they don’t note your striking resemblance to, say, June Cleaver. Likewise, your arrest photo probably isn’t a good choice for that sweet little picture book about kittens. Or really for any book except Hole in My Life by Jack Gantos, which you should be reading RIGHT now if you haven’t read it already. Seriously. Skip the question bit at the end here and go pick it up.

But what do you think? Photos good or photos bad? Bad photos good? Good photos bad? Please weigh in with your thoughts, and share your photo-related stories or Photoshopping-related predictions (á la Clement Hurd).

One of my favorite books in my home library is a copy of Jane Eyre I bought in an antique store for a handful of dollars. Published by Random House in 1943, this out-of-print edition was illustrated with engravings by Fritz Eichenberg and features one of the most beautiful and intriguing book covers I’ve seen, with Eichenberg’s etching of Jane and her fellow schoolgirls printed directly onto the book’s boards (no dust jacket). I think we’d sell a LOT more copies of Jane Eyre at our store if it boasted this cover!

Eichenberg’s engravings throughout the book reflect the dark, moody mystery of Charlotte Brontë’s beloved story, and I dearly wish an edition sporting his shadowy images was still in print. Do you?

I’ve scanned several of the illustrations from my own copy and pasted them below. Clicking on any image will open a larger version in a new window.

My Macmillan rep, Bob Werner, was completely unguarded in the note he sent to me attached to a galley of Masterpiece by Elise Broach (Henry Holt, September 2008). "Drop everything and read this!" it said. "This is the BEST BOOK EVER!!" I couldn’t follow Bob’s advice to a T, because I was then in the middle of reading The Hunger Games and had other things immediately on tap, but I *did* move Masterpiece up to the almost-top of my to-be-read pile, where (lo and behold) it soon moved into my hands, where I’d actually have liked it to stay a bit longer. I wanted to make this book last, simply because I was enjoying it so much.

After almost ten years as a bookseller there is one quality that I look for in a book above ALL else: kid-friendliness. If a book feels kid-friendly to me as I’m reading it, if I can’t think of a single kid who WOULDN’T enjoy it, then THAT’S a book I can handsell to kids (or their parents) with absolute confidence that they’ll enjoy it and come back looking for more recommendations.

I read novels all the time that score high on the quality of writing scale but less so on the kid-friendly scale — these are the books that tend to get lukewarm receptions from all but the most "serious" of kid readers. This can be frustrating, because sometimes I LOVE those books! After all, they feel wonderfully "adult-friendly." But it’s the kid-friendly books that will eventually begin walking out the door based solely on kids’ word-of-mouth. It’s the kid-friendly books that make up the lion’s share of our backlist sales. Why? Because kids love them. Kids tell their friends and teachers about them. And kids keep reading them. It’s that simple.

The thing that struck me most about Masterpiece is that it’s kid-friendly from start to finish. It features a great, engrossing story — the kind kids dreaming of seeing take shape in their own lives. After all, what kid wouldn’t love to discover that a non-creepy critter (in this case a beetle) living in his own house has extraordinary artistic talents AND dreams of being his best friend? What kid wouldn’t want to solve the mystery of a shocking art theft with the help of this friend/critter?

I think kids are going to LOVE this book, and they’re right to do so: it’s fresh, it’s clever, it’s suspenseful, and it’s just plain fun. Teachers will love it for the insight it provides into the art world (specifically the work of Albrecht Durer). Everyone will be additionally charmed by Kelly Murphy’s wonderful pen-and-ink drawings, which make the perfect accompaniment to the story.

Other books I’ve read that have scored as high on my "kid-friendly" scale as this one include Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko, The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, Alabama Moon by Watt Key, and Hoot by Carl Hiaasen. I’m pleased to say that my gut reactions of "every kid is going to love this book" came true for them, as I hope it will for this one.

What’s at the top of your "most kid-friendly" list? Do tell, as those are the books we’re ALL forever seeking!

So, my teenage sidekick, Katrina Van Amsterdam, is an exceedingly busy young woman — hence the reason you haven’t seen a review from her in a while. She is now charging forward into her senior year of high school and recently promised me that when she isn’t filling out college applications, she’ll be writing more reviews of the books she’s reading (and she is always reading!) and sending them my way. Here now is her review of a book that (as you’ll see) she felt she just had to cheer about.

My Mother the Cheerleader
by Robert Sharenow
(Harper Teen, hardcover April 2007, coming in paperback February 2009)

Haunting. Brutal. Evocative. After reading this debut novel by Robert Sharenow, I’m still reeling from the impact of its power. My Mother The Cheerleader occurs in 1960 in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, where integration has just begun to be enforced. For 13-year-old Louise, desegregation has deeply affected her life. Her mother is a Cheerleader, one of the women who taunt and verbally abuse Ruby Bridges, the only black girl attending Louise’s elementary school. But when Morgan Miller, a northerner with ties to New Orleans, stays as a guest in Louise’s mother’s boarding house, Louise’s view of the world is turned upside down.

With Louise’s narration, Sharenow breathes life into the tumultuous world of 1960. The simplicity and sincerity of his writing is unlike that of any other author I’ve read recently. And after finishing this book, it is impossible not to believe in the lingering power of words. Not only is the writing phenomenal, but the story itself is a masterpiece. Sharenow takes stereotypes that other authors use — the white-trash mother; the grumpy, senile old man; the racist Southern bigot; the old black woman — and molds them into characters that could be real people. But the message of the story is what will stay with me long after I’ve put this book back on my shelf: being courageous means different things for different individuals.

I don’t think that I could do this novel justice simply by writing a review. So I implore you, readers of all ages, to take the time to read My Mother The Cheerleader. I promise you that it will be an unforgettable experience.