{"id":15362,"date":"2015-04-03T07:33:38","date_gmt":"2015-04-03T11:33:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=15362"},"modified":"2015-04-03T07:33:38","modified_gmt":"2015-04-03T11:33:38","slug":"a-great-re-read-gregory-maguires-egg-spoon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=15362","title":{"rendered":"An Undersung Tour de Force and Great Re-Read: Gregory Maguire&#8217;s &#8216;Egg &#038; Spoon&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.indiebound.org\/book\/9780763672201\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.odysseybks.com\/files\/odyssey\/eggandspoon_1.jpg\" width=\"245\" height=\"350\" \/><\/a>I&#8217;m so far behind in my reading (a common bookseller&#8217;s lament) that I rarely allow myself the luxury of re-reading a book. But I got a yen recently for Gregory Maguire&#8217;s<a href=\"http:\/\/www.indiebound.org\/book\/9780763672201\"><em> Egg &amp; Spoon<\/em><\/a>. Don&#8217;t know why, but I just had to revisit his Baba Yaga. And in re-reading\u00a0<em>Egg &amp; Spoon<\/em>, I was again struck by what a freaking masterpiece it is, a masterpiece that adults can appreciate but that never loses sight of its child audience \u2013 a rarity.\u00a0<em>Egg &amp; Spoon<\/em>\u00a0is a classic. A grand, quirky classic.<br \/>\nGregory Maguire&#8217;s genius is so glittery fabulous and so human, so rich and sharp and humorous, so wildly fertile, that I think he approaches Shakespeare in inventiveness, earthiness, and scope. I&#8217;ve never compared a living writer to my main bard, Shakesy, but if anyone can stand the test of centuries and still be found gorgeous, timely, relevant, and astonishing, I believe Gregory Maguire can and will.<br \/>\nI was shocked that <em>Egg &amp; Spoon<\/em> was passed over by awards committees this January, and I can only hope that the one or two remaining major children&#8217;s book awards for 2014 titles (*coff*) rectifies this glaring error. (Please note: my dismay isn&#8217;t a comment on the books that did win awards, which I adored and most of which were in our store newsletter as our top picks of the year. I just thought <em>Egg &amp; Spoon <\/em>would be up there with them.)<br \/>\nI think sometimes writers are so good that they almost exist in a category of their own. Maybe Shakespeare was overlooked by the Tudor Tony Awards, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How did this book not win awards?!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15362\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}