{"id":62,"date":"2007-08-20T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-08-20T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rbicmsblog.reedbusiness.com\/elogic_660000266\/2007\/08\/20\/dangerous-admissions-from-a-childrens-author\/"},"modified":"2007-08-20T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-08-20T00:00:00","slug":"dangerous-admissions-from-a-childrens-author","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=62","title":{"rendered":"Dangerous Admissions from a Children’s Author"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my recent review<\/a> of Sherman Alexie’s new YA novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian<\/em>, I referred to the trend of traditionally "adult" authors crossing over to write for a YA and middle-grade audience. It’s less often that I hear of the reverse — authors who traditionally write for children now writing for adults.<\/p>\n

Imagine my surprise, then, to read in the New York Times Book Review<\/em><\/a> that Jane O’Connor, currently best known as the author of Fancy Nancy<\/em>, has lately penned a novel for grown-ups called Dangerous Admissions: Secrets of a Closet Sleuth<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Since I haven’t read it myself I obviously can’t comment on how successfully the author of 30 picture books and long-time children’s book editor makes the leap to writing a "grown-up" novel, but the NYT<\/em> review is certainly favorable and the book’s premise shows promise for childhood sleuth-wannabes like me. In O’Connor’s novel, Rannie Bookman, a freelance copy editor, gets caught up in the mystery surrounding the murder of the Director of College Admissions at her children’s private school. She has a rather personal interest in the case, as her son is one of the murder suspects.<\/p>\n

It’s the humorous details of the story, though, that make this sound like such a fun read. I had to laugh, for example, at the idea that Rannie was fired from her job at Simon & Schuster when she left out the all-important "L" from the title’s last word in a collector’s edition of the first Nancy Drew book, The Secret of the Old Clock<\/em>. Nerdy word lover that I am, I also love the idea that a copy-editor’s skills might be essential to solving a complicated case.<\/p>\n

Chelsea Cain, who wrote the NYT<\/em> review, says, "Grammarians, rejoice. You finally have your own sleuth." And no, Fancy Nancy<\/em> fans, she does not wear a tiara.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my recent review of Sherman Alexie’s new YA novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, I referred to the trend of traditionally “adult” authors crossing over to write for a YA and middle-grade audience. It’s less often that I hear of the reverse — authors who traditionally write for children now writing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62","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\/62","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}