tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9487791418882730042024-03-13T10:12:47.930-07:00Critique de Mr. ChompchompBook reviews and discussion for educators, parents, writers, academics and other grown-up fans of childen's literature.mr chompchomphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02120045873445890949noreply@blogger.comBlogger134125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948779141888273004.post-47344220413427873892014-12-09T10:20:00.001-08:002015-09-01T13:51:52.704-07:00Immersive Narratives<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.nothingaboutpotatoes.co.uk/pics/Things086-strange-underwater-sculptures.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.nothingaboutpotatoes.co.uk/pics/Things086-strange-underwater-sculptures.jpg" width=200 /></a></div>I see things like <a href="http://techgnotic.deviantart.com/journal/Storytellers-of-the-Future-488528836">this post on DeviantArt</a> fairly often , in which a commentator worries about how technology is going to change the way we tell stories and how traditional narrative is going to get swallowed up by the new tech which will be so much more immersive, because of multimedia and interaction and other tech stuff.<br />
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I think these fears are completely unfounded. Technology is, indeed, allowing us to tell stories in different ways. Video games, for example, provide a kind of interactive storytelling we've never really seen before. <br />
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So aren't novels in danger of be swallowed by video games? Won't they eventually go all multimedia and interactive because that will provide so much more immersion.<br />
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No. Just the opposite. <br />
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It’s important to remember that we've had multimedia texts for as long as we've been printing books. They're called picture books, and they're a beautiful medium. They're also intended, for the most part, for children. Why don't we publish novels for adults with illustrations? (Ok, we do sometimes, but it's not at all the norm.) Because ultimately they distract from the immersive text of the story. We use picture books to train kids to read so that they can, eventually, enter that immersive state, sometimes called the "fictive dream" created by a well-written narrative. As kids become more adept with language, we remove the illustrations, little by little so that they can learn to immerse themselves in the text.<br />
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What about the interactivity of video games? Doesn't that more deeply immerse and engage the audience in the story? I don't think so. The involvement in most video games that I've seen is, ultimately, a distraction to the kind of storytelling that fully immerses the audience. Most video games are constructed with story development interspersed with task completion and the two are only tangentially related. The form is too discontinuous to allow the immersion of the fictive dream. The emphasis on task completion also interferes with a deep engagement with the characters and story even if, superficially, a video game allows you to adopt another character's POV.<br />
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I haven't studied video games extensively and there may be examples that break this pattern and strive for more immersive engagement. But based on the way my kids chatter while playing their games, they aren't as immersive as reading a narrative or watching a movie for that matter. Mind you, this doesn't make them worse forms of storytelling. Just different. And not as immersive.<br />
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The novel, as I see it, is the ultimate immersive medium, designed quite literally to merge the reader's mind with a fictional other's, or several others'. Because it's hundreds of years old and relies entirely on language, It's difficult to think of the novel as a refined technology but that's exactly what it is and how, without knowing a Vulcan, are you going to beat it for immersion? The novel's immersion is not only deep, it's also persistent. You can put a book down for a week and be right be re-immersed almost instantly when you pick it up. It's going to take a lot of tech development to produce a form that works half so well.<br />
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Of course tech is moving quickly and artists are working hard to harness new technology. With virtual worlds in the works and brilliant storytellers inspired by new mediums, it's possible that an immersive form that trumps the written narrative could be coming. It's certainly not on the horizon, but it could be out there past the horizon somewhere.<br />
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But even if such a form emerges, it won't spell an end to the written narrative. When film and radio and television came along, even their combined efforts didn't take out live theater. Theater is doing fine, better than ever by some measures. In general, new mediums don't destroy those that come before them. Photography didn't supplant painting, but it did change it. Television didn't even supplant radio, though it did change it. <br />
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Likewise, our written stories won't disappear, but they may change as a result of emerging mediums. I'm excited to find out how.mr chompchomphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02120045873445890949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948779141888273004.post-36915758000081484122014-10-08T09:54:00.001-07:002014-10-08T09:55:40.135-07:00Versions for Kids<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/08/business/media/laura-hillenbrand-jon-meacham-adapt-titles-for-children.html?_r=0">A long article runs in the NY Times</a> about kid's versions of best-selling adult non-fiction titles. Apparently adapting popular adult titles into kids books is now a trend.<br />
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I am of two minds about this. On the one hand, I'm thinking "at last." For years it was simply depressing to walk into the middle grade or young adult nonfiction section and find nothing there beyond a couple of self-help books answering "tough" questions about dating and sex. In contrast, the picture book non-fiction section was packed with endless dinosaur books, other animal books, African American history, trains, you name it. Did something happen to kids when they turned about ten that made them less curious about the real world and ready to get lost in nothing but dystopia and fantasy? Well, maybe, but I didn't think so.<br />
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"They can just read the adult books," friends of mine argued when I pointed this out. The same, however, could be said of adult fiction. YA and middle grade fiction writers are not merely shielding young readers from adult unpleasantness (or pleasantness for that matter). In many cases kids books do just the opposite. But they are appealing to particular interests, energy, point-of-view, hopes and fears that belong (though not exclusively) to the young. This may not mean a hip, snappy voice -- kids see through this in heartbeat--and it most definitely does not mean sanitizing or cleaning things up.<br />
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And that's the obvious concern with the kids' versions of adult nonfiction bestsellers. What are they taking out? The Times article does a nice job exploring this and pointing out some disturbing trends (such as downplaying a Founding Father's multi-faceted relationship with one of his slaves).<br />
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The larger question, though, is why "versions?" Why shouldn't kids get there own original non-fiction works? YA and middle-grade nonfiction should attack subjects that appeal to kids' points-of-view. If writers picked the right subjects, told the right stories, you wouldn't have to filter or censor critical material. For kids it's never whether you deal with difficult subjects, it's how. <br />
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I know the obvious answer. Publishers release "versions" of proven texts rather than take chances on unproven texts for the same reason studios release "Fast and Furious 19: Fastererererer Furiousererererer" It's low-risk and easy money, but not only are these "versions" delivering sanitized stories and history to our kids, they're competing for readers' dollars with potentially better titles. <br />
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I hope kids see through these "versions" and they ultimately fail, but that along the way they show enough promise that publishers work to revitalize the YA and middle grade nonfiction market the right way, by taking risks and seeking out solid original independent work written for kids.<br />
mr chompchomphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02120045873445890949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948779141888273004.post-68533630993718143982013-07-02T10:06:00.002-07:002013-07-02T10:07:48.804-07:00The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/7-9780545424929-4" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dOIW6I0ilKA/UdMBUbIS6nI/AAAAAAAABDo/VrpORsvL5oA/s181/ravenboys.jpg" /></a></div>Sometimes, when I go out at night to hear a new band playing somewhere I'll be listening to the opening act and I'll think "These guys are pretty good. I wonder why they're not headlining." Then the headliner will come out and deliver something so much more powerful or subtle or technically perfect or otherwise imbued with such awesomeness that I'll be left thinking, simply, "Oh, that's why."<br />
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<i>The Raven Boys</i>, by Maggie Stiefvater was like that for me. It's a book so rich and strange and funny and, above all, spooky, that as soon as I started it, it left my previous summer reading--good books, all--feeling like inferior warm-up acts, humbly packing up their gear while the real show got underway.<br />
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Blue lives with her mother and some aunts, all of them psychics. A problem with living with psychics is that they may tell you things about your future that you don't necessarily want to know. In Blue Sargeant's case, it's that if she kisses her true love , he will die.<br />
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For Blue, though, this is not a huge problem. She simply swears off boys.<br />
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Although she is not psychic herself, her mother and aunts all depend on her to do their work. When Blue is around, the psychics feed off of her energy and can better perform their readings. This is why, on the eve of each St. Mark's day, one of the psychics takes Blue with her to watch the souls of the soon-to-be-dead walk past. The event reveals who amongst the people of their small southern town can be expected to perish within the next year. Blue never sees these souls, until one St. Mark's eve, when one reveals himself to her. He calls himself Gansey and he wears the uniform of one of the Raven Boys, those who attend Aglionby, the town's prestigious private boarding school.<br />
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Blue's aunt explains to her that the only way a non-seer could see one of these souls on St. Mark's eve is if the soul is her true love, or if she is the one who kills him. Or, of course, both.<br />
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Gansey hails from a fantastically wealthy, old-money family. As such he is among the most privileged of the set of highly privileged Aglionby students. But Gansey cares little about his status. His life is dedicated primarily to his quest to unearth the buried body of the ancient Welsh king Glendower who will grant a wish to whoever finds him. Gansey is convinced that Glendower is somewhere near Aglionby. In addition to squandering his wealth on this quest, Gansey has befriended and leads a group Aglionby misfits who help him chase after clues. These include Adam, a poor but brilliant scholarship student; Ronan, a dangerous and tortured orphan; and Noah, mysterious, reclusive and spookily wise.<br />
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Soon Blue's path intersects with the boys' and their quest turns into a thrilling tightrope walk, death always just a misstep away.<br />
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The magic in The Raven Boys is the kind that's steeped in folk tradition, making it seem all the more eerie and real. But beyond that, Stiefvater has a gift for revealing and exploring the real angst of the young, no matter whether they are wading waste deep in their parents' money or working multiple jobs to make ends meet. The Raven Boys is about the class strains of the American South as much as it is about magic. Of course, as a top notch YA novel, it's also about the difficult of growing up and making your way in the world. <br />
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The best part, though? The sequel to <i>The Raven Boys</i>, <i>The Dream Thieves</i>, is due out shortly. September 17, to be exact. Not a long wait at all.<br />
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I'll be reading a lot of great books this summer, but part of me will camped out until fall, waiting for tickets to the next big show. Check back here for my review of <i>The Dream Thieves</i>.<br />
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Cross-posted at <a href="http://guyslitwire.blogspot.com/2013/07/if-books-were-rock-stars.html">GuysLitWire.</a>mr chompchomphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02120045873445890949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948779141888273004.post-38611612652918432652012-11-29T03:58:00.000-08:002012-11-29T03:58:54.187-08:00Winnie the Pooh is in a BookOn a Disney vacation with the family, which means I'm in a constant state of ambivalence. Or, rather, that my usual state of ambivalence is felt more intensely here. On the one hand, you have to be impressed at both the scale and the attention to detail the Disney folks manage. The immersion in their fantasies, from the resorts to the parks to the attractions within the parks is near 100%. The kids really love it. On the other hand, I don't completely trust my kids, taste-wise. They like McDonald's too.<br />
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And being yanked completely out of reality is creepy. I feel like I'm in the midst of Huxleyan dystopic Brave New World. Our minds are being controlled by a constant feed of entertainment. And Disney isn't even using drugs on us. Or I don't think they are. We do have the Disney Dining Plan . . . <br />
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One moment of extreme ambivalence came when we exited the Winnie the Pooh ride for the 39th time (it's one of our four-year-old's favorites). The ride is really well done. You are carried in a honey pot through the pages of a book blown up to enormous size, and witness scenes from the pages played out by animatronic characters. Lots of clever effects. The ride is a take on the transformative experience of reading, the words and images of the story blending together much in the spirit of Milne's original work.<br />
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This is lovely and thoughtful and fun -- a nod, even, toward child literacy. The pages-from-the-book theme is carried even into the gift shop that the ride exits into (most Disney rides exit into gift shops). Book pages form the décor in the gift shop much as they do on the ride. There's only one problem. While you can buy all of the pooh characters in stuffed animal and coffee mug form and you can buy pooh themed gummy bears, lollipops and other snacks, and you can buy DVDs and Blu-ray discs of new pooh stories, there's one thing you can't buy in the pooh gift shop: a book. There's not one. Not an imitation-Milne board book, not a book on the making of pooh, and certainly no editions of the original stories. Flat out depressing.<br />
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To be fair, Disney is not anti-book. They run a publishing house, Disney Hyperion, which puts out lots of great stuff. And you can buy Pooh books elsewhere on the property. The Great Britain section of EPCOT has them, along with Mary Poppins and Peter Pan in various editions. But if you are immediately inspired to read by the inspiring Winnie the Pooh ride, you'll be stuck reading the washing instructions on the tag of your new stuffed Eeyore toy.<br />
mr chompchomphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02120045873445890949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948779141888273004.post-28503392453433947132012-11-02T06:50:00.000-07:002012-11-02T06:50:50.980-07:00I Vote Because of all the Lies, Including My Own This entry has nothing to do with children's literature. Read it anyway. Won't kill you. It's about voting and it's part of a "Why I Vote" bloggers round up. You can get links to all the entries <a href="http://www.chasingray.com/archives/2012/11/why_i_vote_round-up.html">here:<br />
http://www.chasingray.com/archives/2012/11/why_i_vote_round-up.html</a><br />
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I'm an undecided voter.<br />
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Ok, that's a lie. But it's a political lie. A political lie is more of a bluff, like a lie in poker. It's a lie for strategic purposes. It's also a lie that the person you are lying to is expecting. That person may also be lying to you, and you should be prepared for it. If you are expecting to be told the truth in poker, the good news is you are going to be invited to a lot of poker tables.<br />
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So, the truth is, I'm not an undecided voter. While it's still technically possible that my vote may change, there is very little I can think of that would cause it. But I don't want my candidate to know that. Why not? Because I want as much as I can possibly get from him. I want all the specifics, promises, clarifications and commitments I can possibly get. I want him to go all in.<br />
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Like a lie in poker, a lie in politics is a lie that could become the truth if circumstances change. If I'm holding a pair of sevens, that's not much. So if I'm betting like I have a great hand, I'm bluffing. But if I draw that third seven, well, suddenly that bluff isn't a bluff anymore.<br />
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Similarly, my candidate could still lose my vote.<br />
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And a candidate that promises something just to get votes is going to have to deliver on that promise if he or she gets elected, or pay the price.<br />
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This probably seems like a terribly cynical metaphor. After all, politicians are not playing for dimes, they're making decisions that affect people's well being, even their lives. Shouldn't we expect them to tell the truth?<br />
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Well, that would be nice. But it's naïve. The political game encourages obfuscation and deception. A politician needs votes. Lots of them. Some of the people he needs votes from are probably not going to completely agree with him. So the default position is going to be to look pretty and say nothing, or say empty things that no one can disagree with like "I love America." It's also useful to make the other candidate look ugly. It not only hurts them, it keeps people from asking questions about you, questions you might have to answer truthfully.<br />
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It's ugly. There's no denying it. But you know what's even uglier? Not having a democracy at all. You kind of have to just go with it.<br />
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Still, just as in poker, there are ways to stop the lying, or at least limit it. A poker player who is caught in bluff after bluff, is either going to stop bluffing so much or be out of the game.<br />
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You have heard a lot about the lying and obfuscation in this campaign, that it's at an all time high. It's discouraging. It may make you want to have nothing to do with it. It may make you not want to vote at all. I get that. And really, if all the lies mean you can't figure out how to use your vote most effectively, it may seem best not to vote at all. But I think a better response is to just try a little harder to get at the truth.<br />
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Not voting just makes others votes count more. While voting without knowledge, could be even worse, you can do some real good by going out of your way to discover the truth, and basing your vote on that. Here are three examples of egregious behavior from both candidates in the presidential campaign: <br />
<OL><LI>The budget deficit: if you've listened to the campaign rhetoric and followed the debates, you are aware that the US is suffering under tremendous unprecedented debt that we have to do something about immediately. Both candidates will tell you this. The problem is it isn't true, or most respected economists believe that it isn't. For one thing, we've been in worse conditions, far worse directly after World War II, right before biggest economic boom in our nation's history. Second, much of the money we owe not to China but to ourselves through bonds. This money is being loaned to us at incredibly low interest rates, and many economists believe we should be borrowing more in order to put people to work and fix a crumbling infrastructure. Finally, trying to deal with the debt now is likely going to make both the economy and the debt worse, not better. That's exactly what is happening right now in Europe. We need to pay down the debt of course, but it can wait until after the economy fully recovers. Both candidates are at least aware of this reality, but neither will speak to it because scare tactics get more votes.</LI>
<LI>Climate change: This entire campaign has gone almost without mention of climate change, at least since the Republican primary, where candidates fought with each other to deny it more. Climate change hasn't gone away. The evidence is greater than it's ever been and its affects have been felt again and again, in this summer's drought and, possibly, in the intensity of hurricane Sandy (one candidate at least has been forced to speak to climate change since Sandy struck). But it was hardly mentioned at either party's convention and not at all in the debates. Failure to deal with the atmospheric carbon that is causing climate change will have a profound impact on both the nation and the world. Climate change talk opens the door for attacks from either side, so both candidates ignore it.</LI>
<LI>Drone strikes: These were mentioned in the debates. Both candidates think they are just great. Drone strikes, missiles shot from unmanned aerial vehicles, have been successful in eliminating enemy combatants in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere. What neither candidate mentions is that drone strikes have also killed, injured and terrorized thousands of innocent bystanders including hundreds of children. By many definitions laid out in international charters and treaties, drone strikes can be legally considered acts of terror or war crimes. Killing enemies is popular with voters. Neither candidate wishes to even mention the problems with drone strikes, much less respond to them.</LI>
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Candidates won't speak truthfully about these issues because they don't see it in their best interests. When they won't talk, like a good poker player you've got to look for "tells." How have they dealt with issues like these in the past? Can you determine a pattern? Do they respond to pressure on these issues? (This may not be a bad thing.) Are they willing to bargain with these issues in order to make deals on other issues?<br />
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To vote decently, you've got to expect to be lied to and misled. Then you have to know what to do with that. Do your research, think through the implications. If you just believe what the candidates tell you, you're not merely throwing your vote away. It's much worse than that. You're letting yourself be manipulated.<br />
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Maybe it's cynical to expect deception from politicians. I think it's just realistic. It should prompt you to find out what is really true, and use both the lies and truth to predict how a candidate will behave. Then, and only then, cast your vote.mr chompchomphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02120045873445890949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948779141888273004.post-89244768167582088992012-05-24T09:54:00.001-07:002012-05-24T09:54:58.873-07:00Looking for a little upliftI recently responded, here and on GuysLitWire to some grouchy critics who pronounced from their fancy platforms that there's too much depressing, dystopian, doom and gloom literature for young people out there. I said, really, we need more of that kind of thing. It's cathartic, it's entertaining, and it's perhaps instructive to a generation who seems to be growing up in a world that may really be going all to pot. I stand by that. Keep the dystopian stuff coming.<div> <br></div><div>But is it too much to ask to have a little something else alongside the dystopian stuff? Lately, I don't see much else, certainly not in the SFF world. Remember utopian literature? Visions of cultures that, while not problem free (that would be boring), had solved some pretty big social problems? Or, barring that kind of hope, just something light and funny? Anything? Anywhere? I'm between books of Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking series. Nothing funny or light there. And I'm in the middle of an advance eBook of The Infects, Sean Beaudoin's new book due out in September. It's about--what else?--a zombie apocalypse. And yeah, it's funny. Beaudoin can't help but be funny. But it sure ain't light.</div> <div><br></div><div>Also feeling down because people keep dying. There was of course the much-publicized recent passing of Maurice Sendak. Then also J<a href="https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1G1ACGW_ENUS369&q=jean+craighead+george&stick=H4sIAAAAAAAAAONgVuLUz9U3MM01MS0CAMFr8LQNAAAA&sa=X&ei=MGW-T9_QA_Hk6QG8vuE3&ved=0CMcBEJsTKAA" class="fl" style="color:rgb(17,34,204);text-decoration:none;font-family:arial,sans-serif;line-height:16px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">ean Craighead George</a>. My Side of the Mountain was one of the most important non-SFF books I read as a child (another was The Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler--I had a thing about running away). Both those authors had long lives and careers (thank you gods and fates for that), but still it's hard to shake the feeling of gloom.</div> <div><br></div><div>I think next I'll try read something by Diana Wynne Jones, another writer who we've lost recently, but who wrote non-sentimental stuff that makes me feel hopeful. Even plucky.</div> mr chompchomphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02120045873445890949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948779141888273004.post-49691462900361943272012-05-08T08:39:00.001-07:002012-05-08T08:39:45.155-07:00Slate predicts the future of printMichael Agresta at Slate <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/design/2012/05/will_paper_books_exist_in_the_future_yes_but_they_ll_look_different_.2.html">publishes a long article on the future of printed book</a>, making predictions similar to what I've been saying here and elsewhere: print books are not going to disappear but they will evolve into collectible art items.<div> <br></div><div>I have to disagree with him when he says that the novel is "<span style="line-height:18px"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">well past its golden age as the digital transition begins,</font></span><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:12px;line-height:18px">" </span><span style="font-size:12px;line-height:18px"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">implying that digitization will change the novel and not for the better. The novel has been impacted by so much more than technology that I see little reason why it would change much due to the advent of the ebook. </font></span><br> <div><br></div><div>Regarding print publications, Agresta gives a number of exquisite examples of artfully made books which emphasize the visual and the tactile in ways that ebooks can't. It's interesting, though, that he fails to mention that visually inventive and tactile books are neither new nor rare. They're just usually sold in a different part of the book store, as picture books, pop-up books, and board books, to children. </div> </div> mr chompchomphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02120045873445890949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948779141888273004.post-81510941231767131582012-05-01T13:16:00.001-07:002012-05-01T13:16:51.731-07:00Kane Chronicles Part III on sale todayIt's a big day for the mythology nerd kids, including my own children. Rick Riordan's The Serpent's Shadow, the third and final installment in the Kane Chronicles series goes on sale today. We are headed to the bookstore as soon as I'm done with my day job for today. <div> <br></div><div>Around lunch time I attended a webcast Mr. Riordan presented today from the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum & Planetarium in San Jose, California. He introduced viewers to a number of mummies including the mummified head of a bull that will figure prominently the story. Then he walked us into an Egyptian tomb where he read a selection from the new book. The webcast will be archived in about a week and if it's available publicly I'll post a link here.<div> <br></div><div>Most interestingly, in the Q and A section of the webcast Mr. Riordan revealed his future writing plans. He's going to finish the Heroes of Olympus series and then begin work on stories involving Norse mythology. He also alluded to some far future plans for introducing the Kanes to the Camp Half-Blood and Camp Jupiter demigods. </div> </div> mr chompchomphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02120045873445890949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948779141888273004.post-38876827629915716912012-05-01T06:00:00.003-07:002012-05-01T06:00:39.191-07:00Clatterpunk<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-9780345524522-0" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="182" width="120" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3ncmXr0jyzs/T5_czeNu4LI/AAAAAAAAAQk/l8thON5nasw/s320/railsea.jpg" /></a></div>What's more steampunk, really, than a train? China Mieville's new YA science fiction novel, <i>Railsea</i> is set in a world of rails and gadgetry that looks both to the future and the past. It's one of those steampunk settings that sets your view of the world askew, both prediction and history, both alien and familiar. Unsettling. Weird.<br />
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<i>Railsea</i> takes place in some indeterminate Earth future when vast expanses of the planet have been covered with rails that crossover and tangle and knot and head off endlessly over "flatearth" in every direction. What's more, the ground over which these rails run has become populated with enormous burrowing creatures, moles the size of tanks, head-sized beetles, human-sized earth worms, just about anything that crawls or digs is geometrically larger and more dangerous beneath the railsea.<br />
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Trains of every sort travel on the railsea. Steam, diesel, wind-powered, human-powered, beast-drawn, you name it. Sham ap Soorap, the protagonist of the story, has just signed up as a doctor's assistant aboard the diesel-powered Medes, a moler--that is, a train with a mission to hunt giant moles for meat. Sham is not especially good at his job. His real interests lie in salvage, in gathering up the technological remains of crashed or abandoned trains, or, even more enticing, the trash of a long-departed alien race. Nonetheless, Sham, denied his preferred profession as a salvor, serves the Medes as best he can. The captain of the Medes is Naphi, a woman with a gadget-encrusted artificial arm who is obsessed with capturing Moler-Jack, one particularly enormous mole of a species called a moldywarpe. (Yes, that probably sounds familiar. Throughout the book, there are continuous echoes of Melville's Moby Dick, but Railsea, thankfully, isn't just a retelling of the classic whale story in steampunk clothing; it spins off in all sorts of directions that Moby Dick doesn't.) <br />
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While Captain Naphi obsesses over Moler-Jack, nearly everyone obsesses over the railsea itself. It's clear that though it is ancient, the endless railway was once constructed. But who built it? The most common theory is that the railsea is the after effect of a war called the "godsquabble" between some vaguely deific beings. It's also clear that aliens have visited the planet, dropped off some garbage and are now gone, and many feel that the aliens also had something to do with the creation of the railsea. These, however, are hardly satisfactory answers.<br />
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What is known and universally accepted is that the railsea is infinite. There seems no point in looking for a beginning or an end to it. That is, until Sham stumbles upon some salvage, a wafer containing pictures, one of which shows, blasphemously, an image of a single rail line heading off into the horizon. This picture, the promise of something new, plagues Sham, calls to him. It also attracts unwholesome characters, other salvors and pirates, who view this image not as a possible answer to the questions of a broken humanity, but merely as a way to become impossibly rich.<br />
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Mieville does have a point to make with all of this (you can probably partly guess what it is already). Finally the story may expose a bit too much of Mieville's political leanings. Still, <i>Railsea</i> is primarily a ripping tale full of violence, action, monsters and all kinds of weird technology, an epic that Mieville relates with rich and strange language. <br />
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For all that, for all of its language and politics and weirdness and gadgets, the story unfolds in a surprisingly warm and touching way. Sham is an insatiably, infectiously curious boy. Throughout his story he draws in people who want to share in his simple wonder themselves. One of those people, it turns out, was me and I found it easy to follow Shram all the way to the end of the railsea. Impossible, in fact, not to. <br />
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<i>Railsea</i> will be available May 15.<br />
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A DRM-limited eBook copy was provided by the publisher for the purposes of this review.<br />
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Crossposted at <a href="http://guyslitwire.blogspot.com">Guyslitwire</a>.mr chompchomphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02120045873445890949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948779141888273004.post-67141301702562687832012-04-17T12:16:00.001-07:002012-04-17T12:16:50.830-07:00The DOJ sticks its nose in eBooksLots and lots of articles about the DoJ taking Apple and some publishers to court for the "agency" model of eBook pricing in which publishers, rather than distributors, set the price of eBooks. Most of these articles come down on the side of the publishers and claim higher prices are good for authors and that lower prices are good for nobody except Amazon (and, well, maybe consumers, sort of for a while). I'll put together a reading list of these articles a little later, but I'm left with one question:<div> <br></div><div>Why is it that only Amazon will benefit if the agency model is eliminated? I haven't found anyone who bothers to explain this. If publishers don't like the way Amazon does business, they should stop doing business with Amazon. They could distribute their own books in epub format, or use Google Books, or any number of independent sellers, or deal with Barnes and Noble. If people can't get the books they want for Kindle, they'll either begin to pressure Amazon to update the software so it reads open standards or they'll buy a different eReader. One might even play Amazon's own game and sell non-Kindle versions for 5 bucks. It might take some guts in the short term to do this, but the alternative is to simply allow Amazon to operate as a monopoly.</div> <div><br></div><div>Also, I ask again, if print books are dying--and they are, cry all you want--why are publishers so concerned if they're profitable? Why aren't they simply shifting their focus to eBooks and finding ways to make eBooks alone profitable? If I were a publisher I'd be less worried about Amazon selling my books for low prices and more worried about up-and-coming eBook only publishers, as well as self-publishing authors who can (and do) sell high quality books for whatever price they feel like. Sooner or later the major publishers will get found out: what they do isn't unimaginably hard and eBooks aren't that expensive to create. Eventually the market will catch them anyway.</div> mr chompchomphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02120045873445890949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948779141888273004.post-27358927851416734832012-03-08T08:08:00.001-08:002012-03-08T08:08:12.439-08:00I told you ebooks were too expensive<div>Justice department to sue Apple and book publishers for jacking up eBook prices.</div><div><br></div><a href="http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2012/03/08/justice_department_warns_apple_publishers.html">http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2012/03/08/justice_department_warns_apple_publishers.html</a> mr chompchomphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02120045873445890949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948779141888273004.post-85683607395872773412012-01-10T10:56:00.001-08:002012-01-11T06:06:57.557-08:00I Don't Miss PaperOf late, when I get around to posting at all on this blog, it has often been more about eBooks than about children's books. It's an obsession, I admit it, and a problem I intend to fix in 2012 and beyond. But first I need to get some stuff off my chest.<br />
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While I've been writing about and worrying about eBooks for a few years now, up until six months ago I only read them from a computer screen. In July of 2011, I finally acquired as a birthday gift an e-reader (a B&N Nook Simple Touch) of my own. Since then, I've done the vast majority of my reading on it. My one sentence reaction: I don't miss paper. I don't miss hauling paper books around. I don't miss needing my reading glasses every single time I want to read something printed on paper. With my Nook I can just bump up the text size when I need to. I can read one-handed with the Nook (try that with paper) which is useful far more often than I ever realized. I've got some reference works--the built-in (subpar) dictionary, a bible, all of Shakespeare, several collections of fairy tales, etc.--right at hand within the Nook itself. I can take notes without needing to carry a pen. And the whole thing fits nicely into a jacket pocket or even in the pocket of my baggier pants.<br />
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I don't take it in the bath tub or the hot tub, risks I'd take with most of my print books, but I'm looking into a waterproof bag to solve this minor problem.<br />
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This is not a pro-Nook review. I have limited experience with other e-readers and can't make intelligent comparisons. But I am at this point strongly pro e-reader. <br />
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Which is not to say I've stepped into e-reading e-topia. There are many problems, the first of which is that eBooks remain too expensive. I've heard all the arguments from various publishers who claim that eBooks are still, if anything, too cheap, and I have to admit I still don't get it. Publishers need to see that they are now competing in a much wider market, against video games and movies and music and other digital materials. Angry Birds is free (with ads). Most little games for my phone are in the 0-3 dollar range. I can download a movie on my computer for what it costs to by a newly released novel on my Nook. How much more information is contained in a video game or a movie than in a novel? How much more production goes into those other genres? The comparison is ridiculous. I realize that the scale of distribution is very different. Few books get the audience that Angry Birds has, but still, $15 dollars for an electronic copy of a book seems wrong in this context. Very wrong.<br />
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The e-reader is also too limited in what it can do. I don't mind at all that B&N pulled the mp3 player and the games and the web browser off the Nook Simple Touch. They were lousy additions on the old Nook and did nothing to improve the reading experience. But now that e-readers are doing a pretty good job of recreating the paper book reading experience (other than some quirks with words chopped off when I use certain text sizes and a weird habit of hyphenating after quotation marks) it's time to allow the e-reader to do more than the paper book can. The Nook has some community features allowing sharing of some titles and limited posting to facebook, but it needs to do more. If I were teaching a class, I'd like to be able to share my annotations of a text with the whole class. I'd like them to be able to share their notes with me as well, and with each other. Currently that can't be done. The Nook should be an RSS reader as well, and I do use mine that way, downloading the latest from longform.org and longreads.com, but only rather awkwardly through an open source program called Calibre. It is shameful that the functionality to access this free material is not available natively within the Nook itself.<br />
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So while I don't miss paper I hope publishers and e-reader manufacturers continue to improve the e-reading experience and don't drop the ball in pursuit of tablets more suited to playing the aforementioned Angry Birds than to reading long works of prose. We readers deserve to be treated decently in the coming electronic world.mr chompchomphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02120045873445890949noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948779141888273004.post-69157810020376116562012-01-04T08:30:00.000-08:002012-01-04T08:30:30.621-08:00Picture Book ScienceThe New York Times has <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/opinion/sunday/scientific-answers-to-the-mysteries-of-childrens-literature.html?partner=rss&emc=rss">an amusing look at a few picture book classics and how they measure up to scientific inquiry</a>. Not explored: the existence of pocketless kangaroos, or the maximize size of bright red dogs.mr chompchomphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02120045873445890949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948779141888273004.post-23086437767177213982012-01-03T13:06:00.000-08:002012-01-03T13:06:16.005-08:00Walter Dean Myers <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2012/0103/Walter-Dean-Myers-chosen-as-new-YA-literature-ambassador">named National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.</a> Very cool.mr chompchomphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02120045873445890949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948779141888273004.post-51995134066934105642012-01-03T13:04:00.001-08:002012-01-03T13:04:35.587-08:00I post <a href="http://guyslitwire.blogspot.com/2012/01/where-to-start.html">review of <i>The Colour of Magic</i></a> on GuysLitWire.mr chompchomphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02120045873445890949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948779141888273004.post-84236507551863571292011-12-07T11:47:00.001-08:002011-12-07T11:52:50.314-08:00Publishers Pushing PaperA recent New York Times article, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/books/publishers-gild-books-with-special-effects-to-compete-with-e-books.html?partner=rss&emc=rss">Selling Books by Their Gilded Covers</a>, describes how publishers are fancifying their print books with artsy covers and nifty end papers and whatnot. This is done, apparently, to bring people back to print. Of an especially nice looking edition of Stephen King's "11/22/63", a publisher is quoted as saying "We hoped that a handsome object would slow the migration to e-book."<br> <br>It's interesting, and it's expected. Books are not going to disappear. There's way too much history wrapped up in them. (Hell, vinyl hasn't even disappeared.) But, with a few exceptions, such as the picture book which still doesn't have a decent electronic equivalent (it's awkward to read an iPad app alloud to a classroom), paper and ink books will, more and more, become collector's items, rather than practical reading material.<br> <br>But what I have to wonder is why are publishers clinging to paper? It's the same publisher handling both formats. Why do they continue see the eBook as a threat? With eBook pricing locked at $15 for new releases, they have to be getting better margins on electronic copies than on the print ones. In fact, most of publishers' griping about eBooks is that they can't figure out how their print book sales will be effected. But if nearly everyone goes electronic, that problem disappears. Print sales won't matter because there will hardly be any. Encouraging sales of a dying media seems to just extend the period of confusion. Why aren't publishers encouraging eBook sales, pushing customers to convert? Do they like paying for printing, shipping, warehousing, and disposal of remainders? Is it all just nostalgia? Seriously, can someone explain this to me? I really want to know.mr chompchomphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02120045873445890949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948779141888273004.post-45508126003457421352011-09-06T11:24:00.000-07:002011-09-06T11:25:53.571-07:00A Nuclear Option<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/17-9781442420090-0"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 120px; height: 180px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0yQpkPUS528/TmZjmS5MQLI/AAAAAAAAAME/vnk1voBMPJc/s320/ColdCase.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5649312292140761266" /></a><br />Santa Fe, NM, if you've never been there, is a truly beautiful city full of adobe houses and free thinkers and great restaurants and a truly heterogeneous local culture. It also happens to be within blast radius of Los Alamos National Laboratory where the first nuclear weapons were developed and where atomic science continues to this day.<br /><br />Julia Platt Leonard uses all of these aspects of Santa Fe in her new thriller and debut novel <span style="font-style:italic;">Cold Case</span>. Thirteen year-old Austin "Oz" Keillor, hoping one day to become an accomplished chef, helps out at the family restaurant, Chez Isabelle, where his older brother serves as head chef. Early one Saturday morning, while his mother is out of the country, Oz comes in to clean the place and discovers a dead body, a murdered bodied, stashed in the walk in. What's worse, his brother's name is on a note in the victim's pocket. When the cops arrest Oz's brother, it's up to Oz and a couple of his friends to keep the restaurant going and find out who really committed the murder. As Oz uncovers clues it becomes more and more clear that all of this has to do with Oz's father, a Los Alamos scientist, now dead, but long suspected of selling the nation's nuclear secrets.<br /><a name='more'></a><br />The book is a well-crafted thriller. The multiple mysteries unravel just steadily enough to keep the reader engaged. The story has all the plot twists you'd expect of a modern mystery and Oz's dogged determination is both admirable and infectious. The writing is fast paced and terse. There is, in fact, not a word wasted. And if the book has a flaw, that's it. Some readers, like me, enjoy a wasted word here or there. If I had to give Leonard advice for her second novel (and that is part of my job here) I'd tell her to loosen up a little bit. I think Oz could tell us a lot more about subjects like learning to cook and what Santa Fe really looks like when you're tearing around it on a bike.<br /><br />The book is a little vague in using the word "nuclear" as well, never really distinguishing between nuclear power and nuclear weapons and, more basically, atomic science. Not that such distinctions are critical to the story, but they are critical to the decisions we make in our lives and it makes me a tad uncomfortable to see them used so interchangeably in a book for kids. We all need more level-headed clarity around these separate subjects if we're going to make the right choices for our future. <br /><br />Ok, serious moment over. <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Cold Case</span> is more fun than that criticism would imply, so read it, get into, enjoy it. Just don't let it be the last book you read about Santa Fe, or gourmet cooking or, most especially, nuclear science.<br /><br />For a bit on the critical nuclear power debate read <a href="http://bigthink.com/ideas/17891">this</a> and <a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/">this</a> and even <a href="http://www.lanl.gov/science/NSS/issue2_2011/story6full.shtml">this (from Los Alamos)</a>.<br /><br />Cross posted at <a href="http://guyslitwire.blogspot.com">Guyslitwire</a>.mr chompchomphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02120045873445890949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948779141888273004.post-8895640994925344712011-06-24T12:29:00.001-07:002011-06-24T12:29:48.107-07:00The Real RapunzelI know Tangled has been out for quite a while now. I took my kids to see it at the theater. All three (3 yr old girl, 7 yr old boy, 10 yr old girl) loved it. They've seen it about half a gazillion times on video since then. Somewhere around the quarter gazillionth viewing I got the idea to check out the original Grimm's version of Rapunzel. Turns out there are two, an original and an updated version for the second edition of the Grimm's original volume. Check them out here: <a href="http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm012a.html">http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm012a.html</a>.<div> <br></div><div>Here's what the Grimm's versions have in common with Tangled:</div><div>1. Hair</div><div>2. Desirable vegetation</div><div>3. Involvement of royalty</div><div>4. Magical tears</div><div><br></div><div> That's about it.</div><div><br></div><div>I won't spoil anything about Tangled except to say that the filmmakers have made Rapunzel a princess because the world can't have enough Disney Princesses. She also has eyes so large they make anime drawings look subtle and understated. In the mode of contemporary Disney princesses--as opposed to those squeaky-voiced, moony-eyed, prince-adoring classic princesses--Rapunzel is spunky. Really spunky.</div> <div><br></div><div>In the original Grimm tale Rapunzel is not a princess. She has the misfortune instead of being born to a remorseless salad addict and her enabling husband. Maybe Rapunzel herself, <i>in utero</i>, is to blame for her mother's salad cravings, I don't know, but the mother claims "she'll die" if she doesn't eat some of their sorceress-neighbor's (and who doesn't have one of those?) enticing greens. So the husband jumps the fence and steals her some. Twice. The second time (first time's always free) he gets caught and threatened by the sorceress. The sorceress (evil fairy in one version) decides that in exchange for the junkie's daughter, once she's born, the couple can have all nutritious leafy veggies they want. This is apparently fine with them. After Rapunzel is born, they make the exchange and, it seems, live happily ever after in Sweet Tomatoes heaven. Rapunzel meanwhile is locked in a tower and forced to grow her hair out for tower-climbing purposes. (No mention is made of how the baby is cared for while hairless or short-haired.) A passing prince catches on to the hair trick and "visits" (if you know what I mean) Rapunzel in the tower. Rapunzel, being tower-schooled and all, hasn't developed much in the way of people smarts and figures it's just fine to tell her captor about the prince's visits. The sorceress doesn't take kindly to this news and Rapunzel gets shorn and banished to the desert (the tower banishment thing having failed). In the desert, apparently all alone, she gives birth to (the prince's?) twins. (Now we're talking spunky. She probably goes through her whole pregnancy without a single leaf of magical salad as well.) Back at the tower, the prince comes visiting, and the witch hauls him up by Rapunzel's stolen hair. The sorceress blinds him and sends him on his way. So with the prince blind and Rapunzel out mothering in the desert, there's no way the two are getting back together, except of course the prince wanders into the desert and trips over Rapunzel or maybe one of their kids. Seeing the prince blind makes Rapunzel cry, but Rapunzel's tears have magic healing powers (because of gestational exposure to really good escarole?) and the tears drip from girl eye to boy eye and the prince regains his sight so that he might complement Rapunzel on her new do.</div> <div><br></div><div>The thing I love most about reading these tales as published by the Brother's Grimm is how they defy our normal narrative expectations. This is by turns quaint and brutal. The fact, for example, that Rapunzel's parents pay for their crime with a more abhorrent one and then get away with it is flatly offensive. Nothing bad happens to the witch either. It's this moral logic, rather than the internal logic, that needs to get fixed when these tales are Disneyfied, or turned into modern picture books. The magical tears thing makes no more sense in Tangled than it does in the Grimm version, but Disney grants Rapunzel decent parents from the start, and in the end the evil sorceress gets what she's got coming.</div> <div><br></div><div><br></div> mr chompchomphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02120045873445890949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948779141888273004.post-15861429652958234432011-05-20T05:11:00.001-07:002011-05-20T05:11:44.128-07:00Ebooks outsell printThe New York Times this morning reports that Ebooks have outsold print books at <a href="http://amazon.com">amazon.com</a>: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/technology/20amazon.html?src=recg&gwh=75C8D1CB18F9895345F702BBC8E18A86">http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/technology/20amazon.html?src=recg&gwh=75C8D1CB18F9895345F702BBC8E18A86</a><br> <div><br></div> mr chompchomphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02120045873445890949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948779141888273004.post-4304909721012514762011-02-07T09:45:00.001-08:002011-02-07T09:45:38.221-08:00New Review on GuysLitWireLast week I reviewed You Killed Wesley Payne on GuysLitWire. You can read the review here:<div><a href="http://guyslitwire.blogspot.com/2011/02/hard-boiled-high-school.html">http://guyslitwire.blogspot.com/2011/02/hard-boiled-high-school.html</a></div> mr chompchomphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02120045873445890949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948779141888273004.post-73913953392519072922010-12-23T05:57:00.001-08:002010-12-27T06:30:22.839-08:00Some Thoughts about EBook Pricing: Guest Post by Andrew Karre<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0.5in; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#330033">Below is Critique de Mr Chompchomp's first guest post. It comes from Andrew Karre, editorial director at Carolrhoda Books, Carolrhoda Lab, and Darby Creek</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0.5in; "></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#330033">of the Lerner Publishing Group, who takes issue with my ranting about ebook prices. Being an actual editor for an actual publisher, rather than just a mouthy guy with a blog, Andrew certainly knows more about pricing issues than I do, so I'll now hand the microphone over to him. I think this is an important discussion, so please post comments and questions.</font></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#330033"><br /> </font></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#330033" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">If you want to hear more thoughts from Andrew Karre, you can visit the <a href=" http://lernerbooks.blogspot.com">Lerner Publishing blog</a> where he posts regularly. You can also follow him on Twitter: @andrewkarre.</font></p> <p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0.5in; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0.5in; "> ********************I'd really like to know why specifically people think ebooks are overpriced. Meanwhile, here's my take on why they're not.<br /> <br />First, some useful background so we have a baseline of numbers. Here’s a typical pricing scenario for an adult novel:<br /> <br />HC: 25.99<br />PB: 15.99<br />EB: 9.99<br /> <br />Here’s a typical pricing scenario for a YA novel (and I’m mainly talking about novels here):<br /> <br />HC: 16.95-17.95<br />PB: 8.95-9.95<br />EB: 9.99<br /> <br />At first glance, there’s something fishy about that ebook price on the YA, as you say. It seems like the ebook ought to be the cheapest. Maybe you think that because MP3 albums are cheaper than CDs. Maybe your reasoning is that the lack of a physical object and the attendant warehousing and shipping ought to translate to a lower price than the same work attached to a physical good. That’s not bad reasoning. But it’s not that simple, unfortunately. And in my opinion it’s more complicated in kidlit than it is in the adult world.<br /> <br />You cannot look at book prices in format isolation because books don’t exist in isolation. Books are a single piece of intellectual property (IP) that exists in several formats in a more or less carefully choreographed sequence. I can’t claim a complete understanding of the economic implications of all this, but maybe if I lay out what I know and believe, the pricing of ebooks will at least be less frustrating and opaque.<br /> <br />It’s not insignificant that ebooks typically come out with hardcovers, at the time of a book’s initial release. If you’re a publisher, this is a problem. Right now, the market is in an uncomfortable transitional place. Ebook sales are growing, but they’re still pretty tiny and not exactly reliable. It’s very difficult to judge print runs under any circumstances, but it’s extraordinarily difficult to do so when you’re not sure how many hardcover sales you’ll lose to ebooks sales. If the ebook transition were sudden, this would be less painful (unless you’re a printer or your skills are entirely tied to print). But it’s not , and so a publisher faces a market that looks like this:<br /> <br />1. He has to pay a lot of money to acquire a manuscript.<br /><br />2. Then he pays another pile of money to get that manuscript to the traditional market (printing and binding), all on top of overhead (that would be me, writing this now). This was always the case, but here’s the kicker.<br /><br />3. At the same time, he has to release an electronic version of that product at a much lower price (a price that it is largely out of his control at this point). It’s hard to know how many of those products he’ll sell, and how many of those sales will replace the currently more profitable printed-book sales.<br /><br />4. Plus, the author is taking an ever-larger portion of the proceeds from those electronic sales (ebook royalties are higher than print).<br /><br /> <br />Like I said, if we could just make the transition instantly, it wouldn’t be so bad. But that’s not how it works (ask the music industry). You have to be in print and digital, and—bonus!--print margins go down as your ebook sales replace printed sales and you print fewer hardcovers, but you’re not necessarily making enough money on the ebooks to replace the print revenue (and did I mention that you had to pay for the print months before you made a single sale in any format?).<br /> <br />This is a problem in any category, but it’s terrible in kidlit, because I believe our print pricing was already structurally out of whack. Why are they so much lower than adult books when none of the costs are meaningfully lower (especially when you’re talking about novels)? Printers don’t charge less if you ask them to print a YA novel as opposed to an adult novel. Advances aren’t proportionally lower, if they’re lower at all. My hunch has always been that this is disparity comes from a perception that adults don’t want to spend as much on kids as themselves. But that’s just a hunch. Whatever the reason, our print pricing makes the ebook situation extra complicated because releasing a 7.99 or 6.99 ebook at the same time as your hardcover is just plain untenable (for lots of reasons that I don’t think I can explain well in a single post). This the “analog dollars for digital dimes” problem that completely reshaped the music industry. In the simplest terms, if you condition the market to believe that your newest, most exciting product is worth 6.99, then you’re going to need to gain many, many more sales as a result of that price drop, or you need to pay the creators much less. And I don’t see any evidence of either happening. If your answer to that is to point to Harry Potter, Twilight, and Hunger Games, then all I can say is if you can be happy with a book world where publishers’ lists look like Apple’s product lineup (a tiny selection beautifully tailored for maximum appeal), then yes, we can trade selection for lower prices (and I’ll go find a new job). If you want selection, though, you cannot price based on the performance of the outliers.<br /> <br />(You might well ask aren’t adult books overpriced? If they were overpriced, it seems to me that a dramatic price drop would bring greater demand. And it hasn’t. If they were overpriced, it seems like the fairly competitive marketplace with lots of players would push down prices. It hasn’t. Conclusion: adult books aren’t overpriced, at least not in the present book market.)<br /> <br />Historically speaking, I bet books have never been cheaper than they are now. I bet an inflation-adjusted graph of all aggregate book pricing from Guttenberg until today would slant down, steeply.<br /> <br />Footnote: You cannot talk about ebook pricing without mentioning Amazon. Amazon has sold ebooks at a loss to gain market share. It was in their interest to price aggressively so they could own the dominant format. Seems to have worked well. The collateral damage in that move is consumer perception of what an ebook is worth. $9.99 seems to me a whole lot like squeezed toothpaste. I don’t see much room to go up at this point (especially since it correlates so nicely with album pricing in MP3s). But it isn’t a price based on the future well being of publishers or authors. It wasn’t a price publishers consented to. I’m sure this will be the subject of a million MBA papers I’ll never read.mr chompchomphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02120045873445890949noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948779141888273004.post-83808967761356638402010-12-08T06:26:00.000-08:002010-12-08T06:27:01.575-08:00File Under Unfortunate Holiday TitlesUmmmm . . . . uhhhhh . . . <a href="http://loneliestho.com/index.html">http://loneliestho.com/index.html</a> mr chompchomphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02120045873445890949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948779141888273004.post-12684469586003975852010-12-06T09:45:00.000-08:002010-12-06T12:35:08.879-08:00The price of EBooks for ChildrenSomeone help with the math here, because something ain't adding up. Typically in the book market, children's books are sold for a bit less than adult books. I don't exactly know why, but I presume that this is due to demands from the market. People expect children's books to be cheaper and therefore they are. (At one time children's books may have been, by and large, shorter, and therefore the product cost would be lower, but this hasn't really been true for some time. It probably set up an expectation in the market, though.)<br /><br />Enter the eBook. People expect eBooks, at least adult eBooks, to be cheaper than their print versions. This is fair. EBooks after all do not use paper, covers or bindings. EBooks do not require trucks to rumble across the country burning gas to deliver. They do not require shelf space in bookstores. They do not require an underpaid clerk to operate a cash register to sell them. So, while a typical hardcover adult book is $20-$30, a typical eBook is $10-$12. To me, that's still too expensive, but I've written about that before and will address it again. Let's suffice it to say that it makes sense to sell eBooks at a lower cost than print books.<br /><br />Except, apparently, in the children's market. Children's books typically sell, in print version, for $7-$15. And, in the eBook version? Well, they sell for . . . $9.99. I checked out The Nixie's Song, the first title in the Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles series. Print (Hardcover) from Amazon: $9.59 (Reduced from the $11.99 cover price). Amazon Kindle: $9.99. Young readers (or their parents) pay forty cents more for the privilege of reading the book on their $100-$200 Kindles.<br /><br />Thank the gods Google has come along to bring some competition to the eBook market. They are now offering The Nixie's Song as a Google eBook download for . . . wait for it . . . $9.99.<br /><br />It's nice to see two of the world's most dominant corporations promoting children's literacy in this way, isn't it?<br /><br />Next rant: the absurdly overpriced audiobook.mr chompchomphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02120045873445890949noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948779141888273004.post-16046530057550749812010-11-02T09:32:00.000-07:002010-11-02T09:34:00.249-07:00Through a Mirror, Darkly<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780316056090-1"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 120px; height: 180px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_F7aeccyDVhU/TNA8WL3U7wI/AAAAAAAAAKE/e71NS4ynYMI/s320/recklesscover.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5534990293877976834" /></a><br />In the opening scene of <span style="font-style:italic;">Reckless</span>, the first volume in Cornelia Funke’s new series, we are introduced to Jacob Reckless whose father has disappeared. Jacob, feeling abandoned and angry, searches his father’s room for clues as to what might have happened to him. What he finds instead is a mirror which serves as a portal to another world. As soon as crosses into this world, he is attacked by a grotesque spider like being. He barely escapes and finds his younger brother, Will, afraid, searching for him back in his own world.<br /><br />The story then jumps ahead twelve years. Jacob, not deterred by the violence he met in the Mirror world has, over the years, spent more and more time there. The Mirrorworld is a place full of dangerous and enticing magic. In his time behind the mirror Jacob has become a successful, even famous, hunter of magical treasures and, like his father before him, has largely abandoned his family in his home world, forever making excuses for his long absences. But one mistake has allowed his brother to follow him through the mirror and tragedy has struck. A race of stone-skinned people called Goyl, at war with various human nations, has attacked the Reckless brothers and, because of the curse of a dark fairy that the Goyl use as a weapon of war, Will is slowly growing stone skin himself, turning into one of the creatures out to destroy the Mirrorworld’s humans. Jacob is certain he can find a cure for his brother, but the skin is changing quickly and with it Will is losing his human mind and soul.<br /><a name='more'></a><br />The Mirrorworld that Funke creates is one of the most richly imagined fantasty worlds I’ve come across in a long time. Funke never misses an opportunity to elaborate on some detail of her invented world--the way Goyl distinguish themselves by the type of stone their skin resembles, the way fairies employ swarming moths in the execution of their terrible magic, the way modern technology (trains, guns, flashlights) slowly creeps into the magical world. Funke’s tale was inspired by the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, but she completely avoids sugar coating the dark stories here. On the contrary, they are reimagined even more darkly than the originals, any happily-ever-afters stripped clean away. At one point Jacob’s band of adventures comes upon the body of Sleeping Beauty, dead. Her prince never arrived. She was never awoken from her sleep-like stasis and eventually just slept to death. The fairies of this story are not cute, Tinkerbell-inspired pixies, but Grimm’s fairies—beautiful, powerful, needy and cruel.<br /><br />You’ll find <span style="font-style:italic;">Reckless </span>shelved with the upper middle-grade fantasies, but really, the book could be equally comfortable in any fantasy section, including adult. The characters are not children (not after the prologue anyway) and while there’s no explicit sexual content, the pages are taut with sexual tension throughout. There’s no limit on the swashbuckling, gun fighting and head bashing violence either, though it all seems in the spirit of the story’s adventure, never gratuitous.<br /><br />The story evokes a similar Grimm’s like feeling of alienation as well, largely due to what it leaves out. There’s no traipsing back and forth between worlds here, and no pages of prose wasted on characters gazing about in wonder at what they’ve found. They, like the characters of the fairy tales, don’t stop to heed warnings, their curiosity and human need drive heedlessly forward. For some readers this quality might make story a frustrating read. For me it only made it more intriguing and I eagerly await the next installment. <br /><br />Cross-posted at <a href="http://guyslitwire.blogspot.com">Guys Lit Wire</a>mr chompchomphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02120045873445890949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-948779141888273004.post-78753219090937492012010-06-18T07:41:00.000-07:002010-06-18T08:02:11.108-07:00Weeping for a Living<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_F7aeccyDVhU/TBuG4A8MLKI/AAAAAAAAAJU/O0YsZp2mtmw/s1600/nievecover.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 203px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_F7aeccyDVhU/TBuG4A8MLKI/AAAAAAAAAJU/O0YsZp2mtmw/s320/nievecover.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5484125268136963234" /></a><br />Nieve's parents are professional weepers. They go to funerals, wakes, firings, and break-ups to cry for people who, apparently, cannot be bothered. It is, not surprisingly, a lucrative career. At the opening of the novel Terry Griggs' <span style="font-style:italic;">Nieve</span>, named after its protagonist, the weepers are preparing for a major event, the funeral of the wife of one of the most influential men in town.<br /><br />But there seems to be a lot more misery in store. The town's beloved Dr. Mory has suddenly fallen gravely ill. The town's spiders are multiplying. When Nieve encounters a Weed Inspector whose job is to ensure the proper level of noxiousness and viciousness in the area's weeds (they actually bite), she begins to realize that something is really wrong. Eventually people start disappearing, shops close and reopen under new management, Nieve's mother begins acting all evil, the sun is dimmed, and almost no one else Nieve meets seems to be aware that the world has gone completely haywire.<br /><br />Nieve finally finds a few people who, like her, remember what the world is supposed to be like and who bond together to form a kind of resistence. Griggs creates a truly eerie and unsettling atmosphere for Nieve's adventure and heroism, showing off a perfect eye for the creepy detail--missing toes, contorted bodies, the use of living things for jewelry, furniture and clothing. He also has a special ear for the sarcastic, bickering tones of teenage dialog.<br /> <br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Nieve</span> dives right into its narrative and then rips along, perhaps a bit too fast. The novel's primary flaw is that the reader never gets a real feel for what Nieve's world is like before all the trouble starts. Because the narrative doesn't fully foreshadow the conclusion, it seems to come out of nowhere. In the end, the book is not as satisfying as it could be, although it's dark whimsy and plucky heroine are enough to recommend it.<br />At its conclusion, <span style="font-style:italic;">Nieve </span>leaves enough unsettled to prompt at least one sequel. According to the jacket copy, <span style="font-style:italic;">Nieve </span>is the first in a "projected trilogy."<br /><br />This review is based on a reading of an advanced copy provided by the publisher.<br /><br />Released: 2010<br />Publisher: Biblioasis<br />Audience: Middle Grade<br />Length: 250 pages<br /><br />Other reviews:<br /><a href="http://charlotteslibrary.blogspot.com/2010/05/nieve-by-terry-griggs.html">Charlotte's Library</a>mr chompchomphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02120045873445890949noreply@blogger.com0