So y’all remember what was making me cranky a year ago? Proof’s in the pudding, and the author copies are in my hot little hands:
Now my mom can quit bugging me to go write a book already. Okay, okay, so I really only wrote slightly less than half of one. My name is on the cover. Dayenu.
This book is what you buy if you have K-12 (or maybe even undergraduate) students who would like to write book reports on an author they might, you know, actually like. There are also some readers-advisory bits that I think came out pretty well (and I say this having opposed some of them pretty strenuously at the time): if-you-liked pullouts on some authors and subgenre listings in back. It’s a pretty good mix of authors if I do say so myself; we pulled off a couple of fairly daring tricks, such as including three or four graphic-novel authors as well as several YA authors, and openly acknowledging the female half of male-female writing partnerships. (Yes, I know, the latter shouldn’t be daring, but find me another reference book that does it properly, I dare you.)
If I had it to do over, I’d make much more of a point of expanding coverage of writers of color, who regularly get shafted in what turns into a self-reinforcing cycle: they don’t get read because readers-advisory books don’t include them, and then readers-advisory books don’t include them because their readerships aren’t large. I did make a total pest of myself to keep a couple-three excellent, less-known-than-they-oughta-be writers of color in our readalike lists, and I’m not sorry about that at all, just sorry it had to come to that.
But for now—Jen’s and my book, let me show you it.
