Editorials
When we think about the respect for “private reading” that Betty Carter calls for in her article on page 525, what tends to come to mind first is the quiet book, or the book that broaches an intimate problem or topic. But the excellence of Betty’s point is demonstrated no...
Dear Mrs. Bush:This is the second time we’ve corresponded via this page; my last letter (see “The Truth’s Superb Surprise,” March/April 2003) concerned our mutual love of poetry, and I hope you’ll be pleased to hear that our next issue is a special one devoted to that genre, with contributions...
It’s hard to figure just who is more naive: Laura Bush or America’s poets. For her part, Mrs. Bush had invited several prominent American poets to the White House to participate in a symposium celebrating the work of Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman. But hearing that the symposium...
With our publication this month of John Rowe Townsend’s pellucid appraisal of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, some readers might feel that the Horn Book is overindulging its notorious Anglophilia. Along with reviewing each of the three volumes, the last covered at some length by guest critic Gregory Maguire,...
I recently had the good fortune to see a brilliant production of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel at the Chicago Lyric Opera. Directed by Richard Jones and designed by John Macfarlane, it was not intended as a production for children; nevertheless, it neatly focused the work using its most child-compelling theme:...
Despite my dedication to the cause, I never thought a children’s book would have me voluntarily up and out at four-thirty on a frosty November Sunday morning. But the heavens and the forecast were so arrayed that I wanted to take my chance to watch the Leonid meteor shower light...
L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, commemorated in this issue by Michael Patrick Hearn, has more in common with J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series than just a population of assorted fantastic beings. Other assorted beings, no more fantastical than you or I, have worked hard to keep both...
While Gregory Maguire was assiduously working away, with a less-than-generous deadline, on his review of Philip Pullman’s long-awaited The Amber Spyglass (see page 735), I was enjoying a busman’s holiday on Herring Cove Beach in Provincetown, reading the Horn Book’s other preview copy of the same book. Perhaps more than...
As an occasional adjunct instructor in children’s literature, I’ve taught Natalie Babbitt’s Tuck Everlasting three times. While the students have sometimes been contemptuous of my other reading assignments (my beloved Tom’s Midnight Garden in particular seems to reveal a generation gap), they tend to get along quite well with Tuck,...
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