As we all peruse the best of the year lists from the various review journals (here’s ours) and look forward to ALA’s announcements later this month of the Newbery Medal, etc., I’d like to call your attention to something I glanced at in my editorial in this month’s issue of The Horn Book Magazine. In an aside to a discussion of the We Need Diverse Books campaign, I opined that “everybody needs good books, not just great ones.” Whether your chosen maxim is “the best is the enemy of the good” or vice-versa (Google cites ‘em with fairly equal frequency), let’s agree that our libraries, personal bookshelves, and reading imaginations have room for both. I am all for Best books but recognize that it’s the Good books that comprise most of my reading, whether for work or leisure. All of the books featured in Notes from the Horn Book are Good ones, that I guarantee.



Roger Sutton,
Editor in Chief

From the January 2015 issue of Notes from the Horn Book.