Hello my long-neglected friends:

What’s that sad excuse for an excuse we use nowadays? Oh yes: “…but LIFE got in the way.” That. Sorry I have been absent from your inboxes these past several weeks. (I’m reminded of how Joan Didion would begin letters that had lain too long unanswered: “During my absence from the country these past eighteen months…”).

ANYWAY, we’re here now. Please join in the digital celebration for the 2021 Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards, taking place all through the month of October on hbook.com. I kicked off the festivities on Monday; next week we’ll focus on our Picture Book winners, then week three we’ll turn to Nonfiction, before wrapping up the month with Fiction and Poetry. Browse the awards page and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for articles, reviews, videos, and more! As always, the January/February issue of the Magazine will include the printed speeches; subscribe here. And in the meantime, take a look at what is upcoming in November/December.

Calling Caldecott is back and has been percolating along, including this week looking at Watercress (a 2021 BGHB Honor Book). The pandemic can’t end soon enough for lots of reasons, but work-wise I’m looking forward to a day when we’ll get back to reviewing picture books from actual printed books, not pixels. The other day I recorded a Talks with Roger interview (forthcoming on October 21) with Laura Vaccaro Seeger about her new book Red, and she was talking about the cut-outs. Cut-outs? I didn’t see any cut-outs in the…PDF. Thank goodness we still had time to edit my review in the November/December Magazine! But looking at the beautiful bookmaking in the copy of Red that Holiday House sent to my home has made me vow never to take turning pages for granted again.

In personal reading, I’m juggling an old Maeve Binchy (Echoes), a new-ish Icelandic mystery by Ragnar Jónasson (Whiteout), and a Holocaust legal thriller by Ronald H. Balson (Once We Were Brothers), the last recommended by son Ethan. It is set in his actual and my adopted hometown, Chicago, and I’m loving the visit. I’d say “Don’t tell Bruce!” in regard to my slighting of our latest book club choice, Wilkie Collins’s Armadale, but I suspect he hasn’t gotten much further in it than I have.

Love,

Roger