From: PortolaDJ at aol.com <PortolaDJ>
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1998 19:42:42 EDT

A "popular" book is such a relief, for all concerned, but still publishers must (if they must by nature) enable books for which the readership will be small. I'd just as soon a deep reader than a wide or shallow one. Rylant is writing to the depth of a few people--but they're the ones who really swim in the worlds she touches. I don't mean really as is "actually"; I mean really as in, "They're the one who are hit hard." The rare reader needs sustaining as much as the more generally available one. I'll bet that not everyone
(young) who likes Rylant wants to talk about that liking. Some preferences are private. And I think it's possible to love writing without being able to find one's own words to expres that love. Sometimes, when writing copy for the catalog or a jacket flap, I want to say merely: "Buy it. You'll be glad" because I'm otherwise at a loss about how to express my own love for the book. Kids must feel the same when questioned about what the like and don't. I would anyway. Dick Jackson
Received on Sun 26 Jul 1998 06:42:42 PM CDT