From: Marc Aronson <75664.3110>
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 1998 17:51:21 -0400

On the issue of plot summary: many of you reviewers are skilled at telling what happens in a book in a fashion that is both interesting to read in itself and also gives some sense of what you think of the book. We on the editing and writing end sometimes feel frustrated, though, for a different reason. Since the reviews you write to aid librarians in purchasing decisions make up the vast majority of the reviews of our books -- often they are the only such reviews -- we hunger for commentary that can engage more extensively with what we have done.
        To put it a different way, reviews for institutions serve that function well. But we also wish there were a place in which books could be considered primarily as works of art. I'd say that, even though often critical, Betsy's review of Arlene did just that.
        So it is not so much that we are critical of the picture book reviews in the journals for having too much plot in them, rather it is that we yearn for other reviews that do more.

Marc Aronson Henry Holt
Received on Fri 18 Sep 1998 04:51:21 PM CDT