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From: Flyingpig2 at aol.com <Flyingpig2>
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 20:59:40 EST
In a message dated 11/8/99 6:22:53 PM, bromannj at hotmail.com writes:
Jennifer, we had the same experience at our bookstore. We even had 10 signed first American editions of the first book that we couldn't give away. We mentioned it in our newsletter, and sold a few that way, but it wasn't until the media got hold of it that the copies began to fly. Interesting that such a broadly appealing book wasn't, on the strength of the cover and subject matter alone, appealing enough. It took a LOT of word of mouth.
My task now is to convince kids that there is life after Harry Potter. (One fourteen-year-old customer was incensed that book 4 isn't out yet, and he swore he wouldn't pick up another book until it was. Happily, I had _Holes_ as my reply.)
Fortunately, there are thousands of fabulous books out there. Someone mentioned Diana Wynne Jones, whose _Witch Week_ seemed to me a godmother to HP, but one I can't seem to handsell to save my life; kids don't want anything too close to HP that isn't HP and they don't care that WW came first. I think Diana Wynne Jones is terribly underrated and underread in the US; I just discovered Jones's very funny, Lloyd Alexander-like _Castle in the Air_, which I loved. (Wish _Archer's Goon_ hadn't gone out of print.)
This is straying from the discussion at hand, so I'll stop except to say that I'm somewhere between Roger and the most ardent fans; I thought the first book was a delight to read, often witty and always imaginative, with an authoritative voice, but not the icon it has become. For me, it didn't hold up to E. Nesbit, Edward Eager, certainly not Tolkien. Wonder what I would have thought at age ten.
It's terrible that I can't immerse myself as fully in the worlds of the books I read as I did in childhood. I love them, absorb and live them to an extent, but not the same way. I re-read books I loved and find that I added so much to them, imaginatively speaking. Perhaps I am more literal now. I certainly ha ve read so much more that my frames of reference are quite cluttered at this point. Is this inevitable, a function of time, or can some of you read the same way you did as children?
Elizabeth Bluemle Flying Pig Children's Books
Received on Mon 08 Nov 1999 07:59:40 PM CST
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 20:59:40 EST
In a message dated 11/8/99 6:22:53 PM, bromannj at hotmail.com writes:
Jennifer, we had the same experience at our bookstore. We even had 10 signed first American editions of the first book that we couldn't give away. We mentioned it in our newsletter, and sold a few that way, but it wasn't until the media got hold of it that the copies began to fly. Interesting that such a broadly appealing book wasn't, on the strength of the cover and subject matter alone, appealing enough. It took a LOT of word of mouth.
My task now is to convince kids that there is life after Harry Potter. (One fourteen-year-old customer was incensed that book 4 isn't out yet, and he swore he wouldn't pick up another book until it was. Happily, I had _Holes_ as my reply.)
Fortunately, there are thousands of fabulous books out there. Someone mentioned Diana Wynne Jones, whose _Witch Week_ seemed to me a godmother to HP, but one I can't seem to handsell to save my life; kids don't want anything too close to HP that isn't HP and they don't care that WW came first. I think Diana Wynne Jones is terribly underrated and underread in the US; I just discovered Jones's very funny, Lloyd Alexander-like _Castle in the Air_, which I loved. (Wish _Archer's Goon_ hadn't gone out of print.)
This is straying from the discussion at hand, so I'll stop except to say that I'm somewhere between Roger and the most ardent fans; I thought the first book was a delight to read, often witty and always imaginative, with an authoritative voice, but not the icon it has become. For me, it didn't hold up to E. Nesbit, Edward Eager, certainly not Tolkien. Wonder what I would have thought at age ten.
It's terrible that I can't immerse myself as fully in the worlds of the books I read as I did in childhood. I love them, absorb and live them to an extent, but not the same way. I re-read books I loved and find that I added so much to them, imaginatively speaking. Perhaps I am more literal now. I certainly ha ve read so much more that my frames of reference are quite cluttered at this point. Is this inevitable, a function of time, or can some of you read the same way you did as children?
Elizabeth Bluemle Flying Pig Children's Books
Received on Mon 08 Nov 1999 07:59:40 PM CST
