From: Ginny Moore Kruse <gmkruse>
Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2001 12:13:54 -0500

Thanks, Karen Wojtyla, for interpreting some of what goes into a publisher's decision to cross-list (and promote?) a novel for both young adult and adult readers. I'm glad you corrected my perception that Fade was published as an adult book. Perhaps the endorsements on its jacket along with the cross-listing confused me into thinking what its publishing "home" had been.

I think many of us agree about the perception that "books written for kids are perceived as less interesting or literary than adult books" by many adults who are serious readers. Somehow these adults can walk into a bookstore (especially a superstore) and completely disregard all of the less literary books, the potboilers, the how-to books, etc. They seem to be able to do this and to beam onto the relatively few
"literary" books published for adults. However, these same adults can walk into the children's section of a bookstore and almost immediately make the assumption that everything they see is of equal quality. Their expectations are immediately different. Thank goodness for public libraries with books for all ages, interests, abilities, languages, etc.

It seems to me that many of Robert Cormier's books are perfect cross-over books, books to give - as Katy Horning did with I Am the Cheese - to adults who might be open to finding some of the real literature written and published for young readers.

I have introduced The Chocolate War, I Am the Cheese, and After the First Death to adult readers. I've also conducted discussions with adult readers of Forgotten Fire (Adam Bagdasarian); Make Lemonade
(Virginia Euwer Wolff) - I'm eager to do that with True Believer!; Habibi, The Space between Our Footsteps (Naomi Shihab Nye); The Birchbark House (Louise Erdrich); Protecting Marie, Words of Stone
(Kevin Henkes); The Great Gilly Hopkins, A Bridge to Terabithia, Jacob Have I Loved (Katherine Paterson); Memory, The Tricksters (Margaret Mahy); M.C. Higgins the Great (Virginia Hamilton); Tibet, Starry Messenger (Peter Sis); and Tuck Everlasting (Natalie Babbitt). I look forward to introducing Kit's Wilderness (David Almond) to adult readers in the future. I realize that most of these books aren't Y.A. books, and so they wouldn't have qualified for cross-listing. However, they've been greatly appreciated by adults who usually say something to the effect of, "if only I had had the opportunity to read a book like this while I was young."

I guess that's what many of us are trying to do - in our varied ways. We're trying to make sure that the kids we know or teach can read period. Choose to read - during some of their "leisure" time. And have an opportunity to read some of what we adults think are the best books. Yes, to the girl who asked earlier this month if all we do in CCBC-Net is talk about Robert Cormier's books. Yup, that's all we do. This month. What we all do each month is try to find out from each other why certain books or authors or artists or themes matter to some of us. So we can each do all we do - whatever that is - even better than before. - Ginny

Ginny Moore Kruse gmkruse at education.wisc.edu Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/ A Library of the School of Education, University of Wisconsin Madison
Received on Wed 29 Aug 2001 12:13:54 PM CDT