From: Kathleen Horning <horning>
Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2001 09:39:27 -0500

Thanks to all of you who shared your professional expertise and personal experiences with us in the past two weeks. We find ourselves here at the CCBC frequently referring back to many of your excellent suggestions as we help students, teachers, and librarians who ask us for assistance.

We would like at this time to turn our attention back to the subject of sports books. In the opening weeks, we discussed sports books for young readers, and now we'll focus on sports books for teenagers. This is especially pertinent as we prepare for the upcoming Charlotte Zolotow Lecture here in Madison by Robert Lipsyte. Perhaps some of you had a chance to hear him make his acceptance speech for the Margaret A. Edwards Award at ALA this past summer or have read the excellent interview with him by Walter Dean Myers that appeared in the June 2001 issue of "School Library Journal." One of the things Lipsyte discussed both times was sports fiction (and he claims that a lot of what we think of sports nonfiction is pure fiction because of the emphasis on false heroes) in light of a masculine identity,
"keeping the game face," as he calls it.

Do any of you have any specific responses to this or the work of Robert Lipsyte in general?



Kathleen T. Horning (horning at education.wisc.edu) Cooperative Children's Book Center University of Wisconsin-School of Education 4290 Helen C. White Hall 600 North Park St. Madison, WI 53706 608&3930 FAX: 608&2I33
Received on Mon 24 Sep 2001 09:39:27 AM CDT