From: Ginny Moore Kruse <gmkruse>
Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2001 10:49:00 -0500

We apologize to everyone who found/took/made time during the summer and early fall to read "Fighting Ruben Wolfe" by Markus Zusak (U.S. edition: Arthur A. Levine / Scholastic Press, c2001). It's apparent that those of us in the CCBC-Net community who had read this fine new young adult novel in preparation for the September discussion just couldn't muster the energy any discussion of "Fighting Ruben Wolfe" deserves. If you did squeeze in time to read it, we hope you'll remember some of your responses, because we WILL get back to it on CCBC-Net. (Here at the CCBC "Fighting Ruben Wolfe" is already on the CCBC's informal list of books worthy of consideration for the 2002 Michael Printz Award. We're not on that particular award committee, but we do host award discussions annually.) Thanks, Arthur Levine, for bringing "Fighting Ruben Wolfe" to readers in this nation.

If you read or revisited Robert Lipsyte's novel "The Contender"
(Harper & Row, c1967) in anticipation of CCBC-Net discussion of this ground-breaking sports novel for young adults, perhaps you now understand why Bob Lipsyte received the 2001 Margaret Edwards Award for the "lifetime achievement for writing books that have been popular over a period of time." We're so excited that we'll have a chance to hear Mr. Lipsyte speak here on the UW-Madison campus on Wednesday evening. That speech will be webcast "live," so if you have a chance to "tune in," at 7:30 p.m. CDT, you can be part of the audience at this 2001 Charlotte Zolotow Lecture event http://www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/czfaq.htm . Be sure to read the Walter Dean Myers interview with Bob Lipsyte in "School Library Journal" (July, 2001), if you haven't already done so. And you might want to locate and read Lipsyte's column published in the Sports Section of the "New York Times" on Sept. 16, 2001.

Thanks to everyone who shared suggestions and comments about sports books for young readers early in September. This is such a difficult area in which to find books. Why? We still don't know, but there were many suggestions, and these were apprecaited, as were the thoughtful, down-to?rth comments about the appeal for young, newly independent readers of celebrity sports biographies and formula nonfiction about sports.

Thanks, Susan Kuklin, you wrote marvelously about creating "Hoops with Swoopes" with Sheryl Swoopes (Jump at the Sun / Hyperion, c2001). You led us to reflect not only on this dynamic book but also on the relationship of basketball to dance and the uses of space by each. We appreciate your vision and your photographs for this book, and also for "Dance!" created with Bill T. Jones (Hyperion, c1998). And by the way, we also enjoy your photograph of Vera B. Williams on the jacket of her astonishing "Amber Was Brave, Essie Was Smart" (Greenwillow, c2001). (Not about sports, but stay tuned, because we'll come back to this book, too, at another time.)

Peace, Ginny

Ginny Moore Kruse gmkruse at education.wisc.edu Cooperative Children's Book Center www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/ A Library of the School of Education, University of Wisconsin Madison Now open seven days a week: M-Th 9-7; F 9-4; Sa-Su 12:30-4 CDT
Received on Mon 01 Oct 2001 10:49:00 AM CDT