From: Nina Lindsay <linds_na>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 09:27:09 -0800

As chair of 2002 Sibert Committee, I read and re-read Black Potatoes very closely, and thought a lot about this issue. Bartoletti does such a fine job of establishing her authority in her source notes, that I felt direct references were not necessary for reasons of authority. It would be nice, of course, to have references for those readers who would like to do some further research on a specific item; I'm guessing this part of the deciscion was editorial, since direct references in this book would have been voluminous in themselves. Without knowing what the decision was, it's hard to comment (though I disagree with the argument that notes at the end turn young readers off; I think that interested readers appreciate them, and uninterested ones ignore them. Direct references, by the way, can be done without superscripts in the main text. Just take a look at last year's Sibert winner, "Sir Walter Ralegh" by Marc Aronson), but I don't think it detracts from the effectiveness of Bartoletti's wonderful narrative.

Nina Lindsay
Received on Tue 12 Mar 2002 11:27:09 AM CST