From: omgary_at_childrencomefirst.com <omgary>
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2005 10:19:43 -0600

Dear Lee, I agree with your post. It's not so much that I want to get rid of all of this type of publishing but rather find a balance. Several years ago I attended an SCBWI conference and the acquiring editor read passages from her favorite books she'd recently publlished...all of them were dark, gloomy, depressing, not just angst-filled but really end-of-the-road stuff and it wasn't just that they started out that way and things got better. Nope. The "realism" carried the dark clouds all the way to the end of the book. I sat there in the audience and thought, wow! There's an editor I won't be submitting to!

I think in many ways in our zeal to bring reality to children lives through the books they read we've dug deep into the cest pools of life and written about it and I don't necessarily think this helps our kids. They know when they're in deep doo-doo themselves and know what that feels like. As both a bookseller and an author I look for titles that would open as many windows as possible for the reader and let as much light in as possible so readers can see that there is hope, there are options, there's a world out there for the taking...and that the situation they find themselves in is neither a permanent curse nor an excuse to stay there.

Olgy
------------------------------------------Olgy Gary, Gen'l Manager
"children come first...because they're our greatest treasure!" http://www.childrencomefirst.com
Received on Thu 23 Jun 2005 11:19:43 AM CDT