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[CCBC-Net] Minders of Make Believe
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From: janeyolen at aol.com <janeyolen>
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:00:05 -0400
Ah, Leonard--I save my email and most of it goes to the Kerlan. My guess is there are more of us doing that than the editors would like!
JaneY
Jane Yolen www.janeyolen.com
-----Original Message----- From: leonardsma at aol.com To: connie.rock at snet.net; ccbc-net at ccbc.ad.education.wisc.edu Sent: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:51 am Subject: Re: [CCBC-Net] Minders of Make Believe
For the more recent years, I wanted the "camera" to move back a bit and focus less on individuals than on trends. There were several reasons for this, one being that in the corporate culture of contemporary publishing it's not always clear who really is responsible for this or that decision or discovery. To that extent, having access to large amounts of correspondence seemed less crucial. I do know some editors who write e-mails that are just as thoughtful as the editorial letters of earlier times, though I'm sure they are the exceptions. I know of one major publishing house that routinely purges some of its correspondence for legal reasons--for the sake of not having material on record that could potentially be used against it in litigrate. (How's that for a hot potato?) I think of e-mail as falling somewhere between the written and the spoken word and I doubt that many people write e-mail with posterity in mind, but in a couple of instances I have been given access to e-ma
il exchanges between an author and an editor as background for interviews I was prepping for, and for possible reproduction in a book, and I found that a lot could be learned from the rapid give and take about revision work that e-mail is so good at facilitating. To go back to my camera analogy, a sequence of e-mail exchanges has the potential to give a more close-up view (or at the very least a different view) of the "creative process" than a comparable sequence of letters, if only because because the author and editor are responding in the moment. For now I guess history belongs to those who save their e-mail.
Leonard S. Marcus
54 Willow Street, #2A
Brooklyn, New York 11201
tel 718 596-1897
e-mail leonardsma at aol.com
web www.leonardmarcus.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Connie Rockman <connie.rock at snet.net>
To: CCBC Net <ccbc-net at ccbc.ad.education.wisc.edu>
Sent: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 10:58 a
Subject: [CCBC-Net] Minders of Make Believe
On Jul 21, 2008, at 11:41 PM, Norma Jean Sawicki wrote: > One of the pleasures in reading Minders is that > it is a story but a story based on fact...not gossip or innuendo. > So true! Leonard Marcus has given us all a remarkable gift by gathering this information into one book, a book that should be required reading for anyone involved with children's literature, past, present, or future. To set the history of children's publishing and children's librarianship side by side within the context of social history - and to do it with wit and sparkle as well as impeccable research - what an accomplishment! Even the footnotes make for fascinating reading (did you all catch the fact that the man who designed May Massee's office at Viking also designed the Oval Office in the White House in 1933 - don't miss those footnotes!) My question to you, Leonard (and I'm sure this has been addressed elsewhere in other contexts) is about the resear
ch method itself. So much of your research on the early days of children's publishing is based on letters. "Dear Genius," of course, and the wonderful correspondences that you cite in "Minders" of Bechtel, Massee, and others. How did your research change as you got into the later years of the 20th century? What is taking the place of the elegant correspondence of those earlier years? The Internet provides us with an amazing array of virtual libraries and digitized records, but is something being lost in the shorthand and ephemeral nature of email? Will public blogs take the place of private diaries? Is email as intimate as a letter penned and mailed and intended for one person's eyes only? How will the methods of communication today affect the research methods of tomorrow? Connie Rockman PS - And for anyone interested - this is my 'take' on the L'Engle thread: Can we all agree that, in spite of standards and criteria of selecti
on, our individual response to a work of literature is, ultimately
, a subjective one. And in our field, that response is complicated by the fact that the "Minders" - whether they be editors, librarians, booksellers, or parents - are no longer at the age of first-response, that visceral place where certain books take a direct route to your soul. I had my own response to A Wrinkle in Time when I read it as an adult, but my daughter, who read it when she was 12, still (now at age 40) talks about the effect that book first had on her - the feeling that she was Meg, and that Meg's character flaws were hers, and when those very traits made it possible for Meg to overcome evil, perhaps there was hope for the angry, worried, confused 12-year-old sharing the journey with her. Never mind any allegories or overtones that adults might read into the story - that bonding of a reader with a character with whom he/she can share a bit of spiritual/emotional growth, that's why we read. That experience happens for all of us
with different books, and different types of books, and who are the "Minders" to question the response, once the book is out there in the world.
_______________________________________________ CCBC-Net mailing list CCBC-Net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu Visit this link to read archives or to unsubscribe... http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/mailman/listinfo/ccbc-net
_______________________________________________ CCBC-Net mailing list CCBC-Net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu Visit this link to read archives or to unsubscribe... http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/mailman/listinfo/ccbc-net
Received on Tue 22 Jul 2008 11:00:05 AM CDT
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:00:05 -0400
Ah, Leonard--I save my email and most of it goes to the Kerlan. My guess is there are more of us doing that than the editors would like!
JaneY
Jane Yolen www.janeyolen.com
-----Original Message----- From: leonardsma at aol.com To: connie.rock at snet.net; ccbc-net at ccbc.ad.education.wisc.edu Sent: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:51 am Subject: Re: [CCBC-Net] Minders of Make Believe
For the more recent years, I wanted the "camera" to move back a bit and focus less on individuals than on trends. There were several reasons for this, one being that in the corporate culture of contemporary publishing it's not always clear who really is responsible for this or that decision or discovery. To that extent, having access to large amounts of correspondence seemed less crucial. I do know some editors who write e-mails that are just as thoughtful as the editorial letters of earlier times, though I'm sure they are the exceptions. I know of one major publishing house that routinely purges some of its correspondence for legal reasons--for the sake of not having material on record that could potentially be used against it in litigrate. (How's that for a hot potato?) I think of e-mail as falling somewhere between the written and the spoken word and I doubt that many people write e-mail with posterity in mind, but in a couple of instances I have been given access to e-ma
il exchanges between an author and an editor as background for interviews I was prepping for, and for possible reproduction in a book, and I found that a lot could be learned from the rapid give and take about revision work that e-mail is so good at facilitating. To go back to my camera analogy, a sequence of e-mail exchanges has the potential to give a more close-up view (or at the very least a different view) of the "creative process" than a comparable sequence of letters, if only because because the author and editor are responding in the moment. For now I guess history belongs to those who save their e-mail.
Leonard S. Marcus
54 Willow Street, #2A
Brooklyn, New York 11201
tel 718 596-1897
e-mail leonardsma at aol.com
web www.leonardmarcus.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Connie Rockman <connie.rock at snet.net>
To: CCBC Net <ccbc-net at ccbc.ad.education.wisc.edu>
Sent: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 10:58 a
Subject: [CCBC-Net] Minders of Make Believe
On Jul 21, 2008, at 11:41 PM, Norma Jean Sawicki wrote: > One of the pleasures in reading Minders is that > it is a story but a story based on fact...not gossip or innuendo. > So true! Leonard Marcus has given us all a remarkable gift by gathering this information into one book, a book that should be required reading for anyone involved with children's literature, past, present, or future. To set the history of children's publishing and children's librarianship side by side within the context of social history - and to do it with wit and sparkle as well as impeccable research - what an accomplishment! Even the footnotes make for fascinating reading (did you all catch the fact that the man who designed May Massee's office at Viking also designed the Oval Office in the White House in 1933 - don't miss those footnotes!) My question to you, Leonard (and I'm sure this has been addressed elsewhere in other contexts) is about the resear
ch method itself. So much of your research on the early days of children's publishing is based on letters. "Dear Genius," of course, and the wonderful correspondences that you cite in "Minders" of Bechtel, Massee, and others. How did your research change as you got into the later years of the 20th century? What is taking the place of the elegant correspondence of those earlier years? The Internet provides us with an amazing array of virtual libraries and digitized records, but is something being lost in the shorthand and ephemeral nature of email? Will public blogs take the place of private diaries? Is email as intimate as a letter penned and mailed and intended for one person's eyes only? How will the methods of communication today affect the research methods of tomorrow? Connie Rockman PS - And for anyone interested - this is my 'take' on the L'Engle thread: Can we all agree that, in spite of standards and criteria of selecti
on, our individual response to a work of literature is, ultimately
, a subjective one. And in our field, that response is complicated by the fact that the "Minders" - whether they be editors, librarians, booksellers, or parents - are no longer at the age of first-response, that visceral place where certain books take a direct route to your soul. I had my own response to A Wrinkle in Time when I read it as an adult, but my daughter, who read it when she was 12, still (now at age 40) talks about the effect that book first had on her - the feeling that she was Meg, and that Meg's character flaws were hers, and when those very traits made it possible for Meg to overcome evil, perhaps there was hope for the angry, worried, confused 12-year-old sharing the journey with her. Never mind any allegories or overtones that adults might read into the story - that bonding of a reader with a character with whom he/she can share a bit of spiritual/emotional growth, that's why we read. That experience happens for all of us
with different books, and different types of books, and who are the "Minders" to question the response, once the book is out there in the world.
_______________________________________________ CCBC-Net mailing list CCBC-Net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu Visit this link to read archives or to unsubscribe... http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/mailman/listinfo/ccbc-net
_______________________________________________ CCBC-Net mailing list CCBC-Net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu Visit this link to read archives or to unsubscribe... http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/mailman/listinfo/ccbc-net
Received on Tue 22 Jul 2008 11:00:05 AM CDT
