Something that confounds the office every single day when we open the mail is the lack of professionalism in book cover design. I am sure that there are many, many books with wonderful covers that fail to become bestsellers, but I’m also sure that wonderful books with awful covers are doomed from the get-go.

Remember when album covers were so important? They were inspirations and compliments to the music on the disk. The album cover has been replaced by the music video, but book covers are alive and well. Rather, they ought to be.

Some of the problem comes from the disintegration of specialization. Yes, you could blame it on technology, but that would be too easy. Blame it on the guy who thinks he can do everything just because he’s got the technology.

Bob Sacks (www.bosacks.com) sent out an article on 6 February from the Independent about a new printer that produces 3D objects. I’ve seen similar printers used in the auto industry, but soon they’ll be available, and affordable, to anyone. The means of mass production will (or could) suddenly be everyone’s utility room.

Great, and not so great. Great for designers, craftspeople, artists; not so great for the rest of us who will experience a flood of the home-made and half-baked.

The same thing happened when desktop publishing was introduced – has it been almost 20 years! – spawning ugly newsletters, brochures, pamphlets, and now books galore. Just because you can produce a public document doesn’t mean you should.

An average book cover consumes 10 to 15 hours of a designer’s life. Ask yourself, do you even know what an average book cover looks like? And don’t ask your sister or your girlfriend or your mom, because unless they’re designers, they don’t know either.

A book cover inspires an immediate reaction. Whether that reaction is apathy, derisive cackles, or curiosity is totally up to you. My advice: Hire a professional.

Here’s a site I like to look at. Remember, though, just because you look at this site, it doesn’t make you a designer. http://nytimesbooks.blogspot.com/

Part of my morning reading always includes the online magazine Slate, and today I discovered that the parent company, The Washington Post, had added something new. A magazine, The Root, “that provides thought-provoking commentary on today's news from a variety of black perspectives.”

Okay, doesn’t the title seems a little cliché, and the timing of the debut, well, insincere? Does it take a black man running successfully for president for black perspectives to find a forum?

Or am I wrong. Is my reaction cynical? Am I too inclined (given the season) to see slavishness and pandering where there is only coincidence?

It’s not that we don’t need a forum for black experience and voices. And after all the editor-in-chief is Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard and Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. His (and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham’s) eight-volume, 4,000-entry, completely stupendous African American National Biography is coming out next month from Oxford.

And the title no doubt references the interactive genealogical section that the site also hosts. Through AfricanDNA.com (co-founded by Gates) African Americans can trace their ancestry in a number of different ways, including DNA testing.

The website states that “The Root aims to be an unprecedented departure from traditional American journalism, raising the profile of black voices in mainstream media and engaging anyone interested in black culture around the world.”

We welcome their perspectives and wish them well.

On a personal note, I’ve been collecting great books about African American issues for the last couple of months in anticipation of Black History
Month. Yes, I’m a couple of days early, but here’s the first.

Andrea Cheng has written and illustrated a very unusual book, Where the Steps Were (WordSong, 978-1-932425-88-8) about an ordinary class of third graders, their always extraordinary questions, and the teacher who guides them. Miss D. takes the class through lessons on American history, with an emphasis on the experiences and contributions of blacks. Five of the children narrate the year in poems.

CARMEN
Rosa Parks

Harriet Tubman,
she came before Lincoln,
but then how did Rosa Parks
fit in?
Miss Parks
just died,
Miss D. says.
—And she was a slave?
—No, she was a seamstress
who wanted to sit
in her seat on the bus.
We find 1955
on my time line.
Dang,
that was about one hundred years
after slavery.
That’s the year I was born,
Miss D. says.
—So when you were little,
we couldn’t have sat together
on the bus?

The children also talk about personal concerns and family matters.

JONATHAN
Everything Dies

Grams had a husband once
and so did my mom
but their husbands died.
Everything dies
like these cicadas
all over the playground.
Simon’s dad
was murdered one day
and so was Lincoln
in that theater
and Martin Luther King
talking about dreams.

There is additional tension as their school is to be demolished at the end of the year.

JONATHAN
Keys

Mr. O’Leary
has all the keys,
every last one
to every last door
in our school,
even the bathrooms
and the boiler room
where he took me and Anthony
to show us
all that heat.
What’s he going to do
with those keys
when they tear our school
down?

Cheng’s sister teaches third grade in Cincinnati, and the book is based on her experience. The class takes a field trip to a farm, and finally to a theater to see a play. There, history comes home to roost as the children, sitting in the balcony, are accused without evidence of spitting on the crowd below. Back in their classroom—having missed the play—the children write letters to the theater manager, asking him if their skin color had anything to do with their presumed guilt.

Where the Steps Were is fascinating, heartbreaking, and hilarious. It’s an extraordinary collection of voices of ordinary children. Our ordinary (not) children.

It’s primary day in Michigan, where the main offices of ForeWord magazine are located. Unfortunately, the National Parties are punishing the state for wanting to have more a voice in the election process by canceling some or all of their delegates to the national conventions. While that’s nothing to celebrate, it is Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, and for that, we have a few book suggestions from Sleeping Bear Press.

Riding to Washington (Sleeping Bear Press, 978-1-58536-324-7) is the story of a girl who rides with her father on a bus from Indianapolis to Washington, D.C., to see and hear Dr. King speak.

At first, she’s convinced that the only reason she’s going is because she’s too much trouble for her mother to handle alone, what with her two baby brothers. On the way, however, she experiences first-hand the effects of inequality and segregation and comes to understand the need for all people, even little trouble-makers like herself, to do the right thing.

Author Gwenyth Swain’s father and grandfather made this trip in 1963, to march for civil rights. The language of the book is colloquial and historical – a choice that will provide discussion material for classrooms. The book is beautifully illustrated by David Geister, with the colors, sites, and textures of the '60s.

Sleeping Bear of Chelsea, Michigan, began publishing in 1998, and considers its authors and illustrators to be “the heart and soul” of the press. Many of their books would be welcome additions to public or home libraries. Here are two others that celebrate the trials and contributions of Black Americans.

 

Let Them Play by Margot Theis Raven
Illustrated by Chris Ellison
978-1-58536-260-8

In 1955 there were 62 official Little League programs in South Carolina, and all but one were white. This is the story of the Cannon Street YMCA All-Stars, an all-black team, that wins the state tournament by default when none of the other teams will play them. At the Little League Baseball World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, the Cannon Street team is invited as guests, but they are not allowed to play. Let Them Play takes its title from the chant shouted by the spectators who attended the World Series final.

 

D is for Drinking Gourd: An African American Alphabet
by Nancy Sanders
Illustrated by E. B. Lewis
978-1-58536-293-6

D is for Drinking Gourd,
and the North Star that led through the night
from station to station on the Underground Railroad,
escaping on a dangerous flight.

From the abolitionists to the Harlem Renaissance, D is for Drinking Gourd celebrates the role the African American community has played in the shaping of America.

It’s deadline time for Book of the Year Awards at ForeWord magazine. FedEx, UPS, and the USPS struggle up our mountainside of stairs – bump … bump … bump — with their dollies of submissions. They’re grumbling; I’m grumbling too.

It’s not that I’m doing a lot of heavy lifting, or that the submissions are inferior. It’s the packaging.

One glance at the wrapping and it’s a dead giveaway who’s the professional and who’s the amateur.

Now, I’m not a snob. I give everything a close look – it’s getting close enough to look that’s the problem.

The professionals have got it down: padded envelope with book and press release. Pull the string and it’s open. The envelope can be recycled. I figure it’s the Golden Rule at work here. The professionals no doubt receive their fair share of manuscript mail and they know what a struggle it is to cut through the tape, the bubble wrap, more tape, the cling film, more tape, Styrofoam jacket, more tape. It makes you crazy. It makes you mad. Is that the first impression you, as a publisher or a writer want to make? Of course not.

So, here’s the thing: If you’re sending books to a distributor, they need to arrive in pristine condition. Go ahead. Bubble wrap them to death.

However, if you’re sending books for review or a contest, dinged corners matter not. It’s not as bad as luggage at the airlines, but it’s not a china shop around here either. We’re not selling books, we’re reviewing.

First of all, no tape. I hate tape. Why do so many people think they’ve got to seal the seal with tape? I’ve got one package around here that is completely enclosed in tape. You could eat off it. Have I opened it? Nope.

Also, I dread anything sent in bubble wrap. I can't get the knife to go through that stuff at all, plus it clings to the book in an unreasonable manner. And then, there's the damned tape!

Speaking of which, choose an envelope that gives your book a bit of room to maneuver. If you have to shove the thing into the wrapping, then I'll have to coax it out. I want a book that leaps into my hands.

No Styrofoam padding. Styrofoam is evil.

No Styrofoam chips. They are the devil’s spawn. (I got a book a while ago from a publisher of spiritual books. The thing was suspended in endless and eternal amounts of Styrofoam chips. What a mixed message.)

Also, if you're sending a book for review or a contest, forget the press kit. Press kits are for newspapers that may be interested in writing a feature without having to do research or make a phone call. At ForeWord, we review books, and the books will speak for themselves.

Forget the bookmarks, stickers, magnets, and pens as well.

But don't forget the one page press release packaged with your book. Got to have that for our filing. (This isn’t necessary for contests, but not a bad idea anyway.)

Oh, and one more thing: No Tape.

Barefoot Books,  NorthSouth Books, and Green Tiger Press are all offering beautiful and well written picture books for children of all ages.

 

The selections from Barefoot Books are for older children, and are great for both reading out loud and reading silently in bed, or on a windowseat, or under a tree. The first one, Indian Tales by Shenaaz Nanji, showcases stories from the Punjab, Utter Pradesh, Rajasthan – each one different. All of the stories are introduced with an explanation of the origin of the tale, and a succinct and interesting overview of the region. Christopher Corr’s illustrations capture the colors of the world’s largest democracy. (978-1-84686-083-6)

 

Fireside Stories: Tales for a Winter’s Eve is another fabulous anthology, this time of winter stories from around the world. Sumptuous illustrations by Helen Cann and elegant writing by Caitlin Matthews make this one a pleasure for readers and listeners.

 

The illustrations in NorthSouth Books’ retelling of Anderson’s Fairy Tales are more restrained, but certainly no less imaginative. Silke Leffler’s choice of what to put on the page will keep the attention of lap-sitters, while the timeless stories unfold. Originally published in Austria, author Friederun Reichenstetter lives outside of Munich and writes briskly, and with poise. (978-0-7358-2141-5)

Ludwig van Beethoven: A Musical Picture Book was also first published in Austria. An amazing story, detailed illustrations, a chronology on the back endpage and a packaged CD of compositions all make this the perfect gift of knowledge and joy. (Written by Lene Mayer-Skumanz, illustrated by Winfried Opgenoorth, 978-0-7358-2123-1)

 

These last two books, from Green Tiger Press, will certainly entertain children, but they’ll also delight adults. Their version of The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse looks just like something my mom used to read me. (In fact, it is. It’s a reprint of the 1947 edition.) The cut-out shape, primary colors, the pink cake, and the cook’s dairy cheeks. The sensational expressions on the faces of the mice! You’ll have so much fun reading it out loud, the kids won’t be able to resist. (Illustrated by Ethel Hays, 978-1-59583-1-927)

 

Another nostalgic Green Tiger volume is their Make It Yourself: Paper & Cardboard Projects for Kids. Old fashioned illustrations and pretty projects are guaranteed to be irresistible to anyone over the age of forty. (Those who can wield a pair of scissors with more grace than a Wii, e.g.) Don’t they get to have fun over the holiday as well? (978-1-59583-188-0)

Cheers!

Once upon a time, I had to drive my son Hart to school every morning – a good 40 minute round trip. We passed the time, and the years, listening to books. All of the Phillip Pullman books got covered, and J.K. Rowling; oh, and we loved Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game series. Many, many times, we’d pop the CD out of the player in the car and bring it inside with us, where we’d listen at the table, drawing (or knitting), as the story continued.

Hart is by far the youngest in our family; I read long books out loud to the other two children before bed. Reading aloud is tiring in comparison with the joy I found in sharing the listening experience with Hart. Also, with the older children, we were confined to that one time of the day, unlike Hart and I who turned on the story even if we were just going to the market ten minutes away.

This year, however, Hart moved up to junior high and takes the bus to school. Alone in the car, what do I read?

Here’s something I just finished, and it’s terrific.

 

The Art Thief
Noah Charney
Read by Simon Vance
Blackstone Audio
Approximately 10 hours on 8 CDs
$55.00 (still shows a higher price -- $11 – for Canada)
978-1-4332-0371-8

The book begins with the professional heist of a Carravagio in Rome. Then, off to Paris where an all-white painting, a “White on White” by Suprematist Kasimir Malevich, disappears from a gallery storeroom. Up in London, the National Gallery of Modern Art buys one of these “White on White” paintings at auction, and nearly the same moment that it’s delivered, the work is stolen. (There is, by the way, a Malevich at MoMA called "White Square on a White Background.")

Anyway, while it appears that there may be a connection between the thefts since they all happened at nearly the same time, it’s a rather peculiar, even indigestible combination of styles. Who would want both a Carravagio and a Malevich?

Who indeed? And that’s where this book is so fascinating, for it answers all sorts of questions about who buys art, who sells it, who steals it, and why. There are also art history lessons thrown in, and amazing details concerning the techniques of forgery, smuggling, conservation, authentication, etc.

And the characters: two fat Frenchman who roly-poly from appetizer to clue to dessert; dry and baffled Inspector Harry Wickenden, who has no interest in art, only in art thieves; Gabriel Coffin who travels around giving conferences on heisting, and has just managed to have his girlfriend – a thief, of course – sprung from prison; two smart and elegant, no nonsense female curators. But perhaps the greatest character is the reader himself.

Simon Vance’s audio interpretation of The Art Thief is light, rich, frothy, bubbling, humorous, nimble, and totally entertaining.

Yesterday, when I was thinking about writing this blog, I looked up the author online. To my astonishment, Publishers Weekly hated the book, saying it was “a story so bogged down with minutiae that even the most dedicated reader will get stuck.” I beg to disagree. I enjoyed every minute of the caper. The characters are unforgettable – I’d love to have dinner with any one of them. The dialogue is full of humor, the plot spins around deliciously, and the details of the business of art fascinate. Add to that the masterful performance of Simon Vance, and this book is pure delight.

Noah Charney holds degrees in art history from Courtauld and Cambridge. He’s also the founding director of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art, an international think tank on art crime. Check out his page at Amazon.com: he’s compiled a list of must-see paintings in American galleries, and a short article called “The Man Who Stole the Mona Lisa.”

I can’t tell you how many people sent me James Wolcott’s New Republic review of Gail Poole’s Faint Praise: The Plight of Book Reviewing in America (University of Missouri). From Wolcott I went to Orwell, and from Orwell to Heidi Julavits at The Believer. Somewhere in between I read a review of John Updike’s book of essays, Picked Up Pieces, by Anatole Broyard, and the September Library Journal article by Barbara Hoffert called “Who’s Selecting Now?” Finally, there was Elizabeth Hardwick’s obituary.

Elizabeth Hardwick co-founded the New York Review of Books in 1963 with her husband of the time, poet Robert Lowell. Twenty years later, I discovered the NYRB when a certain pompous boyfriend of my mother subscribed to it. What a revelation! It became the perpetual annual Christmas present and I had it sent to me for years in Mexico. I felt it was all I needed to stay on top of art, politics, ecology, science, history, and, yes, literature. In lieu of books, there was the book review.

At ForeWord, the service we provide is not quite the elimination of the book itself. (Sorry NYRB, but that is, after all, why I love you.) Our readership is librarians and booksellers, and our mission is to entice them to buy books for their collections, great books.

But everybody’s strapped for time. The Library Journal article referenced above was all about librarians contracting their selection process to vendors like Baker & Taylor. Heavens! What does that mean? Who selects the books at Baker & Taylor? What are the criteria? I’d hate to think that someone could pay to have his/her book placed in a library, that money could buy position…

On the other hand, I understand the librarian’s dilemma. So many books, so little time. What with blogging and analysis and stacking and managing, who’s got time to select books? Who’s got time to read?

We do. That’s what we do. Often, particularly in the afternoons, everyone in this office is reading a book, printed on paper, with ink.

All right, so we read. Lots of people read. What makes us special?

What can I say? Heidi Julavits, editor of The Believer, says in her article “REJOICE! BELIEVE! BE STRONG AND READ HARD,” “If I were to write an essay about reviewing, it would make sense to admit that I have biases; I have opinions; I have some assertions to make about the current state of affairs.”

I admit that I have plenty of biases and opinions and assertions. So do Whitney and Alex and Maryann and Gene and each and every one of our reviewers. But what we also have is a selection process that takes into consideration popular interests, national and international concerns, trends and breakthroughs in science and medicine, new ideas in history, and new voices in prose and poetry. All that plus our own personal biases, opinions, and assertions.

Let’s look at the selection process here at ForeWord. And, I might add, that one of Gail Poole’s principle recommendations for improvement of the book review’s reputation in the world is: "First, and most essentially, I think we need to devise better means of choosing books for review."

How do we select? First of all, I open the mail. I know, it’s kind of crazy, and maybe there are better ways of employing an editor’s time, and maybe I’ll find those ways… But for now, I prefer opening the mail to receiving a pile of unsorted stuff on my floor. Like laundry, it gets cold and wrinkled. So, I open, and sort, and yes, it’s a little like Christmas: most of it you could live without, quite a bit is completely unnecessary, once in a while you get great jewelry. (FYI, the mail consists of books both solicited and unsolicited. And the sorting consists primarily of publication date separation.)

George Orwell says, inimitably: “The reviewer, jaded though he may be, is professionally interested in books, and out of the thousands that appear annually, there are probably fifty or a hundred that he would enjoy writing about. If he is a top-notcher in his profession he may get hold of ten or twenty of them: more probably he gets hold of two or three. The rest of his work, however conscientious he may be in praising or damning, is in essence humbug.” (“Confessions of a Book Reviewer”)

After the initial sort, the piles go to the various offices for close review. Close review means reading. Of course, no one here reads the whole book unless they’re going to write the review as well, but enough gets read to judge whether or not the book is worthy of sending it off to a reviewer.

Orwell says, “…indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash—though it does involve that, as I will show in a moment—but constantly INVENTING reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feelings whatever.”

Worthy is the key word at this step. And that’s where the third pair of eyes comes in. The reviewer, who has expertise in the subject, decides, ultimately if the book is good enough, great enough for a review.

“Nearly every book is capable of arousing passionate feeling, if it is only a passionate dislike, in some or other reader, whose ideas about it would surely be worth more than those of a bored professional. But, unfortunately, as every editor knows, that kind of thing is very difficult to organise.”

Ah, but we do organize it. And that’s what we offer our librarian and bookseller readers:
A book selection process by people who are excited about ideas and stories.
Worthy submissions sent to reviewers with expertise.
Great books chosen and evaluated by people who love to read.

I don’t know about you, but I give away books for the holidays. Here are three that deserve some gift-wrapping.

DUST STORM

A Grave in Gaza by Matt Beynon Rees (Soho Press, 352 pages, hardcover $24.00, 978-1-56947-472-3)

Omar Yussef, principal of a school in Bethlehem, hasn’t been to Gaza since he “had nice curly hair and…could carry an overnight case without breaking into a sweat.” He arrives with a Swede, Magnus Wallender, and meets a Scot, James Cree at the border. Both of them work for the UN While Yussef’s visit is to inspect UN schools, it takes all of five pages to sidetrack him into a rescue mission. The very dangerous rescue mission of a teacher taken into custody after discovering the sale of university degrees to the members of one of the two dueling security (is that the word?) agencies. The next day, it starts to blow, and the murkiness of Gazan politics gets down and dirty as well.

This is the second in Rees’ series, and the writing is superb. As is the pacing. And as improbable as Yussef’s passion is to get to the bottom of things—to go where even angels, gangsters, and corruption fear to tread—he’s a character with humor, strength, and depth. I read this one on the way to New York and back and found, at the end, that I’d formed a great attachment to the brave, portly do-gooder. This is a series I’ll keep up with.

“DON’T BLOW BUBBLES OF DESPAIR.”

This book sits face up on a shelf in my office. Always a step ahead, New Directions published this new edition of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Poetry as Insurgent Art as a hardcover, without a dust jacket. Smart. And fun. Hence the title. This book is full of wonders, wits, and wisdoms, like:

Poetry the shortest distance between two humans.

Great poets are the antennae of the race, with more than rabbit ears.

Oh my, and this:

Be a dark barker before the tents of existence.

Great for the purse, car, bathroom, or hanging by its ear from the Xmas tree. (978-0-8112-1719-4)

ALL THE REST IS NOISE

In Praise of Flattery by Willis Goth Regier (University of Nebraska, 23 illustrations, 232 pages, Softcover $21.95, 978-0-8032-3969-2)

This one’s been sitting in a pile for months. I just couldn’t get to it, and I couldn’t let it go either. Good thing, as I finally cracked it open a couple of days ago and spent a couple of hours laughing. I’m a sucker for this kind of stuff. Yes, in a way, it’s much like Ferlinghetti’s book above, but better, because there are notes and illustrations and quotations from Tacitus and La Rochefoucauld and Saint Simon and anon, etcetera. To La Fontaine, “Flatterers thrive on fool’s credulity.” Samuel Johnson said Dryden was the paragon of “meanness and servility of hyperbolic adulation.” Shakespeare called it “the monarch’s plague.” But instead of just throwing out aphorisms, Regier has numbered RULES. One hundred twenty-eight of them. Here’s one:

RULE 2: Praise must please.

If it does not please, it’s noise....

And another:

RULE 5: To stand out, flattery must fit in.

When flattery is misplaced it is fatal to a flatterer. A flatterer must be able to work a crowd or flatter a target in the midst of one. The audience needs to be taken into account, not just the persons flattered, and not only the present audience but possible future ones. “Holbien, according to legend, so flattered Anne of Cleves that Hery VIII married her on the strength of the likeness, with the result that as soon as the King saw the original the painter had to fly the country.” [Bowen]

Or,

RULE 13: Flattery is a science. [Colton]

Flattery needs to be carefully calibrated. It improves with education, it advances through close observation of cause and effect, and it is based on repeated experience. Among fine-tuned people, flattery requires almost atomic precision.

Last one.

RULE 27: Flattery adapts to all emotions.

Percy Shelley wrote that pity, admiration, and sympathy are “flattering emotions.” There are more. If you doubt yourself you flatter your intelligence. If you blame yourself you flatter your conscience. Love flatters lovers, fear flatters bullies. Apologies flatter. Twilights flatter. Flowers flatter. Oils and alcohol flatter. Words flatter better than anything else, except, on occasion, rapt silence (Rule 66)….

RULE 66: Silence flatters.

“Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise,” says the Proverb (17:28)….

See now, wasn’t that too much fun.