Fine art Isn't Like shooting fish in a barrel: An interview with critics Roger Sutton and Ilene Cooper, Part One

I interviewed Roger Sutton, editor of The Horn Volume Mag, and Ilene Cooper, senior book review editor of Booklist mag, to ask them how they select the books they are going to review, and what trends they are noticing in the field.

Eli zabeth Law: Tell us a little bit nigh yourselves, and who you the audition is for your reviews.

Ilene Cooper

Ilene Cooper

Ilene Cooper: I've been an editor atBooklistmag for 30 years, and I've seen quite the development in our readership.  Our mag started out for librarians, but now we have a full general audition, esp for Booklist Online.

Roger Sutton

Roger Sutton

Roger Sutton: I've been a total fourth dimension volume  reviewer since 1988, andHorn Bookeditor in chief since '96.  The core of our audience, say 70%, are librarians.  The other 30% is made up of publishers, authors, teachers, and parents.  (And the occasional kid, like you lot were, Miss Police force.)

Elizabeth: That's correct, when I was 12, I subscribed to The Horn Book.

Ilene: Oh, god, shoot me now.

Roger: The very, very, very occasional kid.

Elizabeth: I feel like there'southward the occasional Millicent Minn, the nerdy child out in that location in glasses who subscribes to Horn Book.

Ilene: You know who else did? Michael Cart! I believe he wanted to exist a children's literature expert when he was 12.

Roger: Ilene, did you know you were going to go into children'south books for a long time before you did?

Ilene: No, I idea I was going to be Barbara Walters.  My degree was in journalism, but it turned out I didn't like to ask anybody questions.

Elizabeth: Well I have a question for both of you. Now that everyone on the internet has a microphone to post their reviews, with Goodreads, Amazon.com etc, has that changed what yous do at all?  Why are you lot professional reviewers even nonetheless in business organization?

Ilene: I would say that with then many people giving their opinions out there, information technology's fifty-fifty more than important to have a consistent phonation.  And that's where review journals and Booklist come in.  People read books and dear their books and want to talk virtually what they're reading, and that's great.  Merely they don't see the whole world of books the way we do.

Roger: Exactly.

Ilene: It'southward much easier for us to put a book in context, where it is on the spectrum of children'due south literature.

At Booklist, part of the early fall children's and YA galleys and books to be reviewed—more shelves around the corner and across the room.

At Booklist, role of the early fall children's and YA galleys and books to be reviewed—more shelves around the corner and across the room.

Elizabeth: What do you mean, putting the book in context?

Roger: We take, equally volume review editors we've seen all the children'south books published in the concluding quarter century first hand.  So when something comes in, it's not coming into a vacuum, information technology'south coming into this mind's library of something else that has already been there. It gives you a context for what yous encounter, yous don't get over excited, but at the aforementioned time yous don't want to get over jaded because every new book is new book to the person who'due south reading your review.

Ilene: And it allows you some way to be more surprised or enchanted past a book. Because when you lot've seen so many and something comes into your hands that'southward really special, you get re-excited and re-energized.

Roger: Do you wonder if our standards are too high considering nosotros've seen then much?

Ilene:  No, I wonder if our standards are besides low!

Elizabeth: Roger, that makes me think of Eragon.  I enjoyed reading it, I thought there was a ton of activity and adventure, but it seemed similar the same stuff that was already out there—zippo in information technology was new.  Just to the kids who plant it, many of whom read it as their kickoff fantasy, they LOVED it.   It that a little bit of what we're talking about?

Roger: I think that really speaks to the departure between Booklist and Horn Book.  I know that Booklist's mandate for what they're going to review is "if a book has a dwelling house in a library, we'll review information technology."  Isn't that correct?

The Horn Book Guilde

The Horn Book Guilde

Ilene: Yes.  Nosotros want to exist function of the give-and-take about a whole range of books, especially ones that are going to exist all-time sellers.

Roger:  Where every bit we're way pickier, we're smaller.Horn Book reviews effectually 600 books a year, Horn Book Guide reviews about five,000.

Ilene:  We review about 2500.  Booklinks, which connects books with the classroom, gives another venue.

Elizabeth: Roger, why is at that place so much more caché to getting reviewed in the Horn Volume Mag than in the Guide?

Roger: The Horn Volume Guide reviews all new trade hardcover books published—the expert, the bad, and the ugly.The Horn Volume Magazine reviews are more than selective, more detailed, more than enthusiastic, buzzier. Only the Guide reviews, because they show up in a lot of databases etc., probably have more circulation.

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Elizabeth: Authors and editors want you guys to review our books.  How exercise you lot select what yous're going to put in the mag?

Ilene:  We take a little section of "high demand" books that would exist like the next John Light-green, the next Veronica Roth.  Then our in-house reviewers take a look at the truck and option what they want to review, so I send other titles to our outside reviewers.  So there'south usually a reason why others don't go out as quickly.

Roger:  Our magazine editors make preliminary selections.  With Veronica Roth, someone read that first volume, laughed at it, and it but didn't get reviewed.  You don't have that luxury, Ilene, selecting just the best books to review is not function of your mission, which is to give librarians information nigh books their patrons are going to ask for.

Ilene: Yes, and we also attain a much larger audience at present with our online presence.

Elizabeth: Do yous always run across a volume getting stars from everybody and think "Oh, we missed this, we missed that this book would exist such a blast?"

Ilene: Oh, all the time.

Elizabeth: And do you get to get dorsum and re-review?

Ilene: Not actually.  Over the course of time you might rethink, merely not very often.  Nosotros stand by our opinions.

Roger: Right, sometimes you remember "people are crazy."

Elizabeth: Roger, I'm going to gauge that you lot don't 2d guess yourself, or change your mind most a review.

Roger:  Oh sure I do.  You keep reading, and you lot call up dorsum on something y'all read maybe a year ago and call up "y'all know ,that volume stayed with me, and it was pretty great."

Elizabeth: Roger, didn't you get a call from Simon & Schuster's publicist at the time, Tracy van Straaten,  asking why you didn't review Olivia?

Roger:  No, that was a Scott Westerfield volume.  We soon stopped reviewing Olivia, I got actually fed upwardly with those books. They became repetitive and cocky-conscious. Besides much nudging the reader.

Ilene: I have an embarrassing story about how y'all tin can miss certain things.  I remember when Walk Two Moons won the Newbery, and those were the days when they appear and everybody ran for the phones, and I was sitting in the audience and thought "Walk Two Moons? Walk Ii Moons?"  I called the role and Hazel Rochman answered, and I said "This book Walk 2 Moons won the Newbery, did we review it?"  And she came dorsum and said "Nosotros reviewed it, yous wrote the review!"

 Then with the amount of books yous read you don't always recognize greatness.  The other thing is, because Booklist has been effectually more than 100 years, nosotros actually have the file cabinets with old reviews, because they used to be done on index cards.  And then we have those reviews, like "The Great Gatsby, this is a terrible volume!"

Elizabeth: What are you seeing a lot of these days, and you retrieve " I can't believe how many ____ kind of books are existence published.

  A few of the titles responsible for the Dystopian trend

  A few of the titles responsible for the Dystopian trend

Roger:  Books for the older, high end YA audience. Possibly at that place's a need for them, but I detect how loftier school-y YA has get.  Books about kids that are 16, 17, xviii 19.    YA used to be the province of 7th class girls and at present it'south actually high school and upwards who read them.  And I start to question "Why am I all the same responsible for reviewing these?"

Ilene: For me, it'south dystopian.  I can't believe they're still coming! How many ways can the world stop?"