I said it last year, but I’m going to say it again, kittles—April is Autism Awareness Month, and I’ve been steadily increasing our coverage of conditions on the autistic spectrum since 2002. I couldn’t have done it, of course, without one Corey Seeman, an LJ star reviewer if there ever was one. The father of an autistic child, he signed on to tackle autism for LJ five years ago when there wasn’t a lot being published. That all changed when autism made the cover of Time magazine in May 2002—soon, the New York houses were treading the traditional turf of Woodbine House, Guilford Press, and Jessica Kingsley.

To keep up with the resulting boost, I sent poor Corey a book a month, and he kept his head above water, dutifully reviewing the likes of groundbreakers like Judy Karasik and Paul Karasik’s The Ride Together (Washington Square), Carolyn Thorwarth Bruey’s Demystifying Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Guide to Diagnosis for Parents and Professionals (Woodbine), and Charlotte Moore’s George & Sam: Two Boys, One Family, and Autism (St. Martin’s).

Thank you, Corey, for your valuable contributions, including what I’m pretty sure is the first analysis of relevant literature, “Sending Postcards from the Airport,” a 2003 entry in our collection development series, and its sequel, “More Postcards from the Airport: Playing Catch-Up with Autistic Spectrum Disorders.” Thank you, too, Lisa Jordan and Elizabeth Safford for bringing up the back and helping expand LJ’s scope. 

Did you know that Kathleen Norris, author of The Cloister Walk and other spiritual memoirs, once reviewed for Library Journal? Or that our primary reviewer of Westerns was a nun, the rootin’ tootin’ Sister Avila Lamb (”no sex or cussin’; violence okay”). Our reviewers are a talented bunch of active and retired librarians, college professors, and freelance writers. And many of them write books as well. The latest to be published is Seattle Public Library’s own  Jeff Ayers, whose Voyages of the Imagination: The Star Trek Fiction Companion was released last November by Pocket Books .

 

There is a nice interview with Jeff in the Seattle Times. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. In the meantime, I’m keeping Jeff busy reviewing the latest thrillers, another passion of Jeff’s.

Hello everyone!

Here are the titles reviewed in this week’s web-only, freely-accessible Xpress Reviews section. You’re excited, I’m excited, let’s get on with it, shall we?

Xpress Reviews for Week of Apr. 10th, 2007

FICTION
Dickey, Eric Jerome. Sleeping with Strangers. Dutton.

Smith, Alexander McCall. The Good Husband of Zebra Drive. Pantheon.

NONFICTION
American Food Writing: An Anthology with Classic Recipes. Library of America, dist. by Penguin Group (USA).

Glassman, Keri with Sarah Mahoney. The Snack Factor Diet: The Secret to Losing Weight by Eating More. Crown.

Myers, Mitch. The Boy Who Cried Freebird: Rock & Roll Fables and Sonic Storytelling. HarperEntertainment: HarperCollins.

Waldburger, Jennifer & Jill Spivack. The Sleepeasy Solution: The Exhausted Parent’s Guide to Getting Your Child To Sleep—from Birth to Age Five. Health Communications.

GRAPHIC NOVELS
Katsura, Masakazu. I”s. Vol. 12: Room 305. Viz Media.

Kikuta, Michiyo. Mamotte! Lollipop. Vol. 1. Del Rey: Ballantine.

Kirkman, Robert (text) & Tony Moore & others (illus.). Brit. Vol. 1: Old Soldier. Image Comics.

Minekura, Kazuya. Wild Adapter. Vol. 1. Tokyopop.

Porcellino, John. King-Cat Classix: The Best of King-Cat Comics and Stories. Drawn & Quarterly.

Sakuragi, Yukiya. Inubaka: Crazy for Dogs. Vol. 2. Viz Media.

Takahashi, Yashichiro (text) & Sasakura, Ayato (illus.). Shakugan No Shana. Vol. 1. Viz Media.

AUDIO
Child, Lincoln. Deep Storm. Books on Tape.

Orman, Suze. Women & Money: Owning the Power To Control Your Destiny. Books on Tape

No, I’m not talking about audio CD or DVD versions of J.K. Rowling’s best-selling sorcerer tales—I’m talking about two Boston brothers who so love the Harry Potter series that they formed a band in honor of it, that is, Harry and the Potters. Their MySpace mantra: “We play songs about books!” Speaking of tunes, titles include “Save Ginny Weasley” and “The Yule Ball” (both from the band’s debut, Harry and the Potters).

Music and book lovers, you might’ve found your perfect match. And libraries looking to incorporate live music into their outreach programs, take note because these boys actually tour, and word on the street is that they’re good, for muggles anyway.

In other Potter news, the contract that Scholastic required librarians to sign if they were ordering Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows through Baker & Taylor is sparking more headlines. The AP wrote a story on it last week, though surprisingly, it didn’t address the fact that the fax number suffered, er, complications, which made for a lot of peeved librarians (see my blog Have Harry on Order from B&T? Sign the Contract!).

April 22 is Earth Day. Appropriately enough the Santa Monica Public Library and the City of Santa Monica’s Environmental Programs Division is sponsoring a new literary award that aims to ”commend authors, illustrators, and publishers who produce quality books for adults and young people that make significant contributions to, support the ideas of, and broaden public awareness of sustainability”. The Green Prize for Sustainable Literature will be awarded in September 2007 in the categories of adult fiction, adult nonfiction, youth fiction and  youth nonfiction.

Books published in the United States during the 2006 calendar year are eligible for the prize but publishers must hurry to submit their candidates as the deadline is April 30! And this means you, Abrams publicists! One book that sprang immediately to mind as an excellent candidate in the nonfiction adult category is Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21 Century (Abrams, 2006).

 

Edited by environmentalist  Alex Stephens of the popular blog worldchanging.com, ”this beautifully designed volume (which comes with its own slipcover)”, as LJ reviewer editor Irwin Weintraub raved in a LJ Xpress review last December, “collects ideas and workable solutions from more than 60 contributors that demonstrate the human potential to create a better future and a sustainable planet.” 

While this volume meets the the prize’s basic sustainability criteria (future and long-term oriented, awareness of ecological and resource limitations, regional and global in scope,etc.), the sponsors of this award  strangely forgot to include sustainable requirements for the nominees’ physical production, such as  requesting that a certain percentage of the submitted title  be printed on recycled paper or on paper that comes from environmentally managed forests (see “Harry Potter Goes Green”). Fortunately, Worldchanging is ahead of the game, having been printed on environmentally friendly  New Leaf Paper. And the publisher went one step further by purchasing wind power credits equivalent to the amount of electricity used to produce the book.

Books don’t have feathers; books are not birds, but I’m going to apply the old saying about sticking together anyways because it’s Thursday, and my multitasking brain is leaking out of my ears. But to the point, dear readers: I’ve come across two forthcoming titles that are made for each other, possibly for the same audience

They are Christopher Hitchens’s God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (May, Twelve: Warner; see LJ 4/15/07), which—and I’m slipping into Sneak Peak mode here—our reviewer C. Brian Smith dubbed “provocative, challenging, and passionate,” and Parenting Beyond Belief: On Raising Ethical, Caring Kids Without Religion (April, AMACOM).

I’m going to try to make this a regular blog series. Call it off-the-cuff reader’s advisory. Do add any further like reads.

• 8:15-9:00           Registration and Buffet Breakfast
• 9:15-10:15         The most banned children’s book of the year: Authors Peter Parnell (playwright, author of QED; screenwriter/producer for West Wing and The Guardian) and Justin Richardson, MD [co-author of Everything You Never Wanted Your Kids to Know about Sex (But Were Afraid They’d Ask)], their editor, David Gale (S. & S.), and  librarian Pat Scales discuss the creation of And Tango Makes Three and the reaction to it. 
• 10:15-11:30       Editor’s hot picks: Top editors from adult trade houses reveal what fiction and nonfiction you should be buying for the fall and what the latest trends to watch are.
• 11:30-11:40       Break
• 11:40-12:15       LJ Talks to:  A conversation with a long-time editor/publisher.
• 12:15-1:15        Lunch
• 1:15-2:30        YA crossover: Many books speak to both adults and young people, but how do the editors and authors make the decision to pitch them to one audience or the other—or both. (TK).
• 2:30-2:40         Break
• 2:40-3:55        Romance: An editor, author, reviewer, and librarian discuss the latest trends in the most popular genre, including erotica, ebooks and e-marketing, and more.  Panelists include Eloisa James, whose latest book, due in June from Avon is Desperate Duchesses, and Kris Ramsdell, LJ’s romance columnist.   
• 3:55-4:00       Wrap up.
• 4:00-5:00       Cocktails

Although I am a slave to my gray tuxedo cat (see Mr. Felix below), I usually despise cat mysteries or any other kind of fiction involving felines, canines, or any other creature, great or small (with the exception of the classic and very rabbity Watership Down).

 

But as a former senior scribe of my high school’s Latin Club (also known as the Junior Classical League), I couldn’t resist when British mystery book blog, Euro Crime, posted a story (”All Hail Spartapuss!) about a new children’s series set in an ancient Rome ruled by cats.

  

The publisher Mogzilla say the books are ”based partly on historical events as recorded by the great classical writers Tacitus and Suetonius”. The first book, I am Spartapuss, tells the story of a slave from the Land of the Kitons who becomes a Roman gladiator (or is that cat-iator?). This is followed by Catigula and Die Clawdius. If only I had these in Latin class!

In other feline news, the New York Times reports today that Grand Central Publishing  (the former Warner Books) is paying $1.25 million for the rights to publish the life story of Dewey, a rescued cat who lived for 19 years in the public library in Spencer, Iowa. Wow! That would buy a lot of cat food and kitty litter.

Dewey’s biographer is librarian Vicki Myron who will co-write Dewey, a Small Town, a Library and the World’s Most Beloved Cat with Bret Witter, a former editorial director at Health Communications, the publisher of the “Chicken Soup for the Soulâ€? books.

And in a related NYT story, “Home Cooking for  Pets is Suddenly Not So Odd“, pet owners are starting to prepare home cooked meals for Fido and Fluffy in light of the recent Menu Foods tainted food crisis. As a result, sales of pet cookbooks like Real Food For Dogs and Home-Prepared Dog and Cat Diet are rising. If you have these and other pet culinary titles in your collection, you might do a special display for your  pet-loving patrons. 

 

This morning a fellow editor left  a copy of Stephen King’s April 6 Entertainment Weekly column in my chair. HIs latest The Pop of King editorial, “How to Bury a Book” raved about Mischa Berlinksi’s debut novel, Fieldwork and chastised publisher Farrar Straus & Giroux for failing to  better market the book. “Under the drab title and the drab cover, there’s a story that cooks like a mother,” he writes.

 

 A few months ago in an another EW column, “The Secret Gardiner”, King sang the praises of Meg Gardiner, an American thriller writer living and published in Britain.  Lo and behold, shortly after the column appeared, Dutton acquired the U.S. rights to publish her five novels plus two new ones.

Not surprisingly there will probably be increased demand for Fieldwork. A quick check of the New York Public Library’s Leo catalog shows 18 holds for the system’s 11 copies. I would be curious to hear from other libraries about patron response to King’s editorial. Still, I feel a little resentment at how the opinion of one person can sway millions of reading decisions, especially since a few months ago a librarian blogger complained that books that received positive LJ reviews didn’t circulate in his library (Best Books=Best Circulating?).

Hiya,

Here are the titles reviewed in our web-only, freely-accessible Xpress Reviews section. Don’t forget to add Xpress Reviews to your RSS reader!

Xpress Reviews for Week of Apr. 3rd, 2007

FICTION
Baldacci, David. Simple Genius. Warner.

Connelly, Michael. The Overlook. Little, Brown.

Harris, Charlaine. All Together Dead. Ace: Berkley, dist. by Penguin Group (USA).

Mostert, Natasha. Season of the Witch. Dutton.

Milton, Giles. Edward Trencom’s Nose: A Novel of History, Dark Intrigue, and Cheese. Thomas Dunne Bks: St. Martin’s.

White, Kate. Lethally Blond. Warner.

NONFICTION
Good Birders Don’t Wear White: 50 Tips from North America’s Top Birders. Houghton.

Hine, Robert V. & John Mack Faragher. Frontiers: A Short History of the American West. Yale Univ.

Katzenstein, Larry. Living with Heart Disease: Everything You Need To Know To Safeguard Your Health and Take Control of Your Life. AARP: Sterling.

Kingsolver, Barbara with Steven L. Hopp & Camille Kingsolver. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. HarperCollins.

Parenting Beyond Belief: On Raising Ethical, Caring Kids Without Religion. AMACOM: American Management Assn.

Rinzler, J.W. The Making of Star Wars: The Definitive Story Behind the Original Film. Del Rey.

Witt, Carolinda. The 10-Minute Rejuvenation Plan: T5T; The Revolutionary Exercise Program That Restores Your Body and Mind. Three Rivers: Crown.

GRAPHIC NOVELS
Ando, Natsumi & Miyuki Kobayashi. Kitchen Princess. Vol. 1. Del Rey: Ballantine.

Carey, Mike (text) & Glenn Fabry (illus.). Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. Vertigo: DC Comics.

Chiba, Tomohiro & others (text) & Tokita, Kouichi (illus.). Mobile Suit Gundam SEED X ASTRAY. Vol. 2. Tokyopop.

Ma, Wing Shing. Chinese Hero: Tales of the Blood Sword. Vol. 1. DrMaster.

Remender, Rick & Kieron Dwyer (text) & Paul Harmon (illus.). Sea of Red. Vol. 3: The Deadlights. Image Comics.

Shaw, Dash. The Mother’s Mouth. Alternative Comics.

Takada, Rie. Punch! Vol. 3. Viz Media.

Tanemura, Arina. The Gentlemen’s Alliance †. Vol. 1. Viz Media.