Book Buds Kidlit Reviews

Happy Blogiversary, Book Buds!

Many times over the past three years I've looked at my stats and cringed. Poor Book Buds, stuck in single digits for months after its birth. Then the slow creep upwards. Twelve page views a day. Thirty-five. Then a hundred. Yes!

And then ... nothing. A baby. A cross-country move. A death in the family. One hiatus after another after still another. I'd claw and scratch my way back from oblivion, just to see it nosedive as real life butted in. My hard work would evaporate in lost subscribers and inattentive fans. Tomorrow will mark this blog's third year, and the third time I've had to ask hard questions about what I wanted from it and why.

While Book Buds would languish during those intermissions, I'd watch other kids crash this party and steal the cute readers I'd been chatting up feverishly. But most never knew I existed. The green-eyed monster set up residence under my keyboard.

But I had only myself to blame. After all, I'd walked away from Inland Empress, which had a high of 500 hits a day when many future Mommy bloggers weren't Mommies yet, let alone bloggers. Where would that blog be today, if I'd kept at it? I don't let myself go there.

Focus, I tell myself, even now. I wanted a blog that fed my career, not my ego. Reviews only. No Q&As, no news, no personal meanderings. I sometimes stray from that path (this essay is proof) but my footing is still solid.

Each time I came back, it was with renewed purpose and vigor. That's easier when you can be single-minded and not scattershot, lemme tell ya.

The Kidlit Blogging Conference, Part 2

My presentation on advanced reviewing

(Cont'd from yesterday)

There was no getting around the fact that my 12-page handout (yes, it grew to 12, I don't know how) would not fit neatly into a 50-minute presentation. I had prepared for a 90-minute workshop.

I raced through the material and there were many salient points that I had to skim or drop altogether. In the future, I think I will insist on a workshop-length seminar for properly teaching this difficult and touchy subject.

Yes, this is me, courtesy of Mark Blevis.

People were slow to get started, perhaps lulled by the easygoing nature of the other presentations. Mine was pretty high key, and I think many were startled at the size of the handout and the announcement that there would an editing exercise.

More after the jump ...

The Kidlit Blogging Conference, Part I

Before I write up a kidlit blogging conference I attended over the weekend, here's a photo of the whole criminal bunch:

I'm in the front, second from the right with my feet sticking out.

Notice the ratio of men to women. This is why the men are smiling. Or not. I can't really tell.

Author extraordinaire Robin Brande and several of her friends brought us all together and set up speakers, a schedule and a dinner to discuss where children's and YA book blogging is headed. I'm not going to attempt to cover everything, just a few tidbits that leaped out at me.

It was a dizzying day, to be sure. Some of my recollections and notes will be posted here and some at Cybils (link to come later, when I've posted there). Some of the presentations were very freeform -- come with questions, jump in anytime -- true to the nature of the blogosphere.

Being something of an introvert, those weren't my favorite sessions, but I didn't shrink from them either. Others seemed fine with it, but I heard grumbling in a few quarters that there was no coverage of the basics: this is a blog, here's how to get started, this is what kidlitosphere means, etc.

A somewhat troubling rift opened right away between authors and reviewers, with each group sitting on opposites sides of the room (tables were arranged in a huge rectangle so everyone faced inwards). Through mingling over lunch and dinner, some of these rifts vanished, but there will always be tension between those who send their baby off to be reviewed and those whose job is to point out baby's bad manners and odd looks.

Some highlights:

Ahem. Is this mic on? Uh, hello, folks, I'm Anne ...

I'm giving my very first presentation at a conference tomorrow. Yipes! I'm so nervous.

I'm going to try and wean all my favorite kidlit bloggers -- plus a bunch of people I never met, even virtually -- from thinking that reviewing is all about their opinions. Or about authors and books.

No, it's about what literary big shot Steve Wasserman called "a cultural conversation of critical importance."

That's big stuff. Am I up to it? Is a 7-page handout sufficient? Is going over the material 5,000 times enough? Is 50 minutes too much time or not enough?

These are the things you sweat about when you're an introvert. I've eaten myself into a new dress size today fretting about these things. Since my presentation comes at 2 p.m. tomorrow, I'll probably spend the whole morning stuffing myself out of abject misery and fear and downing more free coffee than is good for me. And I don't even like coffee.

Of course, all these people are ridiculously nice or they'd be blogging about politics or law or other not-nice topics. So I have nothing to fear, right? Except that I'm preparing to tell them that the fun can't go on forever. That to write at a professional level means understanding that reviewing is a genre, with its own tropes and quirks and readers' implicit expectations.

Function follows form in reviewing, and I'm going to be teaching them those forms. And they're not going to like it. Not one bit. It's anathema even to nice bloggers to be told there are forms to follow, and they make sense, and the wheel doesn't need reinventing.

I should make myself pretty unpopular. Sigh. And who am I to upset the order of the blogosphere? Humble, mild-mannered Book Buds?

So, I'm in quite the state today. Terrified. Depressed. And oddly energized -- I must be anticipating the free coffee.

I let you know how it goes. More on Monday.