Okay... I know I'm a loser. I know I think about things too much. But, I honestly could not sleep after reading a comment left by "anonymous" on yesterday's blog. It wasn't that the comment was mean-spirited or angry, but it seemed like I was being misunderstood (I know... that's totally immature and pouty of me), so I wanted to put the comment up here and try to explain myself.
If I ever could pull that off anyway.
Here's what "anonymous" said:
I really feel that I should point out that no actual bookseller would stock your book next to "Hop On Pop". Number one because "Hop On Pop" is a classic, but also because we determine the difference in content by reading the books.
Okay... okay... I thought I was being pretty much over-the-top, but I listed Hop On Pop because it was the only children's book title that I knew from a children's author whose last name began with the same letter as mine. (You know Smith and Suess... seriously, I know I overthink things, but that's because I'm a loser) Secondly, my exaggeration was based on an earlier bit I'd written about how YA is lumped into Children's Lit, in general, in a number of lists (such as in SCBWI), and I think my statement reads as a fairly wiggle-roomy contingency that hinges on the ultra-weasel-esque qualifier of "might." Third... whoa... it's a classic? Honestly, I've never read it. I have seen it, though.
I think.
Don't get mad. I'm not picking on booksellers. The whole point of this blog is me picking on me for being such a loser and for seeing things (like the suppression and dumbing-down of males) that I think are so obvious and nobody thinks are big deals so I must be insane, right?
Yeah.
So... I'll tell you the truth. I have two children: a son and a daughter. When my son was a baby, I read to him every day. Seriously... I'd hold him in my lap when he wasn't even strong enough to sit upright and I read entire novels to him, page by page. I read him Hawthorne, Twain, Melville, Hemingway (he really liked some of In Our Time for some reason), Faulkner, Stevenson, Verne, Crane, Octavio Paz, Ray Bradbury... but I never read him one book that rhymed, ever. I'm pretty sure his mother did, though. He's a hell of a reader, too... but I don't know anything about books for children, so I just pulled the H-O-P reference out of my modern-culturally-deprived ass.
Oh... I did read him The Giving Tree, too... but it doesn't rhyme, and that was my older brother's favorite book and it became mine when he died (he was a kid), so I kind of don't like reading that one.
Not kidding.
The comment goes on (with my own parenthetical responses):
I cannot say where "Ghost Medicine" would sit at Costco,
(it would probably hold up the short and rickety leg of the table where the lady is giving out samples of imitation seafood spread on crackers)
...Wal-Mart
(it would probably hold up the short and rickety leg of the table where the poorly-groomed "activists" are collecting petition signatures to send all homosexuals and undocumented aliens to Iceland)
... or Target, but at our store it will move over to YA after 6 weeks on the new book wall.
(WHOA!!! My book was on the New Book Wall for six weeks???? Anonymous, I LOVE you!!!!)
Really.
