linkage!

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

First, the December Notes From The Horn Book issue, including "Five Questions for MWT."

And,  "Our New Year's Resolutions" from Under the Greenwillow.  Be sure to scroll down to the first comment.

Comments

[drashizu.livejournal.com]

"Maps. Your books don't have 'em. Why not?"

Total agreement. We need mapage.

[drashizu.livejournal.com]

Also, she mentioned she doesn't want the map to look Tolkein-esque. I agree, but one thing that I think would look different from that, and actually represent the flavor of the books better than a mountains-and-rivers map, is the kind of political and terrain map that, say, Eddis's or Attolia's military would find serviceable during a war. (The difference being that mountains are represented by shading or elevation lines rather than those upside-down carrot things, which makes a world of difference.) In order for it to be readable, it might have to be in color, but I think Greenwillow would owe MWT that, if she wanted it, at least.

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

I think this is a great idea! Ahem, Megan?

[hazelwillow.livejournal.com]

I think this is a great idea, too. I think it's definitely possible to make a map that doesn't look like a Tolkienesque fantasy map. Just make it... not Medieval looking? It could be like a real map, not a map that's half a picture.

*wants a map rather badly indeed.*

[lizzyazula.livejournal.com]

Greenwillow folks certainly have a sense of humor, don't they? I would never have expected a publishing company's blog to be so funny. Admittedly, when I think of publishers, I think of a bunch of people stuck in cubicles with no sense of humor. Luckily, I was wrong.

[creative-lefty2.livejournal.com]

Some of the craziest people I know are (future) publishers. The rest of the the crazy people I know are geologists.

[lizzyazula.livejournal.com]

I don't really know how I got that impression...I blame the movie The Proposal. The main character was an editor, and the office was filled with little cubicles.

[creative-lefty2.livejournal.com]

I can understand how it might come across as a boring job. Most people think that it is just editing, which a lot of people think is just correcting spelling. In truth, it's a lot more than that.

[hazelwillow.livejournal.com]

Haha! One of my profs is a publisher with a small Montreal press. I went to his office to drop off a project and it was really neat. First of all you have to find their plain, unmarked door, which looks like just another cute apartment in a street of Montreal row-houses, and then after fighting my way there through a blizzard it was like entering a hobbit hole. You go down a few steps and you are SURROUNDED by books. Books are piled high, literally, and you walk between them at your peril. In this middle of all this cluttered coziness was a tiny stove with a frying pan on it, waiting for the publishers to make lunch, I suppose.

It was quite quirky! And I was surprised to learn that publishers are really interesting people, actually. :P

[spellcoats.livejournal.com]

...the letters from ESL teachers who say that their kids have to work twice as hard to get through text, but they love the book.

As a TESL major that makes me so unbelievably happy I don't even. Hilariously, I was rereading QoA once when I got into a discussion with my academic advisor about a study one graduate student did about whether teen literature is less semantically complex, and therefore easier to comprehend, than adult literature. The result: it isn't.

[aged-crone.livejournal.com]

I don't think the books need maps.

However, if Megan does put in a map, she should put in a map as drawn by Eugenides. Full of misdirection and slipperiness and misrepresentation and lies.

*That* would drive the Mappies nuts! ; )

[amolegere.livejournal.com]

Lol! Now that would just be mean! (speaking as a rabid "Mappie") :P