Illustration by Denise Brunkus for 'Read All About It!'
Popular first ladies like Laura Bush tend to get a free pass from newspapers, which generally appreciate that they are doing a difficult job for no pay. But the New York Times Book Review had harsh words for Read All About It! (HarperCollins, $17.99), the new picture book about the joy of reading by Bush and her daughter Jenna.
Roger Sutton, editor of the Horn Book, wrote that the authors seemed “fundamentally tone deaf” to why children love reading and that they told a story in which “the teachers’ names are dorky, the plot is hectic and the suspense and dialogue are artificial.” Is Read All About It! as bad as the Times said? Or was a liberal newspaper biased against a conservative administration it never liked, anyway?
Find out this weekend when a review of Read All About It! appears on One-Minute Book Reviews, which reviews books for children or teenagers every Saturday. In the meantime you can read Sutton’s review here www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/books/review/Sutton-t.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss.
© 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.
www.janiceharayda.com
One-Minute Book Reviews 
That’s the only explanation. There must be a liberal bias. It couldn’t be that the book just isn’t any good.
Comment by Ben Hoffman — August 25, 2008 @ 10:07 pm |
That’s my point, and the one I’m going to deal with this weekend: Maybe the book isn’t any good …
Comment by 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom — August 26, 2008 @ 7:54 am |
I just came from Toys-R-Us and read Jenna and Laura Bush’s book. Let me say, I just loved the book and would have bought one, but the price was a bit high for me. It was well written and the story was very amusing and cute.
Comment by locorunner — October 15, 2008 @ 5:20 pm |
About the price: Maybe it will come out in paperback in a year or so, or in one of those mini editions that publishers sometimes offer as an aliternate …
Comment by 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom — October 16, 2008 @ 10:33 am |