Monday, May 12, 2008

PW says "P-U!": Grateful Nation Spared Reckless Purchase

Just got a note from my agent, alerting me to a review of AWESOME in Publishers Weekly. Guess what? They don't like it! A lot! A lot they don't like it. How do I know? Because in the first sentence of the review, the phrase "overly cute" pops up. And just in case you didn't get it, the phrase "overly cute" makes a special return appearance in the last sentence of the one-paragraph review. Because God forbid you should forget! Sandwiched in between, however, is a fairly zippy and quite precise summary of the book which, if you lopped off the first half of the first sentence and the last half of the last sentence (as I am sure some savvy marketing person at my publisher will do), sounds kind of appealing... to me. But hey, I wrote the book. The only reason I bring it up, though, is to warn everyone that despite PW's interesting take, AWESOME is NOT (as they seem to imply) a book for children or young adults, or whatever they're calling them now. Do NOT let your young adult read AWESOME! It is for OLD adults. I do not question the parenting skills of the reviewer. I'm just mildly surprised and felt obliged to issue a general warning.