From Publishers Weekly
In this awkwardly framed compendium, Graham interviews 27 children's authors of varying degrees of fame, asking them to reflect on the role of journal-writing in their professional and personal lives. Recurring topics include the mechanics of keeping a journal or sketchbook, inspirations for journal entries and the often symbiotic relationship between the authors' private jottings and their published work. While some of the interviews ramble, the writers are often eloquent and their insights into the creative process will especially please fans of the individual authors, children's literature buffs and aspiring writers. However, Graham's plodding introductions to each writer unnecessarily--and gratingly--paraphrase or quote from the interview that immediately follows in its entirety, so that much of the material appears twice. Readers are better off going straight to the diverting tidbits embedded in the interviews: in high school, Judith Logan Lehne "lied" in her diaries when she wrote that a boy she never dated had asked her out and she "almost fainted." ("I worried about this lying until I decided to be a fiction writer," quips Lehne.) Jack Gantos recalls that he inserted the corpse of a "roadkill mouse" into his boyhood diary to keep his sister out; Gretchen Will Mayo's brothers once pulled pages out of her locked diary with tweezers and sold them to a neighbor for five cents. Other contributors include Jean Craighead George, Graham Salisbury, Bruce Coville, Jacqueline Woodson and Naomi Shihab Nye. All ages.
Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Gr 4-8-This collection of essays by and interviews with writers for children and young adults is a rich source of material for teachers who want to expose their students to a variety of diary, journal, and notebook-keeping practices. From David Harrison's manila envelopes crammed full of clippings and notes to Naomi Shihab Nye's notebooks, which she describes as "a useful jumble...a secret room," Graham documents the writers' habits and practices. Each chapter focuses on a different person and begins with a childhood photograph and a short essay about his or her journal writing, followed by material from an interview with the author. The interviews are generally chock-full of interesting, salient details, but by repeating much of the information (in some incidences, almost to the exact words) in her introductory piece, Graham dilutes their power. The book includes 27 authors with a good balance between female and male voices, but Jacqueline Woodson is the only nonwhite author included.-Barbara Scotto, Michael Driscoll School, Brookline, MA
Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
