I Am Loving This Book

That's not something you hear me say very often, is it?

I am loving Minders of Make-Believe: Idealists, Entrepreneurs, and the Shaping of American Children's Literature by Leonard S. Marcus. (I heard him speak last fall. That was good, too.)

I'm not whipping through the book because I'm reading two other nonfiction books right now and shifting among them. But Minders of Make-Believe is my favorite. So many facts! So well organized! I loved the nineteenth century chapters because the first one covered the Puritans (and, coincidentally, I also love the P. People) and the second contained some of the same material I read about in The Last Dickens. Marcus even talks about the Boston publishers who appeared in The Last Dickens. The number of women writers who held editorial positions with children's magazines post Civil War was interesting, too.

Last night I read about how the Newbery got started. Soooo interesting.

It's been a while since I've read a straight history book this good.

Training Report: Sigh. Another day spent doing good works, if you can believe it. Well, mostly. As I was driving from place to place this morning, I realized that the older brother in the 365 Story Project has acne. And a couple of details for the very first day came to me. And I wondered if the 365 Story Project could turn into a traditional novel. Should it? Should it be like a traditonal novel but different?