They really *needed* another opinion...?

[ellenkushner]

So not one but two reviews of my new book were published in the Sept/Oct 2007 issue of the AJL (Association of Jewish Libraries) Newsletter:

Kushner, Ellen. The Golden Dreydl. Illus. by Ilene Winn-Lederer.
Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge, 2007. 126pp. $15.95. ISBN: 978-58089-135-6.

DELIGHTFUL REVIEW, ending with:
"...Kushner is known for her fantasy novels, and her foray into the seldom-explored area of Jewish fantasy for young readers will appeal on many levels. Jewish customs and folklore, interesting characters, and silly riddles combine for an entertaining and enchanting read. Highly recommended for middle-grade readers in all libraries."
-- Kathe Pinchuck, Congregation Beth Sholom, Teaneck, NJ

O ecstasy! But followed by this one:
Another Opinion:
"Sara is a preadolescent girl who feels that nobody understands her. Because she is Jewish, she doesn’t get to join in all the fun of Christmas, and her parents are unsympathetic to this problem. Her big brother, Seth, teases her, and at her aunt’s annual Chanukah party, he joins with their cousins in making a dreydl game into a big fight. When the mysterious Tante Miriam arrives, she gives all the kids great gifts—except for Sara, who gets a golden dreydl. After a another fight breaks out with Seth, the dreydl flies out of Sara’s hands and breaks her aunt’s brand new TV. Until this point, the book seems like a run-of-the-mill story about a self-centered, insecure pre-teenager. But during the night, the dreydl magically becomes a girl, and Sara is transported with her into an alternative universe that is peopled with demons, King Solomon, a Fool, and the Tree of Life. And it is here that this adaptation of the Nutcracker story really starts to fall apart. Good fantasy creates worlds and characters that are believable. This book does not. Some characters, such as Miriam and King Solomon, are from the Bible; others, such as the Fool and the demons, have been invented only to further the disjointed and unsatisfying storyline. The golden dreydl, we learn, needs to return with its magical letters to the Tree of Life, before all “light and music, knowledge and wisdom” cease to exist. She has been captured by the demons, however, and must be rescued. If readers knew what the Tree of Life was, this might be compelling, but since it is not adequately explained, even the main character doesn’t seem all that interested. Winn-Lederer’s illustrations are intricate and weird, and their uniqueness is the only bright light here. The back flap says that the author has narrated The Golden Dreydl with the Shirim Klezmer Orchestra in their adaptation of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker Suite, and perhaps in that venue the story works. It falls short, however, as a novel for middle readers. Grade level: 3–5."
Nancy A---, Temple Emanu-El, Dallas, TX


Discussion Questions:

• Why, why, whyyyyyyyyy?
• Is what the world really needs (in the words of one friend) "another book about a self-centered teenager"?
• Do some people just not get fantasy?
• Are Texans less enlightened than Greater New Yorkers (especially people from Teaneck)?
• If you really loved me (and you're a librarian or Jewish educator), would you be writing an indignant post or enthusiastic review somewhere where your colleagues would read it?

Obviously, if you actually read the book and don't like it, that's cool - I don't think everyone needs to love everything I write! The things this woman picked on just struck me as odd. You?

Comments

[ewein2412]

well, I for one would be just flabbergasted with bewilderment. These 2 reviews are in the SAME ISSUE of the SAME NEWSLETTER? I'd have said that was just cause for a letter to the editor.

And ok, we haven't read the book, but my kids don't have any problem with either the fantasy elements OR the parallels to the Nutcracker, both of which they get in general, although I think that even if they didn't they'd be likely to gloss over anything confusing without a blink. And they aren't even Jewish. (Well, not *very* Jewish, their Jewish grandfather having died some ten years before either of them were born.)

And gosh, it never occured to any of us that it was about a teenager, self-centred or otherwise... possibly because the kids started listening to it when they were 5 and 8.

---------------------
Oh... and btw... if the review has got the name spelled correctly, can I just tell you how PSYCHED we all are to see that she is actually Sara without an H!

[burgundy.livejournal.com]

I would say it's not that people from Texas are less enlightened (although I admit to a certain amount of bias in that area) but that people from Dallas are less enlightened. And also, yes, some people just don't get fantasy.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Aside: I reviewed The Golden Dreydl in a recent Bartcop-E column, though I don't have the url handy. I'll add it to my CD recommendations archives soon.

Meanhwile:

1) Column inches

2) Depends on who you're trying to reach.

3) See 2)

4) See 2)

Ya' gotta know your audience, but the reviewers don't have to know your audience.

[sboydtaylor.livejournal.com]

Hey, I'm a Texan, and I'd like to think I'm enlightened.

To answer your question "Why?", though:
Because different people like different things, and since you were known as a fantasy writer before the book it makes you easier to dismiss. It shouldn't, but it does. *I* can see that you're playing with all sorts of happy myths that are very common, just from the reviews. Sadly, if your reader doesn't know -- and isn't willing to imagine -- what a Tree of Life is, then that reader is pretty much lost to you.

[couchspudprotem.livejournal.com]

(1) Never read your reviews.
(1a) Or, if you must, take them with several large pinches of salt. Nobody knows anything. And do you actually care what one particular person thinks (unless she's, I don't know, your mother, or someone whose opinion you already know and value)? Do you value their opinion more than the people who bought it, published it, read it, loved it, reviewed it positively...
(2) Yes, some people just don't 'get' fantasy. Just as some people don't 'get' sci fi. Or westerns. Or porn!
(3) See rule one!

Can't See the Tree in the Forest of Trees

[my-tallest.livejournal.com]

I'm sure the second reviewer would find difficulty with children understanding what a "Halloween Tree" is, but it didn't stop Ray Bradbury's story from getting into my library, and delighting me.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I dunno. I have several friends and acquaintances in Dallas and the rest of Texas who are your usual varying degrees of smart and cool. When I have visited I have not seen any highway signs that go "Now Entering the Unenlightened Zone."

If I was going to do some reviewomancy...it's a pretty grounded-in-reasons reply (goes into character, structure, amount of background info provided), which makes me think that it's really just not what that reader was looking for, and maybe there were expectations of what kind of book it was going to be on their part and when it wasn't that book they went "blaah!"

[burgundy.livejournal.com]

The Dallas comment was pretty much tongue-in-cheek. I have a vested interest in saying that Texans are not as a rule unenlightened because I'm a Texan myself. My knee-jerk dislike of all things Dallas is irrational but involves no ego investment on my part.

I haven't read Golden Dreydl myself and so I can't weigh in on how good it is or is not, but there's something in that review that turns me off.

[gardnercastle.livejournal.com]

Sorry to hear about the negative review! However, thanks for posting the positive one--I'm using it to request that we get this book for our children's collection here in Hampton, VA. I look forward to reading it!

I have to say, "another opinion" sounds biased from the first: "Because she is Jewish, she doesn’t get to join in all the fun of Christmas..." The tone trivializes the protagonist's feelings. Sounds to me as though the reviewer is being deliberately obtuse and dismissive.

I hope that discerning readers will recognize this and heed the first review, rather than the second. Those who know your work certainly ought to!

[j00j.livejournal.com]

I might see if any of my fellow library students who are interested in children's lit have comments. My suspicion is that most kids *do* get fantasy and are open to these things, but some stodgy reviewers don't. I don't see a lot of other reviews in the database here, but if it helps, the Booklist review seems to disagree with the second reviewer on the fantasy issue and is pretty favorable... Have you seen it? Hazel Rochman (Booklist, Aug. 1, 2007 (Vol. 103, No. 22))

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Yes, I've noticed that Texans seem to be locked in an eternal struggle about how their city rocks and all the other cities in Texas suck. *g* I just commented because that "oh people from X are dumb" thing tends to rub me the wrong way. I mean, we all know it's not uniformly true, so I'm never sure quite why that thing stays in people-discourse and then I pick at it and so on. :P

Bit of a peeve, is all. *g*

[dremiel.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I believe that I actually know the Dallas reviewer. Or at least I know a Nancy A. at Temple Emanu-El. She's a nice enough person but our tastes are very differerent.

Don't give up on Texas!

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

My knee-jerk dislike of all things Dallas is irrational but involves no ego investment on my part.

My money's on you being from Houston, but I could be wrong.


--an enlightened child of Dallas

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

Book reviews are like teaching evaluations: aside from any legitimate or taste-based criticism, there are always remarks from a couple of people who seem to exist in rather different universes. I've seen comments like "teacher often missed class" for a teacher who always arrived early; "teacher was never available for consultation" for a teacher who had triple the regular number of office hours and was available by e-mail, etc. etc.

[burgundy.livejournal.com]

Hee! You're absolutely right. I've been in Austin for the past 4 years, but the rest of my life was Houston.

[belledewinter.livejournal.com]

Oh well, I guess you can't please everyone all the time. *shrugs* Don't think too much about it because for one person who didn't like your book there will be at least ten who did. People sometimes just need something to complain about. Besides, it's not like you can trust reviews all the time - it's much better to just see for yourself.

Also, I don't think the reviewer is getting the point at all in any case.

[gaedhal.livejournal.com]

Well, the Fool may not be "Biblical" but isn't it a
standard character in Jewish folklore?

And what the heck's wrong with an "alternative
Nutcracker"?

Sounds pretty cranky to me!

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

I was going to say--congratulations on "inventing" the character of the Fool! That's better than inventing the Internet, gee whiz!

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

A winner is me!

Dallas people rag on Houston, and Houston people rag on Dallas. Me, I have two defenses for my prejudice against Houston:

1) my dislike of the city in no way implies a dislike of people from the city, and
2) my dislike is grounded in concrete fact. Houston is a horribly polluted swamp.

Mind you, I don't think Dallas is perfect, either. Which probably makes me all around too reasonable to be entertaining in the usual spitting contests.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Heee. I had the impression from several people that Dallas hates Houston and Austin, Austin disdains everybody else, Houston hates Dallas. I have no data re: San Antonio. *g*

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

The conservative types in Dallas probably hate Austin for being the most pinko-commie leftist part of the state. Me, I had no problems with it, and a lot of my friends went to school there.

And yes, San Antonio does seem to get left out. As does El Paso (though they probably spit on Midland-Odessa, or maybe Lubbock).

Everybody spits on Lubbock.

[burgundy.livejournal.com]

Now that I'm in Austin, I can self-righteously rag on both cities!

But I rag on Austin too. Austin in some ways is worse, because it thinks it's such hot shit.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's the Austin approach: liberal self-righteousness that applies to everybody else. (I like Austin, and liberalism too, but any liberal bastion in a conservative region tends to be a little too proud of its veganism and transgenderism and earth-motherism and what have you.)

what a thread hijack this turned out to be

[burgundy.livejournal.com]

It's not just Austin's liberal self-righteousness that bothers me; it's Austin's liberal self-righteousness despite ingrained institutional racism and economic inequality. Austin is a great place to be if you're an educated middle-class white liberal, but it's not a great place to be if you're poor or brown. And many of the educated middle-class white liberals seem to be entirely unaware of this, and are gobsmacked when they meet people of color who say they'd rather live in Houston.

[beemerbike.livejournal.com]

As someone who ran as far from Texas as I could, when I could, my only comment is that the state average SAT score is 710. Chances are this person may not even know what a dreydl is. Seriously though, I have only heard good things about the book. Perhaps the reviewer was asleep at the keyboard.