WHAT'S ON YOUR DESK?

ELIZABETH GUY

With more and more authors turning to laptops these days, the regular desk appears to be a thing of the past. Or many authors tell me so.

I admit that most of my writing and editing is now done away from my Hutch desk. But sometimes I still have to sit at it, particularly when I manage the website. 

On it, I have lots of family photos, souvenirs and memorabilia too numerous to mention here, a Zen garden, a waterfall, a small TV, a HP inkjet printer I'd like to throw out the window, awesome speakers and oodles of CDs. 

But this is usually the view I encounter when I work at my desk. 

SAY WHAT? Commonly Misused Words

Allude - to make reference to.
     "And by the way, dear Margaret, do take the time to read my book before you allude to it."

Elude - to avoid adroitly.
    Good health eludes me.

OUR CURRENT CONTEST

CAPOTE
(2005)

Starring:
Philip Seymour Hoffman
Laura Kinney
Catherine Keener


The facts behind Truman Capote's bestseller In Cold Blood. After 
a Kansas family is murdered,
Capote decides to write a book about it. His research leads him face-to-face with the killers. 

A MOMENT IN THE HISTORY OF WRITING

In May 1954, Pulitzer-Prize winner John Hersey penned an article in Life magazine titled, “Why Do Students Bog Down On First R? A Local Committee Sheds Light On A National Problem: Reading.”

In the article, Hersey criticized school primers, referring to them as “insipid illustrations depicting the slicked-up lives of other children.” How could these boring books compare to cartoons, comics and other kiddy stimuli?

Hersey went on for ten pages, detailing issues he felt contributed to poor student reading levels. At the end of the article, he asked, “Why should [school primers] not have pictures that widen rather than narrow the associative richness the children give to the words they illustrate — drawings like those of the wonderfully imaginative geniuses among children’s illustrators, Tenniel, Howard Pyle, “Dr. Seuss,” Walt Disney?”

Dr. Seuss responded to the challenge. Adhering to the look say reading programs taught in schools, he limited himself to a sight vocabulary of 223 words. He then crafted a story that took nine months to complete.

In 1957, Random House published Cat in the Hat and the little book revolutionized the way children learned to read.

Cat in the Hat turns 50 on March 2, 2007! Send a birthday card to Cat in the Hat, and Random House will donate a book to First Book. The book bank gives new books to children from low-income families. 

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