 |
|
|
|
|
| Online Exclusive |
|
SAVE | EMAIL | PRINT | MOST POPULAR | RSS  | REPRINTS
|
|
|
Reader Beware
Review Date: AUGUST 15, 2008
Category: NONE
Classification: ONLINE EXCLUSIVE
Eighth-grade grammar is of direct use for very few professions. Copyediting is one of them. Good copyeditors, who remember eighth-grade as well as, or better than, their first kisses, are worth their weight in platinum. And when copyediting is not done well, everybody—readers and writers—suffers. Our reputation to the contrary, Kirkus reviewers can be a forgiving lot: We typically review from galleys and have grown accustomed to reading past typos and other errors, confident that the publication team’s copyeditors will correct them in the finished books. This doesn’t always happen.
Consider the case of one of the best young-adult books of the year. It caught both the reviewer and me up with its compelling plot, world-building and character development, but the galley was so riddled with errors that, in the end, I could not read past them. I contacted the publisher in the hopes that these had been corrected in the finished book and discovered that, alas, many—too many—had not. They were errors of the most basic sort, the kind that we all learned about (and then many of us forgot) in eighth-grade grammar.
Where was the copyeditor, that valuable professional whose skills were developed in the eighth grade and honed by a career of eagle-eyed reading? This book came from one of children’s publishing’s larger houses; surely they can afford a copyeditor or two. More to the point, how many sets of eyes, copyeditors’ or no, went over this manuscript before we got it? How is it that these elementary errors were not corrected? In its own weird way, it’s a testament to the book’s strength that multiple readers managed to miss these basic faults.
But.
After consultation, the reviewer and I agreed that although we both felt the story deserved a starred review, it should not receive one; we felt we had to look at the book as a whole, and the whole included too many grammatical faults to ignore. The publisher has assured me that the errors will be corrected in the second printing. That’s good—for all the kids who manage to skip the first one, which is a large number.
In the end, the team let everybody down: the author, whose story should skim along, unfettered by easily correctible errors, and the kids, who are close enough to eighth grade to wonder what on earth happened to the rules they’ve just learned.
Why do I not cite the book’s title? Because I don’t want any publisher of any book reviewed in these pages to sit back and think, “Whew—not my book.” Everybody involved in bringing books to kids should be held to the highest standard. The books and their readers deserve this. While perfection may be an unattainable standard, every single publishing enterprise should be concentrated on doing its damndest to get as close as humanly possible.
—Vicky Smith
|
SAVE | EMAIL | PRINT | MOST POPULAR | RSS | REPRINTS
Copyright 2005 Kirkus Reviews
|
|
|
|
|
| Online Exclusive
|
 | Talk Like a Man: Robert B. Parker Tribute
January 15, 2010 - I still remember the first time I heard Spenser's voice ring out in the opening chapter of The Godwulf Manuscript (1973), as he razzes the college president who's trying to hire him. What's this guy's problem? I thought. Why does he have such an attitude? The attitude, I soon learned, had deep roots...Part of it was a temperamental similarity to Spenser's creator, Robert B. Parker, who died on Jan. 18th at age 77.
|
|
|
|
|
