Top Ten Fiction Titles in 2008!

Every year the Ontario Library Association puts together something called "Best Bets" - a list of their top ten picks for picture books, non-fiction books, and fiction books for children and young adults. It's a helpful guide for other librarians, parents, teachers, and even booksellers.

And guess what's on the top ten fiction list for Best Bets 2008?


Legend of the Lost Jewels!!!

How crazy-wonderful is that?

Now if you guessed the latest Ken Oppel or Shane Peacock, or Art Slade - well so did I. And we were right. No surprises there - those guys are excellent writers and those were terrific books.

But imagine how it feels to see your book up there too. On the same list!!!!

Seriously. Legend is there - I'm not making this up.

The books are listed in alphabetical order by author's last name (I know, I know, those quirky librarians with their love of chaos and obfuscation!) so my book isn't technically beside Oppel or Peacock's title. But that's kind of a relief. It's a bit intimidating to have a surname that starts with L - when you walk into a library or a bookshop, your books are usually nestled up to those of Madeleine L'Engle or C.S. Lewis or Janet Lunn. And in your mind, you begin to hear the strains of that old Sesame Street tune... one of these things just doesn't belong here...

The Best Bets 2008 list has so many great books by great writers... (I really can't help wondering if Legend is up there by mistake. But if it is, don't tell me -I don't want to know.) The top ten fiction list includes:

Maureen Bush's Feather Brain; Alan Cumyn's Dear Sylvia; Marie Louise Gay & David Hormel's On the Road Again - More Travels With My Family; Don Lemna's When The Sergeant Came Marching Home; Annabel Lyon's All-Season Edie; Susin Nielsin's Word Nerd; Ken Oppel's Starclimber; Shane Peacock's Death In the Air; and Art Slade's Jolted: Newton Starker's Rules for Survival.

!!!!!!

Pretty impressive company, eh?


Publishing a book is a little like launching a message in a bottle out to sea. (For one thing, you rarely encounter it again.) Legend came out and sort of sank without a trace - at least as far as I could tell, from the book review sections I perused in vain, or the bookstores I took to lurking in... But still you hope. You hope your book, like a tiny, glassed-in bit of parchment, will bob merrily along, enjoying favorable winds on a long and happy voyage to interesting places. You hope it will eventually find its way into the hands of someone delighted to receive it, someone who may, after reading, send it on another journey, to another reader...


But you don't actually know.


Unless, of course, they tell you. For example, if a reader sends you an email (not that I'm hinting) saying something along the lines of "Not bad, looking forward to more"? If a reader does that I swear your feet will not touch the ground for a week. When the estimable Otto Penzler reviewed Martello Tower for the late, lamented NY Sun, and called my book "captivating", it's possible I may have gone shoeless for a month - I certainly would never have noticed.


But these moments are few. Most of the time writers toil alone and in uncertainty. It's a great life and all that but, as with most jobs, there's precious little feedback.



Enter the librarians!



I haven't read all the books on the Best Bets 2008 list, but of course that's one of the things Best Bets does for people like me - it spurs us on to check out these titles. My pal Helaine Becker turns up on the non-fiction list, of course, with her mesmerizing Science on the Loose. (hmm... and now I'm wondering... is there an award Helaine has NOT won or been nominated for?) And the elegant and inspiring Elizabeth MacLeod (a personal favorite of my middle child) appears on the non-fiction list twice, both for Royal Murder and for Why Do Cats Have Whiskers? (Talk about range!) I will have to read Linda Granfield's The Unknown Soldier, now that I've read the librarians' description, as well as the latest by John Wilson, Desperate Glory. The Story of World War 1.

And what of the picture books? My kids are now past this stage (although still unwilling to part with the thousands that line our shelves) but I have nieces and nephews and I still volunteer in the library of my neighborhood school. So while I do know enough to reach for the latest Ruth Ohi, Hazel Hutchins or Melanie Watt (and yes, their titles are all on the list) I need informed, expert advice to guide me to the authors and illustrators I might not yet have encountered. (A copy of this list, slipped into my backpack, will be invaluable the next time I'm birthday shopping for the kindergarten set!)

And that's the kicker, isn't it? Expert, informed advice. That's what Best Bets means to me. That's why it means so much to me, to be included on this list. Because librarians made this list. If you've read my Globe and Mail piece from years and years ago (and goodness knows why you would have) you'll know that librarians are my heroes. My mother was a librarian in Sudbury, my grandfather started a parish library in Montreal West, and my grandmother was a children's school librarian in Montreal West. Cicero wrote: "If you have a garden and a library you have everything you need". And, for an individual, I think that is still true. But for a healthy society, I would expand Cicero's quotation to say that if you have gardeners and librarians, you have everything you need.

Reading is a deeply personal experience. Not all books and not all writers speak to all readers. To be a reader requires persistence, patience, and, I truly believe, the right to walk away when it's clear your relationship with a book or a writer is doomed. (Coincidentally, to be a writer requires the same persistence and patience, as the rejections pile up and the writing turns balky. Also, I suppose, a thick skin.)

Loads of people won't ever read Legend. The title, the jacket, the characters or plot - any or all of those things may turn people off. And even when a reader does crack its spine, he may decide it's not right for him. But a group of Ontario librarians read it. And the librarians liked it. They liked it enough to recommend it.

And that's the nicest thing that's happened to me in a very long time