Every week, I make a little note in my planner to Write a Book Review. However, this implies that I should have, each week, read a book that I would like to review.

I am not reading as much or as often as I should, so here I am, Writing a Book Review… of a book I didn’t read.

Granted, it’s not really a review. My non-review will be brief and reflect only the material I have read, and despite my misgivings, I might continue to read it.

You see, it all started on the green line, a fresh new library book in my bag calling my name (see also: why I can’t finish reading a book). A few pages into James Wood’s How Fiction Works and I was smitten. Writing instruction merged with pop-literary criticism, emphasis on structure? Oh, baby, oh baby. And Wood writes in these intoxicating little idea bits, every few paragraphs numbered, clearly distinguishing between ideas. This is all the pleasure of studying literature without any of the parts that hurt your brain.

Still on the green line. Wood is discussing the many advantages of free direct discourse, summoning memories of creative writing classes past, and his example on page 12? Make Way For Ducklings. Children’s lit being acknowledged in a lit crit book for mainstream adult audiences. I am basically making out with this book at this point. Fellow train passengers are looking at me strangely.

Then, page 13 happens:

“What happens, though, when a more serious writer wants to open a very small gap between character and author?”

Really? Really!?

I hang out with so many kid lit champions that I sometimes forget how easily this genre that I love can be dismissed. Boo on you, Wood, for writing this, boo on any FSG editors who let this completely superfluous phrase that adds nothing to Wood’s larger argument to remain on the page.

And boo for me for submitting to the temptation of something shiny when I could have cracked open one of the other books in my bag. Perks of Being a Wallflower or Dying to Know You.

Kid stuff.

File this post under: How A Children’s Lit Degree Destroys Everything You Love. Ask me sometime about how I wrote 4 papers on The Giver in 9 months…