What a nice surprise! The New York Times was all about children’s and YA books today (yeah, ok, so it was also about the mortgage crisis and Tony Snow’s death and dogs that take anti-depressants, but I am like most people. I see what I want to see). I already adore Suzy Lee’s Wave on the basis of the one image from the book on the NYT website.

In addition to some children’s/YA book reviews, there was an article written by Gail Collins about Twilight. There is also this piece about possible product-placement in the Gossip Girl, Clique, and A-List books (haven’t read any of them myself). I found this article interesting, because it made me think about how writers choose to describe things. If a writer says that a teenage character is wearing Jimmy Choo shoes, is that just about product-placement, or even signaling (message: hey, this girl is rich and has fancy, informed taste!)? Or to make the book more like television (I confess that I got ridiculously excited when, while watching Veronica Mars S1, I saw that she was wearing a shirt I own! Moderately fancy shirt, but I had bought it at a second-hand shop)?  Surely some of this “his eyes were as blue as a Ralph Lauren polo shirt” business has to do with a quick, down-and-dirty way to produce a visual image in the reader’s head. It’s one step away, I think, from having illustrations in the book, since the writer relies on the reader either to know already what a Ralph Lauren polo shirt looks like, and have that image in mind, or to be able to flip open a fashion magazine and find said shirt.

I’m not saying this is bad. As I said, I’ve never read Gossip Girl, etc., and so can’t judge. My reaction upon reading the article was more along the lines of, “Huh. So that’s what those writers do,” like I might look at a bee hive and say, “Hmm. So that’s how bees build.”