I teeter back on forth on Gopnik. I’ve found his New Yorker pieces funny and interesting, yet at the same time there’s something unctuous about him–as though he makes a concerted effort to hit all the bases of whatever culture he’s writing about. This (along with the fact that the story never seemed to START) was the issue I had with his book. It was like he was saying, “Ok, magical stuff a la Harry Potter, check. Cultural sensitivity, check. Child angst at quarrelling parents, check.” I couldn’t get past it.

I’m sorry to hear Adam Gopnik’s book was a dud. I absolutely loved Paris to the Moon and the anthology he edited, Americans in Paris. I enjoy his New Yorker pieces as well. But writing a decent children’s book is more difficult than you would think. There are so many crappy ones out there. I remember the late John Holt, educator and writer, saying that you should not read anything to a child that you wouldn’t read for your own enjoyment. He hated the awful talking-down-to patronizing tone of what passes for literature aimed at kids.