From SLJ.com

I'm sure some of you suspect that the whole Hot Men of Children's Literature (HMOCL) is just a great way to get some serious marketing done on the part of authors and publishers. Maybe so. Honestly, on this end of the spectrum my primary concern is the deliciousness of the candidates. But that doesn't mean that people won't send in nominations when they've worked on one book or another. Today, we introduce the very first “double-whammy of hotness.” An editor at Lee & Low recently worked with these two up-and-coming HMOCLs and decided that they needed some attention hotness-wise.

So for the very first time we've the official Hot Men of Children's Literature: Double Whammy Edition #1 starring: G. Neri, an award-winning filmmaker and new media producer from Los Angeles, where he also taught animation and storytelling to inner-city youth. And Jesse Joshua Watson, a fine artist and illustrator whose work has appeared in galleries, on CD covers, and more recently in children's books.—October 9, 2007

My trusty counter tells me that this is my 49th blog, so I thought it would be a good time to think about the blog process itself. Each time I read over one of my posts, I have a sinking feeling. I notice a typo, a misspelling, a repeated word. Here I am lecturing about writing, and my sloppiness is exposed. Seeing my own failings makes me oh so grateful for the production teams who help me on my books—the editors who ask me to write more clearly, the copy editors who catch mistakes, the designers who care so much they read the text and tell me what they think. Revealing to all of you here how often I rush and slip makes me thank my lucky stars that my books go through many hands before you see them. In a way this gets back to the thread about the digital echo: books need the hand-crafting that makes them books (when they are done well). But online there is more of a premium on speed, on exchange, on the back and forth of ideas, than on final presentation. I would love to find ways to tap both—the full bookishness of a book, with the conversational quality of the Web.—October 5, 2007