No Author Left Behind

This is not a political blog. You can find plenty of those elsewhere.
But with the presidential election less than three weeks away, the competition for one's vote is getting louder and the lobbying from special interest groups more frequent.

One ad in particular caught my eye. It's a poster of "a child’s face behind hundreds of author and illustrator names... [and] headlined 'We Create Children’s Books Because We Care About Children—That’s Why We’re Voting For John Kerry.'"

With a list of over 360 published children's authors and illustrators, you know you're going to discover many of your own favorites, and I did. I quickly recognized the following twenty from my own bookshelves or recent library visits:

Avi   Judy Blume   Susan Cooper   Bruce Coville
Tomie dePaola   Kate DiCamillo   Jeanne DuPrau   Sid Fleischman
Jack Gantos   Dan Greenberg   James Howe   Gail Carson Levine
Jane Langton   Linda Sue Park   Katherine Paterson   Tamora Pierce
Louis Sachar   Maurice Sendak   Jane Yolen   Laurence Yep

I've already mentioned about a third of those in previous posts and I hope I'll get the chance to discuss at least a third more. You could do worse than use those twenty authors as the starting point for creating a reading list for your child (Ella Enchanted, Holes, Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key, Dragonwings, The Tale of Despereaux, etc.)—unless, of course, you now decide to boycott them.

I also noticed the conspicuous absence of Lynne Cheney, author of America: A Patriotic Primer and A is for Abigail,—an oversight, no doubt.

(For the record, scanning the list was worth it just to discover the unfamiliar name, Crescent Dragonwagon.)