Lord Randolph Churchill once summarized the career of Benjamin Disraeli in one line: “Failure, failure, failure, partial success, renewed failure, ultimate and complete victory.” The parallel is not exact and might sound a little cruel, but it nicely encapsulates the career, so far, of the fabulously talented children’s book author Laura Amy Schlitz, who this past week won the 2008 Newbery Medal for most distinguished contribution to children’s literature. Read more at A Late-Blooming Talent in Full Flower – WSJ.com
educating alice 
hi, Monica. I read this story yesterday, and was puzzled by this statement by the article’s writer:
“yet with not the slightest taste of cod liver oil nor any of the tiresome left-leaning didacticism that has characterized so much writing for children since the late 1960s.”
I suppose she did not have room to give examples, but I’d love to hear her explain this. It didn’t ring true to me–and in fact detracted from her piece, I thought.
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Good catch. (I’m so fixated on “my” award winner that I’m mostly reading to see how they feature her and not much else.) The whole sentence is, “Better still, her storytelling is a return to the moral traditions of the greatest and most enduring tales, yet with not the slightest taste of cod liver oil nor any of the tiresome left-leaning didacticism that has characterized so much writing for children since the late 1960s.” Very odd. Is it a response to realistic award winners like Katherine Paterson? Susan Patron? Weird.
It is, of course, the journalist’s not Schlitz’s feelings.
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