Publisher's Weekly's Best Books of 2007

Publisher's Weekly has already picked the best books of 2007. If you're published in November or December, you are just SOL, apparently.

That said, I do agree with some of their picks. For instance, Knuffle Bunny Too and Emily Gravett's Orange Pear Apple Bear in the picture book category.

But let's have a look at the "children's fiction" section, and count how many you wouldn't give to your eight-year-old.

I'll give you a minute.

Not that I don't want to sing the praises of Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, or Catherine Jinks' Evil Genius. They deserve all the champagne and truffles they can get.

But come on, PW, just make a separate YA section already, and give up more space in children's! Where the hell is the love for The Talented Clementine, huh? You have every genre known to adultkind up there, but you can't be arsed to sacrifice a few more inches to tell parents about books like Margaret Peterson Haddix's Dexter the Tough?

I love YA. You people know this. But there's a teeming underworld of marvelous children's books that don't get any attention from mainstream media, and this is where it starts. Because if PW doesn't consider them worth a mention, why should anybody else?

I gotta go breathe into a paper bag now.

Thanks to Fuse #8 for the heads-up.