Judging books by their covers,
October 2003.

It’s Scary Books Month here, and there are plenty of things to be scared about: a Bible masquerading as a girl’s fashion magazine; a picture book author so taken with herself that she neglects to mention who did the pictures; and the horrors of stroking text.

Fortunately, there are also books this month that are so pretty it’s frightening. After last month, when pretty much all I did was complain, I’m grateful to have covers I can say really nice things about. Those reviews are nice and short, so you can spend less time reading the review and more time gazing in wonder at how nice these are.

I’m also extremely grateful to the readers who answered my call for help, with special thanks to the two readers who forwarded me the link to Random House’s Smart Public site, which contains pristine versions of pretty much everything Random House puts out. Since Random House owns a ton of imprints, that’s a veritable gold mine of images. Those two readers will be receiving a special gift in the mail real darn soon. The other reader who wrote in, though I have not yet taken her up on her kind offer, will also receive a prize.

The offer continues: if you have access to covers that are not in the Random House family and are either willing to scan them for me or live in the Bay Area and care to lend them to me so I can scan them, please let me know. If your offer pans out, you will have both my immense gratitude as well as a special prize.