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Reviewing by number.

Article Excerpt
I just bought a box of stars. You know, those little foil stickers your first-grade teacher used to slap on your spelling test if you got all the words right. Or maybe she'd stick one on your forehead if you sat through the entire Christmas concert without talking, without wiggling, and without kicking the chair in front of you. It's been many years since I've worn one of those gold stars on my forehead (since first grade my life has been a whirlwind of talking, wiggling, and kicking chairs), but I was motivated to get some after a disagreement with the Horn Book staff over one of the titles I recently reviewed. I thought the book was wonderful, amazing, and profound and clearly deserved to get a starred review; unfortunately, the Horn Book staff felt otherwise. Guess who won that battle? (Hint: not me.) Thus the copy of The Horn Book that you received did not have a star next to that book's title ... but, rest assured, my copy now has a star beside it! Peel-and-stick stars are not the only thing you'll find in the margins of my magazine. I've also been known to amend, annotate, and otherwise comment on other people's reviews with scribbled notes of support (Right on!; You go, girl!) and disagreement (No way!; I don't think so!). Heck, I'm even querulous enough to argue with my own reviews sometimes (What was I thinking?).

All this to say that if the reviews in The Horn Book--a publication that critiques about five hundred books a year, and nearly all of them worthy of positive attention--can inspire this kind of drama, you can only imagine the debates that surround the other 4000 or so titles that are reviewed only in The Horn Book Guide. Especially since the quality of these books ranges from the truly terrific to the nearly nauseating. Every book gets a brief critical review and is accompanied by a numerical ranking from 1 to 6. I asked Kitty Flynn, the executive editor of The Horn Book Guide, how these ratings are determined. (Actually, I asked her, "How come when I recommend a book for a specific rating, it's sometimes changed by you guys? Why is that, huh?") She explained that upon receiving a submitted review, "one of the editors reads the book, makes her own evaluation, then checks the review and the rating. If the reviewer and editor agree, groovy. If we disagree, but I'm convinced by the reviewer's comments, I go with that. If I'm not convinced and can amend the review without too much trouble, I'll change the rating. Once the editor signs off on a review, we circulate a weekly report of the edited reviews to other staff members for their input." One part of me...

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