Rotten Tomatoes may be Addressed to Me Care of my Agent

I'm anxiously awaiting the blogosphere's reaction to my entry in the School Library Journal's Battle of the Books, which will be posted tomorrow morning. It's a bracketed March Madness-style competition between various YA and Middle Grade titles, and I was asked to advance either The Ring of Solomon or Sugar Changed the World. And no, I'm not going to reveal my decision–I'm not allowed yet.

Anyway, some of the judges so far are drawing criticism for being too nice, and for doing essentially the same thing I did–explaining why both books are great, and then kind of arbitrarily choosing one over the other. Rather than actually explaining why the winning book is BETTER than the other, you understand. So I admit that in this sense I wimped out (as Roger Sutton has put it), choosing instead to write a review designed to divert attention away from these two great books and back to ME.

I've been feeling a little neglected lately–my wife's in Switzerland.