What Makes A Book Great?

Talking with Barbara DeMarco-Barrett is one of a writer's guiltiest pleasures. She wants to know what you do and why. She lets you talk process. She actually reads the books you've arrived (via phone, in my case) to discuss and sends you back into the mindspace of creation. I like being there, in that mindspace.

Yesterday's one-hour conversation will soon be available through podcast, and when that's the case, I'll let you know. For today, however, I thought I'd share with you an answer to one of Barbara's questions about the criteria by which I evaluate books. I returned, with her, to the year I chaired the National Book Awards Young People's Literature jury (2001) and to these words that I delivered when presenting the five nominees—An Na, Marilyn Nelson, Kate DiCamillo, Phillip Hoose, and Virginia Euwer Woolf (the winner):

We concerned ourselves with matters of framing, form, and voice; with credibility and characterization; with the execution of plot or storyline. We studied the language—was it rigorous? Tantalizing? Fresh? We explored dynamics pertaining to originality and mood, meaning and soul. We thought out loud about each book’s innate capacity to alert, embolden, and inspire. Enduring books are the ones that enter the blood streams of their readers—that stir and shape and finally transform. They are the ones that get passed on, parent to child, friend to friend, the ones that jolt us toward insight, compassion, idea, hope, politics, or love. Toward the answers to the questions we must keep asking.