Challenging the longstanding myth that everybody loves those cute creatures known as penguins, the American Library Association reports that a children’s book featuring penguins has topped the list of library books the public objects to the most – for the second year running.

The 2005 picture book by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, And Tango Makes Three, is about a family of penguins… with two fathers. At least it’s in illustrious company – other titles on the ALA’s list of challenged books include Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass.

From the Associated Press:

The ALA defines a “challenge” as a “formal, written complaint filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness.”

[…]

Overall, the number of reported library challenges dropped from 546 in 2006 to 420 last year, well below the mid-1990s, when complaints topped 750. For every challenge listed, about four to five go unreported, the library association estimates.

“The atmosphere is a little better than it used to be,” [Judith] Krug [director of the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom] says. “I think some of the pressure has been taken off of books by the Internet, because so much is happening on the Internet.”

According to the ALA, at least 65 challenges last year led to a book being pulled.

May 10 marks the 75th anniversary of the most infamous book burning in history – on that date in 1933, over 20,000 books banned by Germany’s Nazi regime, including works by Heinrich Heine, Thomas Mann, Karl Marx, and H.G. Wells, were set aflame in Berlin’s public square by Nazi youth groups.

To mark the anniversary, Abebooks.com has an overview of the various authors and books banned at the time, and has posted feature interviews with three experts on book-burning, including Australian author Matt Fishburn, whose debut non-fiction work Burning Books is due to be published this month. In the Q&A, Fishburn discusses why books are burned so often throughout history:

“People love a celebratory bonfire, especially when it can symbolize a letting go of the past: burning old photos, marking a graduation by burning a hated textbook, or the like. […] Tellingly, in the US (and no doubt in other countries) many universities had an impromptu tradition of turning a blind eye to their graduating class burning their textbooks at the end of semester in a great bonfire. Indeed, when the Nazi fires were first reported in 1933, this was one of the most common comparisons made - the fires in Germany were, after all, organized by students and took place relatively early in the new regime. Nor is it idle to point out that such burnings are always a great spectacle. In Berlin there were marching bands, torchlight processions, group singing and college songs, parades, movie cameras, and members of the cultural elite.

“This is not meant to trivialize the impact of any such bonfire. Most officially sanctioned fires are designed to control, and to announce what they stand for and what will be accepted under their rule. Burnings like those of the Nazis have something in common with the early modern burning of books in Europe. They announced what would be acceptable in future, and in the process shaped the new public sphere. The book burnings are the symbol; the repressive legislation that came in its wake was what enforced it.”

Newest on Q&Q’s Job Board:

• Developmental Editor, ESL Department - Oxford University Press (Don Mills, ON)
• Part-time Editorial Assistant - Canadian Tax Foundation (Toronto, ON)
• Publisher - Social Studies & Humanities - McGraw-Hill Ryerson (Whitby, ON)
• Production Coordinator - University of Toronto Press (Toronto, ON / Guelph, ON)
• Senior Manager, On-Line Marketing - Penguin Group (Canada) (Toronto, ON)

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Authors Paul Quarrington, David Adams Richards, and Emily Perkins all read and spoke at an event held at the Leander Boat Club in Hamilton, Ontario, Monday, May 5, 2008. The event was hosted by bookseller Bryan Prince and A Different Drummer Books. (Photos courtesy of A Different Drummer.)

Emily Perkins and Bryan Prince.

Paul Quarrington signs books with the help of a cold drink, a small pile of cash, and Ian Elliot of A Different Drummer.

David Adams Richards gets a grip on the lectern.

From the Toronto Star:

It’s a tell-all book about an elite military unit the Department of National Defence didn’t want published for reasons of national security, and now pointed questions are being raised over whether some of the incidents it chronicles actually happened.

The 261-page book, titled Nous étions invincibles (We Were Invincible), is billed as the first insider’s account by a former member of the Joint Task Force 2, a covert anti-terrorism unit stationed near Ottawa.

The unauthorized memoir, penned in French, went on sale in Quebec last Wednesday – a day after its Quebec City-based co-author, Denis Morisset, was arrested on charges he contacted two minors for the purposes of committing a sexual offence.

Some of the exploits Morisset recounts – like the unit’s role in taking out 17 Shining Path guerrillas during a Peruvian hostage-taking in 1996 – have been documented elsewhere. But others, such as claims that six of his fellow unit members have committed suicide, the tale of a botched mission in Afghanistan, or the account of a commando raid to “eliminate” hostage-takers during an Ottawa bank heist in 1994, can’t be independently verified. A spokesperson for the Ottawa Police Service told the Toronto Star “there was no such incident.”

We obviously have no idea who’s lying in this case – whether Morisset is at all credible, or whether the charges against him are legit – but is somebody to quash the book and undercut his allegations, having unnamed spokesmen deny them and having him arrested on a sleazy charge the day before the book is launched would be one way to do it. Speaking hypothetically, of course.

The winners of this year’s BC Book Prizes were feted at a gala April 26 at the Fairmont Waterfront Hotel in Vancouver. Prizes were awarded in seven categories at the ceremony, where the annual Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence was also presented.

Ian McAllister, who won the Booksellers Choice Award for his memoir The Last Wild Wolves (Greystone Books), and Harbour Publishing owner Howard White.

Fiction nominees Heather Burt and Mary Novik. Novik won for her historical novel Conceit (Doubleday Canada).

George McWhirter, poetry nominee and poet laureate of Vancouver.

Author and award presenter Dennis Foon with Meg Tilly, a finalist for her kids’ book Porcupine (Tundra Books).

Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence recipient Gary Geddes, West Coast Book Prize Society president Sally Harding, and B.C. Lieutenant Governor Steven Point.

Illustrated children’s literature finalist Lisa Cinar, author Michael Turner, and poetry finalist Gillian Wigmore.

The New York Times recently reported Guo Jingming to be the most successful writer in China. This may come as a shock to some, but not to star-crazed Chinese teenagers, who flock by the thousands to his book signings.

The pop singer turned author has seen three of his four novels sell over a million copies each, earning him $1.4-million last year.

Guo is the most successful of a dozen young celebrity authors who make up the “post-’80s” generation, some others of whom have also achieved book sales in the millions. This group includes the high school dropout and professional car racer Han Han, 25, who derides China’s inefficient educational system in his novels and regularly insults older, more established artists on his blog, and Zhang Yueran, 26, whose novel “Daffodils Took Carp and Went Away” features a bulimic girl who falls in love with her stepfather, is mistreated by her mother and is sent off to boarding school.

While the Chinese government frequently jails dissident writers or forces them into exile, it mostly ignores the antics of Guo and the other post-’80s writers. For all their flamboyance, they exemplify the social ideals of the new China — commercialism and individualism — said Lydia Liu, a professor of Chinese and comparative literature at Columbia University. They “don’t pose any threat,” Liu said. “They collaborate.”

In his latest column, David Milofsky, Book Beat author for the Denver Post, says he understands the frustration of authors who are unable to get their books reviewed in local papers.

Because a book editor can receive upwards of 10,000 books annually, of which perhaps one-tenth can be reviewed, there is a good deal of pressure applied by publicists and authors competing for review attention. Given the resources of New York publishers, it’s not surprising that most books reviewed by major publications are by well-known authors.

So how do unknown authors compete? They turn to the online world, where space is limitless, and, most importantly, where many people look for news and entertainment information.

Perhaps the most significant new outlet for reviews is the Barnes & Noble Review, which was launched just last October. In addition to being more nicely designed, the Review has the added advantage of many brick-and-mortar B&N bookstores to help promote it.

Jim Mustich, editor in chief of the B&N Review, said in an e-mail message, “We run one new 1,000-word review every weekday. In addition, we also review six titles in our Spotlight section and feature 50 titles with brief annotations in our Long List Section.”

Random U.S., that is. According to a New York Times report, Random House CEO Peter Olson is being replaced and will officially step down over the next few weeks.

Mr. Olson, who has run Random House, the world’s largest consumer publisher, since 1998, has come under mounting pressure in recent months as Bertelsmann’s financial results have been damaged by lower profits at Random House and steep losses in its American book clubs, which he also oversees.

Bertelsmann’s recently-appointed chief executive, Hartmut Ostrowski, has lost patience with the performance of this American outpost and wants to install his own person, said these executives, who spoke on condition of anonymity because it involved internal personnel issues.

“Outpost”?

An online survey of kids’ reading habits has turned up some surprising results – at least, surprising to Washington Post writer Jay Matthews. In the headline and intro to his article, Matthews drops the bomb that the Harry Potter series is not #1.

Children have welcomed the Harry Potter books in recent years like free ice cream in the cafeteria, but the largest survey ever of youthful reading in the United States will reveal today that none of J.K. Rowling’s phenomenally popular books has been able to dislodge the works of longtime favorites Dr. Seuss, E.B. White, Judy Blume, S.E. Hinton and Harper Lee as the most read.