From Cover to Cover (2 page)

Professional reviewers don’t always see the complete dust jacket, as they often see books before they are published, in a form known as
bound galleys
or
advance reading copies
(
ARCs
). Whether you see the jacket or not when you are evaluating a book, it is important to keep in mind that jackets function more as part of a book’s marketing and promotion than as an integral part of its art.

Most children’s trade books make their first appearance as
hardcover,
or
clothbound,
books. The hard covers, called boards, are composed of heavy cardboard stock covered with cloth or paper, or a combination of the two.
Library bindings
on hardcover books are reinforced to stand up to multiple circulations, whereas
trade bindings
are on books produced primarily for bookstore sales. If a hardcover book sells reasonably well, the publisher may choose to issue a
paperback
edition or may sell the
paperback rights to another publisher. In some cases, a publisher opts for
simultaneous publication
, issuing a hardcover and paperback at the same time. Other times, a hardcover edition will be skipped and the book will be issued as a
paperback original
. In young-adult literature, paperback originals have become increasingly common, but in children’s books, most paperback originals are published as mass-market books, which are generally not given the same consideration by reviewers. As a result, they are often only briefly noted or even completely overlooked, although they are regularly purchased by libraries due to their popularity. Most popular series books such as Cirque du Freak, Magic Tree House, and Rainbow Magic are issued as paperback originals and thus have rarely withstood the scrutiny of professional evaluation and review because they are not reviewed as individual volumes.

Endpapers
: Every hardcover book has sheets of paper, generally of heavier stock than the text, pasted flat against the insides of the front and back covers and along the gutters (the page edges at the inside margins) of the first and last pages of the book. Sometimes endpapers include supplementary information such as maps, and sometimes—particularly in picture books—they are illustrated or the story actually begins and ends on the endpapers. More often than not, endpapers are left blank, although they may be of a color contrasting with or complementary to the cover or the jacket, to add to the overall aesthetic of the book. Books are composed of sheets of paper called leaves. The right-hand page of the leaf is the
recto
page; the page on the reverse side is the
verso
(the left-hand page).

FRONT MATTER

Half title
: The first page of a book, bearing only the book’s title, with no author or publisher listed. Half-title pages are carryovers from the past, when books were sold without bindings, and half titles served to
both identify and protect the pages stacked in bookshops.

On the back of the half-title page, the author’s previous books may be listed. This is called an
ad card
. Illustrated books sometimes use the back of the half-title page for an illustration known as a
frontispiece
. Sometimes books are designed so that this page forms a double-page spread with the
title page
.

Title page
: Every book has a title page, and it contains some of the most important information about the book. Both sides of the leaf are considered to be part of the title page. The front page includes the full official title of the book, including a subtitle (if there is one); names of people associated with the creation of the book, such as the author, illustrator, adaptor, editor, or translator; an editorial imprint; and the name of the company that published the book. The title page sometimes includes the year of publication and information about the edition.

The
copyright page
is often chock-full of small print that reveals a great deal about the book. The copyright information usually appears after the title page, but in some books it is placed at the end of the book, usually on the final page. The year of original publication is shown in the copyright date, which follows the symbol ©. Referring to the copyright statement should be part of every critic’s routine because it helps to establish a context for the book you are about to evaluate. Was the book originally published in another country or in an earlier edition? If so, the copyright page will tell you. When more than one date is listed in the copyright line, the one that corresponds to the book you are holding in your hand is always the most recent year. This is the date you will cite in the bibliographic information accompanying your review.

Publishers generally include information related to a book’s printing history on the copyright page. People sometimes use the terms
printing
and
edition
interchangeably; however, they are technically not the same
thing.
Edition
refers to all the copies of a book printed from the same set of files. There may be several
printings
of a single edition but, except for occasional minor changes such as the correction of a misspelling, there are not significant textual differences between printings. You may see a notation on the copyright page such as
First Edition
, which generally means the book you are holding is the first printing of the first edition, in other words the first appearance of this particular text. The notation
First American Edition
is often a sign that the book was previously published in another country. When that is the case, you may see a statement beginning with the words “First published in…” which will tell you the country of origin, the date of first publication, and the original publisher of the book. If parts of the book were first published elsewhere (such as in a magazine), as is often the case with collections of poetry and short stories, this should be indicated on the copyright page as well, or on a continuation of that page.

Many publishers also include a printing code here, showing the number of printings a particular edition of a book has been through. In printing codes, the numerals from 1 through 10 may run backward or forward or may show the even numbers running forward, followed by the odd numbers running backward. Whichever way the numbers appear, the lowest one that appears in the code tells you the number of the printing of the book you are holding.

For example, 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 is a standard code for a first printing. Note that the lowest number in this string is 1—that’s how we can tell the book is a first printing. Using the same style of code, a fourth printing would be 4 6 8 10 9 7 5. The numerals 1, 2, and 3 have been dropped from this string. Another publisher might designate a first printing with 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 and a fourth printing as 10 9 8 7 6 5 4.

Today most books published in the United States also include
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data
(CIP) on the copyright page.
The CIP data has the sort of information that is used in a library catalog and includes the book’s author; title; ISBNs; subject headings; library classification; and, for children’s books, a one-or two-line summary of the book. Like the dust jacket, the CIP data should never be taken as an integral part of the book. The book creators have no control over this information; therefore, books should never be criticized for misinformation in the CIP data. The
International Standard Book Number
(ISBN) is an important piece of information that appears here (and usually above the bar code on the back of the jacket or cover); each binding of each title has a unique ISBN, to be used in placing orders to purchase it. Trade bindings, library bindings, and paperback editions of the same books all have separate ISBNs, which should be indicated in every review’s bibliographic citation.

Other valuable details related to a book’s production are sometimes found on the copyright page. You may find, for example, an author’s source note for a folktale. If photographs have been used to illustrate the book, photo credits often appear here. In picture books some publishers now indicate the illustration media on the copyright page and, in books of all kinds, names and sizes of type styles used may be cited, in addition to the name of the book designer.

The next recto page often consists of the author’s and artist’s
dedications
of the work to one or more individuals. Like jacket art, flap copy, and CIP data summaries, dedications are generally irrelevant to the assessment of the book as a whole.

Sometimes an author thanks someone who has been helpful in the book’s creation, and this sort of information should be included in the
acknowledgments page
, which sometimes follows the dedication page or sometimes appears at the end of the book. Unlike dedications, acknowledgments can be significant to the critic: It is quite common for writers to seek out the expert opinions of content specialists who read over the
final manuscript of a book prior to publication and point out any inaccuracies or implausibilities they notice. This sort of acknowledgment by the author usually indicates the content specialist’s professional affiliation. Phillip Hoose’s book
The Race to Save the Lord God Bird
includes in his acknowledgments:

This shows that even though the author is trained as a scientist himself, he sought out the opinions of others who were experts in the field, and it may be of help in assessing accuracy.

Preface
: A short note, written by the author, includes details about the creation of the book that are not an essential part of the book’s content. Sometimes called simply an
author’s note
, it may give readers a brief description of what inspired the author to write the book, or it may tell us why the author believes the subject of the book is important. In children’s books, we sometimes see a variant of this called “A Note to Parents.” This typically includes information about the levels of understanding children are likely to possess at different ages. For example, Robie H. Harris’s book about human reproduction,
It’s Not the Stork
, includes a note for parents and other adults working with young children outlining the types of questions young children have about the subject and suggests how best to use the book with them.

Foreword
: Like the preface, a foreword is also a short note about the book’s creation and the need for information on the topic; however, a foreword is generally written by someone other than the author, often
an expert on the book’s subject.

Contents
: Books with chapter headings include a table of contents that lists the front matter, part title headings, chapter headings, and back matter in order and indicates the page number for the beginning of each. The contents can be especially helpful in a nonfiction book because it often reveals the organization (or lack thereof) of the material in the book. In novels, chapter titles listed in the contents can provide a quick summary of the action, which can help you remember plot details after you have read the book.

Between the contents and the body of the book, the publisher may insert another
half-title page
. If the book is divided into two or more named parts, there will be a
part-title page
right before the beginning of the body of the book. This may simply say “Part One” or “Book One,” or it might give a specific title to the section, such as “The Escape.”

BACK MATTER

Additional information often appears at the end of the book, particularly in works of nonfiction. Back matter can be an essential part of the book, and it should be evaluated and reviewed as carefully as the body of the book itself.

Epilogue
: A brief concluding statement that stands apart from the text as a whole. There is often a sense that the author has made a sudden jump ahead in time from the body of the book. Margot Theis Raven’s picture book
Let Them Play
, illustrated by Chris Ellison, recounts a 1955 World Series Little League game in which an all-black team was not allowed to play. A one-page epilogue fast-forwards to 2002, when the original team members, now old men, took a bus to the opening ceremonies of the Little League World Series, where they were presented with a championship banner.

Afterword
: A short and usually subjective passage in which the
author shares his or her own personal responses related to the subject of the book. At the end of
Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler’s Shadow
, author Susan Campbell Bartoletti tells readers:

Appendix
: Supplementary material on a particular aspect of a nonfiction topic is sometimes included in an organized section at the back of the book. A book on the history of major-league baseball, for example, might include an appendix providing a chronological listing of World Series winners. Appendices are typically labeled by letters A, B, C, and so on, followed by a descriptive title:

Appendix A: World Series Winners

Appendix B: All-time Record Holders

Glossary
: An alphabetical list of words and/or expressions used in the body of the book that may be unfamiliar to readers. Each entry in a glossary is defined, and sometimes a pronunciation is included. Glossaries are usually confined to the special vocabulary related to the subject of the book. A book on a ballet company, for instance, might include a glossary of words such as “arabesque,” “barre,” and “pointe.” A book written in English but that includes some words and expressions in Spanish might have a glossary that gives the definitions and pronunciations of the Spanish used in the text.