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  • The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."
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January 23, 2007

ALA AWARDS

The Caldecott and Newberry have been awarded, along with other American Library Association winners.

Susan Patron, author of The Higher Power of Lucky, won the 2007 John Newbery Medal, for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature. The winner of the 2007 Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in young adult literature is the graphic novel American Born Chinese, by Gene Luen Yang.

The winner of the 2007 Randolph Caldecott Medal, for the most distinguished American picture book for children, is Flotsam, illustrated by David Wiesner.

Posted by at 12:30 AM in Prizes, Prizes and More Prizes |

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