Last Friday night about 100 young people between the ages of 8 and 15, some still in soccer clothes, along with their parents came to Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Mass., to celebrate the first anniversary of Fresh Ink, a galley-reading program for children. What makes the program special is not just its size—340 children and 475 reviews to date—but its emphasis on teaching children the art of reviewing. The store posts the reviews on its Fresh Ink blog, and it has generated 58,000 page views, according to bookseller Carter Hasegawa, who stays in e-mail contact with the kids. Porter Square gives its children reviewers a $5 gift certificate if their review ends up being posted as a shelftalker in the store. Another measure of success is the more than $300 that Porter Square has paid out for more than 60 reviews.
At the event, Porter Square served up more than just cookies and juice – there were also awards for the children’s favorites. Cheers greeted the news that Gill Lewis’s Wild Wings (Atheneum), illustrated by Yuta Onada, was the best middle-grade fiction of the year; Veronica Roth’s Divergent (HarperCollins/Tegen) was chosen best YA. Three enthusiastic Fresh Ink participants ages 9, 12, and 15 spoke about reviewing, while veteran author Mitali Perkins (Bamboo People) and debut writers Sheela Chari (Vanished) and Karsten Knight (Wildefire) talked about how much they value constructive reviews, even negative ones.
Twelve-year-old Alison summed up the excitement that many children in the room said they have when reading a galley, “It seems like it’s almost a dream come true to read a book before it comes out.” For 15-year-old Jenna, “Every time that I see that the [galley] box is full, it makes my day. We get to let our ideas be heard and explain what we like, what we love, and what books need improvement.”
Of course, no celebration of books and reading would be complete without something new to read. HarperCollins sales rep Anne DeCourcey, who also spoke about the importance of advance reviews to publishers, brought bags of galleys as giveaways.
