“What is new is the way the packaging operations dovetail so neatly with the values of the sprawling corporations that now control the publication of most books in America. It can come as no shock to anyone that they believe in marketing and the bottom line over and above everything else. When it comes to books for young readers, the result — in the overwhelming majority of cases — is a focus-group-driven literature of solipsism, which most children and adolescents ignore as bleak and inauthentic, despite all its calculated relevance.”