I feel that surely Higuera meant to do something more complicated with the Collective and just didn't manage it, but perhaps I am giving too much benefit of the doubt to Higuera and also the Newbery committee.
The choice not to italicize seems like a wonderful example of someone coming up with an idea that sounds good in theory (no italicizing means that all languages feel equal! Yeah!) but works completely differently in practice. It's like reading one of those early twentieth century books where the author just tosses in a Greek epigraph, in the original Greek, without providing a translation (and it's probably thematically important so you do need to know what it means!), in the comfortable assurance that the entire audience has a classical education and if you don't then what are you even doing here?
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Date: 2022-05-02 01:50 pm (UTC)The choice not to italicize seems like a wonderful example of someone coming up with an idea that sounds good in theory (no italicizing means that all languages feel equal! Yeah!) but works completely differently in practice. It's like reading one of those early twentieth century books where the author just tosses in a Greek epigraph, in the original Greek, without providing a translation (and it's probably thematically important so you do need to know what it means!), in the comfortable assurance that the entire audience has a classical education and if you don't then what are you even doing here?