
>Star bar

>My favorite curmudgeonly critic Norman Lebrecht offers his point of view about the ever-increasing trend toward using stars as critical shorthand:

Of all the devices that devalue the function of criticism, the bar of stars is among the most pernicious. It suggests that artistic creation can be ticked off like a school essay and subjected to a set of SATs, in which the individual, expert guidance of teachers and examiners is set aside for the one-rule-fits-all solution of 21st century politicians.

Roger Sutton About Roger Sutton

Roger Sutton has been the editor in chief of The Horn Book, Inc, since 1996. He was previously editor of The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books and a children's and young adult librarian. He received his M.A. in library science from the University of Chicago in 1982 and a B.A. from Pitzer College in 1978. Follow him on Twitter: @RogerReads.

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  1. >My favorite part of Cold Comfort Farm was the stars she said she would insert before the most outstanding selections of her purple prose– so readers could find the best bits easily, like they did with a Baedeker.

  2. >I hate the star system. This is why I have given up on reviewing books on Amazon or GoodReads or anything that forces you to add a star rating to your comments. I could give a really bad book 5 stars because it was what I needed at the moment and it fulfilled its promise, whatever that was, and I could give a really good book 2 stars because it could have been better.

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