'Spring Is Sprung'

Spring is sprung,
De grass is riz,
I wonder where dem birdies is?
De little birds is on de wing,
Ain't dat absurd?
De little wing is on de bird!

I have no idea who came up with this little ditty, but when we were kids growing up in New York I guarantee you it would send us into breathless gulps of laughter. We thought it was the most hilarious thing in the world — a "poem" we could recite in our native language, Brooklynese.

But I thought about it because spring finally came to our neck of the woods this weekend. Cherry blossoms were out, the tulips were up and that, in turn, made me think ahead to ... Summer. And, more specifically, our summer reading series.

This summer we want to give focus to the books we feature and we want to hear from you as we plan. We have already heard from some of you; we'd like to hear from more of you. We, of course, are also pressuring (I mean, uh, elicting) suggestions from the TMM staff.

I want to make sure you know that we are particularly open to fiction at this time of year; we cover very little fiction during the rest of the year, but summer seems, logically, to lead us to want to crack open a good novel.

Some of the ideas we're tossing around are:

1) New fiction from Africa

2) Memoirs (of who? women, men ... from around the world?)

3) History: America revisited (some incredible new scholarship to which we offer just a glance)

4) Urban literature (some call it "ghetto lit"). Is it more than trash?

5) Your suggestion here.

You see what I mean? So many possibilities. Let us know ...