Life in Black and White - a semi-regular blog column by a publicist who should be doing something else...

What's black and white and read all over? I know, I know. We've all heard that old chestnut. Except it doesn't quite work in print. And, too, the books I work with mostly haven't been read... yet.

I'm a publicist at Chatto & Windus, Harvill Secker, Yellow Jersey and Square Peg. So I read a lot in proof, and a fair bit of stuff that we haven't even acquired, may never acquire. And it's a funny feeling. You've just read something great. Or side-splitting. Or so SO wrong that you completely have to vent to someone about it. But you can't. Because hardly anyone's read it yet.

My friends have got fairly bored of me going “OMG I just read this amazing book – what? No, I know you've never heard of it. It's not published until 2012. Stop interrupting-”

So here I am. Just out of the Chatto editorial meeting and still glowing from the brilliant news that we've acquired one of the most mind-blowingly inventive, lyrical and transportive books I've read in ages; The Country of Icecream Star by Sandra Newman - what? No, I know you've never heard of it. It's not published until 2012. Stop interrupting.

But The Country of Icecream Star is unusual for Chatto because it's a young adult/crossover book, and a co-acquisition with our sister imprint David Fickling (or should that be brother, I wonder? Sorry, I digress.) We normally only publish adult fiction - in the ten years I've worked for Random House I can only think of two other books we've specifically published as crossover, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. And it got me thinking; what makes a book crossover, and why have we only recognised this phenomenon so recently?

Because adult and teen reading has always overlapped – right? But we don't always call that crossover - Jilly Cooper was probably the most widely read author among my (female) friends when I was at school. But I've never seen her marketed as crossover. And reading aloud the dirty bits out of Fanny Hill in the school canteen doesn't make that crossover either.

So on some level crossover has to be what we deem suitable for kids – what we as publishers can responsibly market to them. But that's not the whole story either. I read many of the classics from the age of 11 to 16; Jane Austen, Emily and Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, Thomas Hardy – all works I read as teen and associate with that age. All eminently suitable for the impressionable young mind. Well, ok. Mostly. But I've never seen them marketed as crossover (at least, not until Stephenie Meyer made Wuthering Heights vamptastic.)

I suppose one objection is that all those titles have adult protagonists (or at least their journeys continue into adulthood). And one thing shared by all the crossover books we've published, is that the main character is a child. So is a crossover book a book about children, that works for adults too? Well, then why isn't Frost in May crossover? Or Claudine a L'Ecole?

Or is a crossover book at bottom a children's book, with a marketing stamp saying “hey, you in the suit. Yes you. It's ok you know – you're allowed to like this too.”

Are we adults so hidebound that we have to be given permission to read stuff written for kids?

Well, in defiance of this notion I had a rummage in the attic, and spent the evening giving myself permission to re-read some wonderful books. Little House in the Big Woods. The Children of Green Knowe. The House at World's End. Anne of Green Gables. Charmed Life. Ordinary Jack... I urge you to read them all. Today. Go on! It's ok - you have my permission.

So. What would you nominate to cross over today?