Or two of them do, anyway. Some of you may have already seen that Shadow Scale has gotten a starred review from Kirkus Reviews. Well, it has also received a star from Booklist.

Cue Count Von Count: “Two beautiful stars, Ah-ah-ah!”

Those are stars, not bats. Yes, I’m sure. AH-AH-AH!

Seraphina got eight stars, an unbelievable number, a rare convergence of the literary heavens. It took some work for me to stop feeling, neurotically, that the second book had failed before it was even written, because how could it ever live up to the first? It couldn’t, on the star front anyway.

But we don’t judge our second children by our first — or at least, we shouldn’t — and now, if nothing else, we can say: “Shadow Scale got some stars!” Then we can back away gently from the glittering constellations, and maybe leave the counting to our publisher and the Count. He, at least, can’t seem to help it.