Poor Intern Alexis, saddled with her responsibility to review the latest Times Book Review. Because we're such meanies, we made Alexis drag the paper to the Sunday night premiere of Walk the Line, where she did most of her reading (and, we hope, caught the eye of Joaquin Phoenix for being such an intellectual). This week, the Review indulges the ankle-biters with its Children's Books section, which does a solid nosedive in quality by devoting space to the work of Queer Eye star Carson Kressley and his book about unicorns. After the jump, Alexis delves into the homo-kiddie-lit and requisite Maureen Dowd review.

We read the 19-page-long Children's Books section while we were at the Walk the Line premiere last night waiting for the movie to begin, and let's just say, in doing so, we missed seeing Joaquin Phoenix enter the theater and we did not, as we had hoped, get to give Tyler Hilton a high five. And let's just say, we were not pleased!

There was little to report in the world of children's literature, except to say that we never thought we'd be alive to see the day when Carson Kressley made an appearance in the New York Times Book Review — but oh we're alive. Very, very alive. John Schwartz reviews Kressley's children's book, "You're Different and That's Super," and not surprisingly, comes to the conclusion that Kressley "is not a gifted writer." He goes on: "The other colts have names like Tuckabuckaway and Wooligan, and their close buddies are their "besties," and the young horses discover "scrum-diddly-umptious apples together." It's literary Splenda, and it should make any parent carefully consider the prospect of reading the story over and over again. It could make an adult get an eensy-weensy bit throwy-uppy."

Oh, how gay, how very, very gay. What's even gayer is that this is a book about a unicorn. Writes Schwartz: "Initially, just a little prettier than the rest of his friends, Trumpet the horse grows a big horn in a funny place the fact that Trumpet's distinction is his great big horn is, well, the sort of thing that gets Focus on the Family very upset." Schwartz concludes the review with this nugget of wisdom: "Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay McHomosexual."

Patricia J. Williams, the Nation columnist who we respect very much, makes the awkwardest transition we've seen in a long, long time in her review of "Lies and Other Tall Tales." "Not long ago," she writes, "I was at a dinner party of smart, well-heeled Manhattanites, all of whom were remembering their first apartment after college - that walk-up with the kitchen sink that was designed to do double duty as a bathtub, or the warehouse space before it became a loft By the end of the evening the air was thick with real-estate bluster What we were all engaged in, I realized, was an Upper West Side version of "playing the dozens." Lying, in other words, but oh what fun! Before there was rap, you see, there was playing the dozens, that satisfying sport of competitive exaggeration. It is an African-American folk tradition that is very much akin to what my prosperous friends were doing

Going from Central Park West red diaper baby bantering to African-American folk tradition. Oh goodness. This, right here, is why the Democratic Party is in trouble.

There was one children's book review, though, that we did not regret reading, and that was Jenny Allen's review of "The Baby on the Way" and "Show Way." She's so funny! About "The Baby on the Way," a book about a young tot who's coming to terms with his new baby sibling, Allen writes: "Near the end of the story, Jamal asks his grandmother if she thinks that one day somebody "will ask if I was ever a baby." "Yes, sweetheart," she tells him. "If you should live so long." Maybe this is just a turn of phrase, like "if I should die before I wake," of a person from the pre-therapy generation, or maybe Jamal's grandmother is speaking about the violence that snatches the lives of so many young African-American men. Either way, it strikes a melancholy note."

This made us laugh out loud and Topher Grace may or may not have heard us. Topher, if you're out there somewhere, sorry and we think your new moustache is cute, not creepy!

Are Men Necessary?
 By Maureen Dowd
Reviewed by Kathryn Harrison

We almost skipped over this review because we thought it was part of the Children's Section and after 19 pages, had really, really had enough! That might have been what the editors had in mind cause this review was not so favorable!! Essentially, Harrison's problem is this: "Consumed over a cup of coffee, 800 words provide Dowd the ideal length to call her readers' attention to the ephemera at hand that may reveal larger trends and developments. But smart remarks are reductive and anti-ruminative; not only do they not encourage deeper analysis, they stymie it."

We really loved this bit of catty speculation because, well, "catty speculation" is practically our middle name! And so:

"A friend of mine called nearly in tears the day she won a Pulitzer," Dowd reports in a passage about men threatened by successful women. "'Now,' she moaned, 'I'll never get a date!'" Reading this, I can't help wondering if Dowd is that self-same "friend." After all, it's rare that she resists naming her friends, most of whom have names worth dropping: "my witty friend Frank Bruni, the New York Times restaurant critic"; "my friend Leon Wieseltier"; "the current Cosmo editor, my friend Kate White"; "my late friend Art Cooper, the editor of GQ for 20 years"; "my pal Craig Bierko"; et al.

What a scandalous proposition! If true, would this mean that Maureen was guilty of not revealing her sources. Could she then potentially join Judy Miller?! That there is one "gal pal" she's not so fond of calling up, or name-dropping. There's a fancy lady who's not getting any dates any time soon, unless it's from Shirley Cherry, inmate #69696969, from Camp Cupcake or wherever.