From: Susan Greenberg <sigst+>
Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 13:29:54 -0400

Since the issue of "reviews" has been mentioned more than once, I would like to offer a perspective that hasn't been mentioned--at least not in this discussion--and that has been used in another context.

My husband has been a "reviewer" for the journal "Appraisal", which publishes reviews of science books for children. In that journal, as many of the librarians will recognize, there are 2 reviews for each volume or set. One is written by the librarian, and the other is written by the science "expert". (My husband does the science review). This format enables the future purchaser to have a picture of the quality of the writing and its age appropriateness, as well as the accuracy of the scientific material on which the text is based.

This approach would speak to the dual issues of "well-written" and
"accurate" in the assessment of multicultural literature. If the publishers would institute such a process *before* the books were published, many of these inaccurate, offensive texts would never hit the store shelves.

This last point--post-publication review--has been a glaring flaw that my husband has tried to influence over the years that he has been writing reviews. You can see that this issue is not unique to texts dealing with culture, but to all subjects for which there is the potential for inaccuracy, and for which there is the risk of long-term damage, because these texts remain in the hands of a public that is not well-enough informed about these subjects.

Just a parting"thank you" to all the contributors who have made this month's discussion so enlightening.

Susan Greenberg

 Fri, Oct 29, 1999 12:27 PM 00 Ginny Moore Kruse
  wrote:r



Susan I. Greenberg Dept. of Instruction and Learning School of Education University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh, PA 15260

phone: (412) 624!31 e-mail: sigst+ at pitt.edu
Received on Mon 01 Nov 1999 11:29:54 AM CST