From: Leslie Hauschildt <lhauscht>
Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2007 11:21:50 -0700

One public librarian's opinion - a librarian who works with children from infants to middle schoolers. (oh wait! That's the age range the Newbery Award is for) Might I note that just because a book gets the Newbery, it doesn't mean you have to promote it or read it to all the children in that age range?

This is a tempest in a teapot - Lucky's story is not a story of one event or one word. It is a story of growing up, a story of widening horizons, a story of learning more.....learning more about herself, learning more about others, learning more about the world.

If every book for children had to adjusted to find the least offensive verbiage for every part of it's story, I honestly believe we would find the body of literature for children to be incredibly watered down, and we would defeat our purpose of creating, finding and providing reading materials for children that encourage them to develop a life-long love of reading.

Yes, the award is something that draws attention to one book - and how fabulous that we have an award for children's literature that garners as much attention as it does! But - it IS only one word in one book......we need to keep the bigger picture of what we do in mind in my opinion.


Leslie Hauschildt Head, Children's Information Services Evergreen Library, Jefferson County Public Library 5000 Highway 73, Evergreen, CO 80439 303-674-0780 x2 lhauscht at jefferson.lib.co.us
Received on Sun 18 Feb 2007 12:21:50 PM CST