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From: Nancy Thalia Reynolds <ntreynolds_at_comcast.net>
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 15:17:28 +0000 (UTC)
Debbie,В the issue of our (consumers') responsibility as readers is one that's been concerning me for a long time. I agree completely. There are m any pieces to this puzzle. One of them is book reviews, a subject that has come up before. Finding reviews that are not thinly veiled (or unveiled) pr omotion is becoming more difficult. When those who sell books drive the boo k-reviewing bus, content becomes another form of advertising.
There are informed sources out there to help readers assess quality, like y our blog and Cynthia Leitich Smith's. But of course that doesn't address th e issue of how these flawed works came to be published in the first place, consuming publishing resources that might have gone to createВ more cre dible books.
It seems likely that given publishing realities, for change to come,В c onsumers will need to demand it. I've already pointed out that the low comp ensation writers ofВ nonfiction books, especially series,В for chil dren receive tends to work against depth. There are some exceptions though.
Frustrated with the lack of reading resources available for my mixed-race d aughter, we found anthologies of first-person accounts byВ kids helpful , for example Pearl Fuyu Gaskin's WHAT ARE YOU? This book consists of inter views with mixed-race teens and young adults about how their heritage has s haped their lives. This was a vast improvement over series nonfiction about race, whichВ tended to be breezy summaries of generic "issues" with ex amples drawn from the lives of sports and film celebrities, most of whom ha ve a short shelf life. And even those whose names readers still recognize 5 years later seldom lead lives that correspond to those of readers.
Series that tackle controversial issues by offering "for" and "against" vie wpoints can be helpful. However, I have grown wary, and weary,В of the American habit of presenting all such issues as having 2 sides of more or l ess equal weight. This binary narrative works against depth and can be insu ltingly wrong. Many issues have multiple facets, which can be inconvenient and difficult to present in a simple book format for kids. That doesn't mea n it's impossible. Marc and other nonfiction writers do that. This binary a pproach can be given more depth when it's presented entirely throughВ w riting by itsВ partisan adherents and when the binary narrative fits th e issue (for example, abortion). But the binary approach has a subtext that tells readers that important issues are adversarial (in a courtroom kind o f way) and that viewpoints which stress one side over another are, by defin ition, extreme and therefore at least partly suspect. My guess is that this approach frees the reader from the responsib ility of assigning value to an y particular point of view and thereby committing to it. Yet in my view, cr itical thinking requires that step eventually.
Nancy Thalia Reynolds MIXED HERITAGE IN YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE (Scarecrow Press, 2009)
edge/experience in citing, indexing, and contracts...В Lots of useful info to ponder. You posed an excellent question. When there is so much supe rficiality, how will change occur? Part of that responsibility lies with us (the consumers). If we buy, for example, THE BUFFALO ARE BACK, do we signa l that we're willing to spend our money on a flawed product? Course, you ha ve to know its flawed in the first place. And, what constitutes "flawed" di
Received on Tue 19 Oct 2010 03:17:28 PM CDT
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 15:17:28 +0000 (UTC)
Debbie,В the issue of our (consumers') responsibility as readers is one that's been concerning me for a long time. I agree completely. There are m any pieces to this puzzle. One of them is book reviews, a subject that has come up before. Finding reviews that are not thinly veiled (or unveiled) pr omotion is becoming more difficult. When those who sell books drive the boo k-reviewing bus, content becomes another form of advertising.
There are informed sources out there to help readers assess quality, like y our blog and Cynthia Leitich Smith's. But of course that doesn't address th e issue of how these flawed works came to be published in the first place, consuming publishing resources that might have gone to createВ more cre dible books.
It seems likely that given publishing realities, for change to come,В c onsumers will need to demand it. I've already pointed out that the low comp ensation writers ofВ nonfiction books, especially series,В for chil dren receive tends to work against depth. There are some exceptions though.
Frustrated with the lack of reading resources available for my mixed-race d aughter, we found anthologies of first-person accounts byВ kids helpful , for example Pearl Fuyu Gaskin's WHAT ARE YOU? This book consists of inter views with mixed-race teens and young adults about how their heritage has s haped their lives. This was a vast improvement over series nonfiction about race, whichВ tended to be breezy summaries of generic "issues" with ex amples drawn from the lives of sports and film celebrities, most of whom ha ve a short shelf life. And even those whose names readers still recognize 5 years later seldom lead lives that correspond to those of readers.
Series that tackle controversial issues by offering "for" and "against" vie wpoints can be helpful. However, I have grown wary, and weary,В of the American habit of presenting all such issues as having 2 sides of more or l ess equal weight. This binary narrative works against depth and can be insu ltingly wrong. Many issues have multiple facets, which can be inconvenient and difficult to present in a simple book format for kids. That doesn't mea n it's impossible. Marc and other nonfiction writers do that. This binary a pproach can be given more depth when it's presented entirely throughВ w riting by itsВ partisan adherents and when the binary narrative fits th e issue (for example, abortion). But the binary approach has a subtext that tells readers that important issues are adversarial (in a courtroom kind o f way) and that viewpoints which stress one side over another are, by defin ition, extreme and therefore at least partly suspect. My guess is that this approach frees the reader from the responsib ility of assigning value to an y particular point of view and thereby committing to it. Yet in my view, cr itical thinking requires that step eventually.
Nancy Thalia Reynolds MIXED HERITAGE IN YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE (Scarecrow Press, 2009)
edge/experience in citing, indexing, and contracts...В Lots of useful info to ponder. You posed an excellent question. When there is so much supe rficiality, how will change occur? Part of that responsibility lies with us (the consumers). If we buy, for example, THE BUFFALO ARE BACK, do we signa l that we're willing to spend our money on a flawed product? Course, you ha ve to know its flawed in the first place. And, what constitutes "flawed" di
Received on Tue 19 Oct 2010 03:17:28 PM CDT
