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RE: Caldecott and Diversity Question 2 - Prize Overlap: Case Study 2004
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From: Charles Bayless <charles.bayless_at_ttmd.com>
Date: Mon, 20 May 2013 12:27:28 -0400
Claudia,
You ask an excellent question for highlighting the different approaches and goals we have and you also make a couple of statements where it seems I was not sufficiently clear.
Question: "Were the Honor books chosen that year clearly more "consequential" than THE SOUND OF A DOOR CLOSING
?"
My lack of clarity 1: "half of families are confronted with divorce, parents leaving, and sometimes returning, the theme of this book is universal and it too can be read across culture lines"
My lack of clarity 2: "Just because they comprise a smaller more focused set of texts which falls within the larger realm of what is considered for the Caldecott and Newbery awards does not mean they are less universal or less "consequential" than other books."
Your Question: "Were the Honor books chosen that year clearly more "consequential" than THE SOUND OF A DOOR CLOSING
?"
Your analysis looks at six books, the four Caldecott Honor and Medal winners for 2004 plus two other books published in 2003 that you believe were equally deserving of consideration. You make a reasoned argument as to why the two other books ought to have been considered based on your assessment of various speculative items and subjective judgments. That is not a criticism. All good argument and discovery begins with speculation and subjective guesses.
But I am not attempting to determine why different books were chosen. All the prizes are administered by the ALA and so I assume (pending contrary information), that the basic process and qualifications are reasonably uniform, subject to the normal variation year to year as the panels of judges change. We know the current process is inherently subjective because there are no fixed definitions of most distinctive, best quality, excellence, greatest eminence. My goal is not to define those terms or second guess how particular decisions were made. What I am seeking to do is fix a definition and associated measures that will allow us to evaluate how well the judges fulfilled their mission. As explained in my earlier post, I am using consequentiality as the definition and defining a consequential book as one which is read by many people, over time, frequently cited by others, and of interest to people and cultures beyond the US.
What I have been doing is looking at past winners and non-winners and looking at their objective, quantified consequentiality. It this approach which allows your question to be answered: "Were the Honor books chosen that year clearly more "consequential" than THE SOUND OF A DOOR CLOSING?" The objective answer is that Yes, the Caldecott winners were significantly more consequential than THE WAY A DOOR CLOSES or BEAUTIFUL BLACKBIRD.
The relevant measures of consequentiality (sufficient commercial demand to still be in print and generate multiple editions; citations by others in the field; universality and appeal to others as determined by whether translated and if translated, how many editions and languages) are as follows.
All six books are still in print. Only three of the books have any citation data (anything published within the last decade or so is hit or miss as to whether it has been subsequently cited in another book). The data for the six books you mentioned follows.
THE WAY A DOOR CLOSES - 3 editions. No foreign language editions. No citations.
BEAUTIFUL BLACKBIRD - 5 editions. No foreign language editions. In the third quartile (towards the bottom) of citations, about 30% less than DON'T LET THE PIGEON DRIVE THE BUS.
THE MAN WHO WALKED BETWEEN THE TOWERS - 26 editions. 5 foreign language editions in 4 languages. In the third quartile of citations, about 7% less than DON'T LET THE PIGEON DRIVE THE BUS.
ELLA SARAH GETS DRESSED - 13 editions. 3 foreign language editions in 2 languages. No citations.
WHAT DO YOU DO WITH A TAIL LIKE THIS? - 28 editions. 11 foreign language editions in 5 languages. No citations.
DON'T LET THE PIGEON DRIVE THE BUS - 42 editions. 17 foreign language editions in 7 languages. In the third quartile of citations.
At the time of their decision, the Caldecott judges could not, of course, know any of this. But whatever subjective mechanism they used to make their decisions, they were pretty accurate with one exception. In hindsight, it appears that were Medals awarded based on consequentiality, DON'T LET THE PIGEON DRIVE THE BUS would have been the clear Medal winner and that THE MAN WHO WALKED BETWEEN THE TOWERS would have run a close race with WHAT DO YOU DO WITH A TAIL LIKE THIS? for first place in honors. Why was THE TOWERS chosen over PIGEON? I can't know. Perhaps it was the expensive design to which you allude. Perhaps it had a bigger or more effective marketing campaign. I can't, from the numbers available, say why THE TOWERS was chosen over PIGEON. All I can say is that nearly a decade on, it is clearer that PIGEON is actually the more consequential of the two books. It also seems clear that whatever individual subjective assessments of their merits might be, that neither THE WAY A DOOR CLOSES or BEAUTIFUL BLACK BIRD was in the same league of consequentiality as any of the others.
None of this disavows any person's subjective judgment of any book. All it addresses is the objective information.
My lack of clarity 1: "half of families are confronted with divorce, parents leaving, and sometimes returning, the theme of this book is universal and it too can be read across culture lines"
We are using universal in different fashions. I am defining universalism in terms of having the quality that a book is read by many other people in many other cultures. The three measures I am using are 1) whether a book is translated at all, 2) if a book is translated, into how many languages is it translated, and 3) how many foreign language editions are there? I am not defining universalism by themes such as death, love, divorce, courage, etc. I acknowledge these as universal but whether an author has developed them in such a fashion as to be interesting outside of the context of American culture is what I am really after. I am measuring the actual extent of reading across cultures rather than the potential to be read across cultures.
My lack of clarity 2: "Just because they comprise a smaller more focused set of texts which falls within the larger realm of what is considered for the Caldecott and Newbery awards does not mean they are less universal or less "consequential" than other books."
That is not what I am saying. I am not saying that they a priori have less universal appeal BECAUSE they are a subset of the superset of candidates considered by Caldecott and Newbery. I am seeking to explain why it is that books chosen from a smaller pool are less likely to have high consequentiality numbers (which is what we see when we compare Caldecott and CSK numbers). By analogy, if I am looking for someone who can bench press 500 pounds, I am far likelier to find that individual in a crowd of 1,000 people than in a crowd of 10 people that is simply a subset of the larger group. It is certainly possible that there is someone capable of bench pressing 500 pounds in the 10 person crowd, just far less probable. Correspondingly, if I am seeking the "most distinguished American picture book", it is necessarily true that there is a greater probability of finding it among a superset of 1,000 candidates than in a subset of ten candidates. Not impossible to find it in the subset, just less likely.
This is a mathematical issue, not a judgment issue. An elaborate example. A graduating class of 1,000. Alumni and fitness buff "Ox" Williamson funds an award to every member of the class who can bench press 500 pounds. Only about 0.5% in any given year are able to do so, about 5 students in the class. Ox randomly chooses one of the five (20% chance) for a medal and the other four get an honorable mention certificate. The Ox Award brings significant prestige.
Not to be outdone, fellow alum and sports enthusiast, "Lefty" Awkright wants to bring attention to the particular challenges faced by left handed weight lifters. He funds a further award to recognize south paws who can bench press 500 pounds. If no left hander can press 500, the award goes to the next most fit.
How often will someone win both prizes? Only 7% of the population is left handed so the chance of the Ox Medal winner being left handed is 7%. With a 7% chance of both conditions occurring (winning the Ox Medal and being left handed), you would expect there to be a double Winner (Ox Medal and Lefty award) once every 14 years (1.0/0.07)
How often would you expect there to be a double winner between the Caldecott and CSK? Applying the above formula to the question we face, the numbers are different but the formula the same, other than that there are two controlling variables rather than one. If we want to know the chances of winning both the Caldecott and CSK in the same year we have to determine the odds that if someone has won the Caldecott, what are the odds that they are also African American AND that the subject that they have chosen is also African American. Based on demographics, African Americans are 13% of the general population, 5% of the bibliocentric population, and 1.8% of authors of children's books (according to CCBC figures). Let's use the more generous 13% figure. Based on CCBC 2012 numbers, 3.3% of children's books are about African Americans. Consequently one would expect in any given year that there would be a 0.033X0.13 0.00429 chance of someone winning the Caldecott Medal AND being African American (13% chance) AND for the story being about African Americans (3.3% chance). In other words, one would expect to see a dual winner for the same title between the Caldecott and the CSK (meeting all three conditions of sufficient quality for the Caldecott AND being by an African American AND being about African Americans) once every 233 years (1.0/0.00429).
What about an African American winning the Caldecott Medal alone, regardless of subject. That would be 13%, i.e. once every 8 years. The Caldecott is tracking at once every 16 years, half the number we would expect based on demographics. However, if we use cultural bibliocentricity (numbers in the first post) we would expect that the number of African Americans winning the Caldecott Medal would be 5% or once every twenty years; more in line with the existing win rate. And if we use the CCBC numbers for African American authors/illustrators of children's books, 1.9%, then we would expect an African American winner of the Caldecott Medal ever 53 years.
Charles
Received on Mon 20 May 2013 12:27:28 PM CDT
Date: Mon, 20 May 2013 12:27:28 -0400
Claudia,
You ask an excellent question for highlighting the different approaches and goals we have and you also make a couple of statements where it seems I was not sufficiently clear.
Question: "Were the Honor books chosen that year clearly more "consequential" than THE SOUND OF A DOOR CLOSING
?"
My lack of clarity 1: "half of families are confronted with divorce, parents leaving, and sometimes returning, the theme of this book is universal and it too can be read across culture lines"
My lack of clarity 2: "Just because they comprise a smaller more focused set of texts which falls within the larger realm of what is considered for the Caldecott and Newbery awards does not mean they are less universal or less "consequential" than other books."
Your Question: "Were the Honor books chosen that year clearly more "consequential" than THE SOUND OF A DOOR CLOSING
?"
Your analysis looks at six books, the four Caldecott Honor and Medal winners for 2004 plus two other books published in 2003 that you believe were equally deserving of consideration. You make a reasoned argument as to why the two other books ought to have been considered based on your assessment of various speculative items and subjective judgments. That is not a criticism. All good argument and discovery begins with speculation and subjective guesses.
But I am not attempting to determine why different books were chosen. All the prizes are administered by the ALA and so I assume (pending contrary information), that the basic process and qualifications are reasonably uniform, subject to the normal variation year to year as the panels of judges change. We know the current process is inherently subjective because there are no fixed definitions of most distinctive, best quality, excellence, greatest eminence. My goal is not to define those terms or second guess how particular decisions were made. What I am seeking to do is fix a definition and associated measures that will allow us to evaluate how well the judges fulfilled their mission. As explained in my earlier post, I am using consequentiality as the definition and defining a consequential book as one which is read by many people, over time, frequently cited by others, and of interest to people and cultures beyond the US.
What I have been doing is looking at past winners and non-winners and looking at their objective, quantified consequentiality. It this approach which allows your question to be answered: "Were the Honor books chosen that year clearly more "consequential" than THE SOUND OF A DOOR CLOSING?" The objective answer is that Yes, the Caldecott winners were significantly more consequential than THE WAY A DOOR CLOSES or BEAUTIFUL BLACKBIRD.
The relevant measures of consequentiality (sufficient commercial demand to still be in print and generate multiple editions; citations by others in the field; universality and appeal to others as determined by whether translated and if translated, how many editions and languages) are as follows.
All six books are still in print. Only three of the books have any citation data (anything published within the last decade or so is hit or miss as to whether it has been subsequently cited in another book). The data for the six books you mentioned follows.
THE WAY A DOOR CLOSES - 3 editions. No foreign language editions. No citations.
BEAUTIFUL BLACKBIRD - 5 editions. No foreign language editions. In the third quartile (towards the bottom) of citations, about 30% less than DON'T LET THE PIGEON DRIVE THE BUS.
THE MAN WHO WALKED BETWEEN THE TOWERS - 26 editions. 5 foreign language editions in 4 languages. In the third quartile of citations, about 7% less than DON'T LET THE PIGEON DRIVE THE BUS.
ELLA SARAH GETS DRESSED - 13 editions. 3 foreign language editions in 2 languages. No citations.
WHAT DO YOU DO WITH A TAIL LIKE THIS? - 28 editions. 11 foreign language editions in 5 languages. No citations.
DON'T LET THE PIGEON DRIVE THE BUS - 42 editions. 17 foreign language editions in 7 languages. In the third quartile of citations.
At the time of their decision, the Caldecott judges could not, of course, know any of this. But whatever subjective mechanism they used to make their decisions, they were pretty accurate with one exception. In hindsight, it appears that were Medals awarded based on consequentiality, DON'T LET THE PIGEON DRIVE THE BUS would have been the clear Medal winner and that THE MAN WHO WALKED BETWEEN THE TOWERS would have run a close race with WHAT DO YOU DO WITH A TAIL LIKE THIS? for first place in honors. Why was THE TOWERS chosen over PIGEON? I can't know. Perhaps it was the expensive design to which you allude. Perhaps it had a bigger or more effective marketing campaign. I can't, from the numbers available, say why THE TOWERS was chosen over PIGEON. All I can say is that nearly a decade on, it is clearer that PIGEON is actually the more consequential of the two books. It also seems clear that whatever individual subjective assessments of their merits might be, that neither THE WAY A DOOR CLOSES or BEAUTIFUL BLACK BIRD was in the same league of consequentiality as any of the others.
None of this disavows any person's subjective judgment of any book. All it addresses is the objective information.
My lack of clarity 1: "half of families are confronted with divorce, parents leaving, and sometimes returning, the theme of this book is universal and it too can be read across culture lines"
We are using universal in different fashions. I am defining universalism in terms of having the quality that a book is read by many other people in many other cultures. The three measures I am using are 1) whether a book is translated at all, 2) if a book is translated, into how many languages is it translated, and 3) how many foreign language editions are there? I am not defining universalism by themes such as death, love, divorce, courage, etc. I acknowledge these as universal but whether an author has developed them in such a fashion as to be interesting outside of the context of American culture is what I am really after. I am measuring the actual extent of reading across cultures rather than the potential to be read across cultures.
My lack of clarity 2: "Just because they comprise a smaller more focused set of texts which falls within the larger realm of what is considered for the Caldecott and Newbery awards does not mean they are less universal or less "consequential" than other books."
That is not what I am saying. I am not saying that they a priori have less universal appeal BECAUSE they are a subset of the superset of candidates considered by Caldecott and Newbery. I am seeking to explain why it is that books chosen from a smaller pool are less likely to have high consequentiality numbers (which is what we see when we compare Caldecott and CSK numbers). By analogy, if I am looking for someone who can bench press 500 pounds, I am far likelier to find that individual in a crowd of 1,000 people than in a crowd of 10 people that is simply a subset of the larger group. It is certainly possible that there is someone capable of bench pressing 500 pounds in the 10 person crowd, just far less probable. Correspondingly, if I am seeking the "most distinguished American picture book", it is necessarily true that there is a greater probability of finding it among a superset of 1,000 candidates than in a subset of ten candidates. Not impossible to find it in the subset, just less likely.
This is a mathematical issue, not a judgment issue. An elaborate example. A graduating class of 1,000. Alumni and fitness buff "Ox" Williamson funds an award to every member of the class who can bench press 500 pounds. Only about 0.5% in any given year are able to do so, about 5 students in the class. Ox randomly chooses one of the five (20% chance) for a medal and the other four get an honorable mention certificate. The Ox Award brings significant prestige.
Not to be outdone, fellow alum and sports enthusiast, "Lefty" Awkright wants to bring attention to the particular challenges faced by left handed weight lifters. He funds a further award to recognize south paws who can bench press 500 pounds. If no left hander can press 500, the award goes to the next most fit.
How often will someone win both prizes? Only 7% of the population is left handed so the chance of the Ox Medal winner being left handed is 7%. With a 7% chance of both conditions occurring (winning the Ox Medal and being left handed), you would expect there to be a double Winner (Ox Medal and Lefty award) once every 14 years (1.0/0.07)
How often would you expect there to be a double winner between the Caldecott and CSK? Applying the above formula to the question we face, the numbers are different but the formula the same, other than that there are two controlling variables rather than one. If we want to know the chances of winning both the Caldecott and CSK in the same year we have to determine the odds that if someone has won the Caldecott, what are the odds that they are also African American AND that the subject that they have chosen is also African American. Based on demographics, African Americans are 13% of the general population, 5% of the bibliocentric population, and 1.8% of authors of children's books (according to CCBC figures). Let's use the more generous 13% figure. Based on CCBC 2012 numbers, 3.3% of children's books are about African Americans. Consequently one would expect in any given year that there would be a 0.033X0.13 0.00429 chance of someone winning the Caldecott Medal AND being African American (13% chance) AND for the story being about African Americans (3.3% chance). In other words, one would expect to see a dual winner for the same title between the Caldecott and the CSK (meeting all three conditions of sufficient quality for the Caldecott AND being by an African American AND being about African Americans) once every 233 years (1.0/0.00429).
What about an African American winning the Caldecott Medal alone, regardless of subject. That would be 13%, i.e. once every 8 years. The Caldecott is tracking at once every 16 years, half the number we would expect based on demographics. However, if we use cultural bibliocentricity (numbers in the first post) we would expect that the number of African Americans winning the Caldecott Medal would be 5% or once every twenty years; more in line with the existing win rate. And if we use the CCBC numbers for African American authors/illustrators of children's books, 1.9%, then we would expect an African American winner of the Caldecott Medal ever 53 years.
Charles
Received on Mon 20 May 2013 12:27:28 PM CDT
