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Re: Multicultural Statistics for 2013
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From: bookmarch_at_aol.com
Date: Tue, 04 Feb 2014 12:19:43 -0500 (EST)
Going forward I would urge CCBC to do more to differentiate kinds of books.
For example, books related to math it would seem to me have little to nothing to do with the self-identified ethnicity of the author -- outside of a very limited few about counting, say, in a given culture.
Books about most aspects of science, again, seem irrelevant to any study of representation and authenticity -- other than that, as I've written, I think more authors from under-represented groups should be encouraged to write about anything and everything that interests them. One question I would love to see teased out from the stats is about STEM: how many books from authors of under-represented groups do we have on STEM subjects, which authors, which subjects -- because if we say that young people need authors who resemble then, surely that is in all areas expressly including Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.
Books about many aspects of history strike me as more related to the author's depth of research -- for example about Ancient Rome, or The Crusades, or the Aztecs -- then his or her ethnicity -- nor is it clear to me how such subjects should be tabulated -- the Aztecs were expressly not Latino, they were destroyed by the Spanish. And there were Africans who rose high in Rome.
Books in series where the author is a doing work-for-hire writing within a template from the publisher may inflate a book count -- series run long -- but are not author-driven -- the author does not select the subject or treatment. I would exclude such books.
If we want apples to apples comparison I suggest the total of books sent to CCBC be parsed by subject and by series versus individual title. Once we have cleared the field we can look at who writes what, who publishes what, and of crucial importance: who reads what?
Marc Aronson
Date: Tue, 04 Feb 2014 12:19:43 -0500 (EST)
Going forward I would urge CCBC to do more to differentiate kinds of books.
For example, books related to math it would seem to me have little to nothing to do with the self-identified ethnicity of the author -- outside of a very limited few about counting, say, in a given culture.
Books about most aspects of science, again, seem irrelevant to any study of representation and authenticity -- other than that, as I've written, I think more authors from under-represented groups should be encouraged to write about anything and everything that interests them. One question I would love to see teased out from the stats is about STEM: how many books from authors of under-represented groups do we have on STEM subjects, which authors, which subjects -- because if we say that young people need authors who resemble then, surely that is in all areas expressly including Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.
Books about many aspects of history strike me as more related to the author's depth of research -- for example about Ancient Rome, or The Crusades, or the Aztecs -- then his or her ethnicity -- nor is it clear to me how such subjects should be tabulated -- the Aztecs were expressly not Latino, they were destroyed by the Spanish. And there were Africans who rose high in Rome.
Books in series where the author is a doing work-for-hire writing within a template from the publisher may inflate a book count -- series run long -- but are not author-driven -- the author does not select the subject or treatment. I would exclude such books.
If we want apples to apples comparison I suggest the total of books sent to CCBC be parsed by subject and by series versus individual title. Once we have cleared the field we can look at who writes what, who publishes what, and of crucial importance: who reads what?
Marc Aronson
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Received on Tue 04 Feb 2014 11:21:37 AM CST
