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Re: "Marginal" Awards
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From: Stacy Whitman <stacylwhitman_at_gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 04 Feb 2014 12:34:38 -0500
[Sorry if this posts more than once--my messages keep getting rejected for quoting too much of another message.]
While the CSK and the Belpre are somewhat more well-known, the ethnic awards that are not sponsored by ALSC are virtually unknown in many circles. I didn't even know that the APALA awards existed until one of the books published by my company won it a few years ago. The APALA and AIYLA awards aren't announced at the same time as the Newbery, Printz, CSK, and Belpre, and so few people, even librarians, know to seek out the award lists.
I've noticed this year a greater effort to let people know about those other awards--the ALSC blog featured the APALA, AIYLA, and Amelia Bloomer awards<http://www.alsc.ala.org/blog/2014/01/other-kidlit-awards-from-alamw14/>, and I saw more people tweeting about the lists and sharing them on Twitter and Tumblr. (And I'm grateful for that increased awareness because, full disclosure, one of my books, KILLER OF ENEMIES by Joseph Bruchac, won the AIYLA award this year for best YA book.)
I think that these awards should be considered equally in terms of consideration for including in library collections, but awareness is often a factor, as is prioritizing. If a community is largely African American, a librarian might focus more on the CSK vs. the APALA or Belpre, especially if funding is tight. When you have so few mirrors for the population you serve, it's completely understandable that a focus on mirrors rather than windows might happen.
And it does come down to numbers again--if only Asian Americans are paying attention to the APALA awards, and only Native Americans to the AIYLA awards, etc., then of course they're going to be less well known because numbers are not on their side, population-wise. But should it come down to just concentration in the population?
This is where we get back into the question of who a book is for, and why so often gatekeepers (librarians, teachers, parents, publishers, etc.) feel that books must match readership in ethnicity and race.
In "Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors<http://www.rif.org/us/literacy-resources/multicultural/mirrors-windows-and-sliding-glass-doors.htm>," an article by Rudine Sims Bishop (did someone link it already? Just in case, I'm linking it again), she talks about how important the cross-cultural experience can be: "readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author." I think too often gatekeepers underestimate white children's capacity for empathy with characters who are not of their own background, and need to remember that even in homogeneous areas, kids need to read a wide diversity of books.
So many times, I've heard librarians and teachers tell me when they hear about my diverse books, "Oh, but our district isn't diverse at all." A lack of diversity in an area becomes the excuse for a lack of diversity in books, when in fact, I think the opposite should be true: a lack of diversity in an area should be a reason to increase diversity in the books the patrons have available to them, to open up the world to them. Librarians and teachers in non-diverse areas should be paying a whole lot more attention to the ethnic awards than perhaps they do.
Best,
Stacy Whitman Publisher Tu Books, an imprint of Lee & Low Books http://www.leeandlow.com/p/tu.mhtml swhitman_at_leeandlow.com
On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 11:15 AM, Foote, Diane <dfoote_at_dom.edu> wrote:
>
>> I disagree strongly with the notion that ethnic awards are
>> "marginalized." If you compare them to the Caldecott and Newbery, maybe so.
>> But by that measure, every single existing children's book award is
>> marginalized, including the National Book Award. It's just really hard to
>> compare awards that have been around for 75+ years with everything else. If
>> Belpre and CSK are marginalized, then so are the Sibert, Geisel, Wilder,
>> Carnegie, Batchelder, etc. awards.
>>
>> ...I do think awareness of the Belpre will grow faster than awareness
>> for other awards, given the enormous growth of Latinos as a portion of the
>> U.S. population.
>>
>>
Date: Tue, 04 Feb 2014 12:34:38 -0500
[Sorry if this posts more than once--my messages keep getting rejected for quoting too much of another message.]
While the CSK and the Belpre are somewhat more well-known, the ethnic awards that are not sponsored by ALSC are virtually unknown in many circles. I didn't even know that the APALA awards existed until one of the books published by my company won it a few years ago. The APALA and AIYLA awards aren't announced at the same time as the Newbery, Printz, CSK, and Belpre, and so few people, even librarians, know to seek out the award lists.
I've noticed this year a greater effort to let people know about those other awards--the ALSC blog featured the APALA, AIYLA, and Amelia Bloomer awards<http://www.alsc.ala.org/blog/2014/01/other-kidlit-awards-from-alamw14/>, and I saw more people tweeting about the lists and sharing them on Twitter and Tumblr. (And I'm grateful for that increased awareness because, full disclosure, one of my books, KILLER OF ENEMIES by Joseph Bruchac, won the AIYLA award this year for best YA book.)
I think that these awards should be considered equally in terms of consideration for including in library collections, but awareness is often a factor, as is prioritizing. If a community is largely African American, a librarian might focus more on the CSK vs. the APALA or Belpre, especially if funding is tight. When you have so few mirrors for the population you serve, it's completely understandable that a focus on mirrors rather than windows might happen.
And it does come down to numbers again--if only Asian Americans are paying attention to the APALA awards, and only Native Americans to the AIYLA awards, etc., then of course they're going to be less well known because numbers are not on their side, population-wise. But should it come down to just concentration in the population?
This is where we get back into the question of who a book is for, and why so often gatekeepers (librarians, teachers, parents, publishers, etc.) feel that books must match readership in ethnicity and race.
In "Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors<http://www.rif.org/us/literacy-resources/multicultural/mirrors-windows-and-sliding-glass-doors.htm>," an article by Rudine Sims Bishop (did someone link it already? Just in case, I'm linking it again), she talks about how important the cross-cultural experience can be: "readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author." I think too often gatekeepers underestimate white children's capacity for empathy with characters who are not of their own background, and need to remember that even in homogeneous areas, kids need to read a wide diversity of books.
So many times, I've heard librarians and teachers tell me when they hear about my diverse books, "Oh, but our district isn't diverse at all." A lack of diversity in an area becomes the excuse for a lack of diversity in books, when in fact, I think the opposite should be true: a lack of diversity in an area should be a reason to increase diversity in the books the patrons have available to them, to open up the world to them. Librarians and teachers in non-diverse areas should be paying a whole lot more attention to the ethnic awards than perhaps they do.
Best,
Stacy Whitman Publisher Tu Books, an imprint of Lee & Low Books http://www.leeandlow.com/p/tu.mhtml swhitman_at_leeandlow.com
On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 11:15 AM, Foote, Diane <dfoote_at_dom.edu> wrote:
>
>> I disagree strongly with the notion that ethnic awards are
>> "marginalized." If you compare them to the Caldecott and Newbery, maybe so.
>> But by that measure, every single existing children's book award is
>> marginalized, including the National Book Award. It's just really hard to
>> compare awards that have been around for 75+ years with everything else. If
>> Belpre and CSK are marginalized, then so are the Sibert, Geisel, Wilder,
>> Carnegie, Batchelder, etc. awards.
>>
>> ...I do think awareness of the Belpre will grow faster than awareness
>> for other awards, given the enormous growth of Latinos as a portion of the
>> U.S. population.
>>
>>
---
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Received on Tue 04 Feb 2014 11:36:03 AM CST
