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RE: "Marginal" Awards
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From: Charles Bayless <charles.bayless_at_ttmd.com>
Date: Tue, 04 Feb 2014 14:54:00 -0500
Christine,
I can't speak to your other points but I can provide some empirical meat regarding broadening CSK. A couple of years ago I was looking at a range of adult and children's literary prizes in terms of how effective they were predicting commercial success and book longevity (years continuously in print). CSK had the worst performance of any of the prizes. Books went out of print much sooner, there were fewer editions produced in the US, and there were many fewer foreign editions and foreign translations.
Part of this, as you say, is probably a correlation with topical issues rather than race. Foreign markets are unlikely to have the same level of interest in US Civil Rights history or slavery and therefore fewer translations. Similarly in the US. If there is a high correlation between AA authors and books about Civil Rights history, and there is declining interest in new titles about that history, then an observed decline in AA authors is not so much about an antipathy towards AA authors but instead would be about a decline in interest about their chosen subject. The direction of causality can sometimes be obscure.
The CSK numbers were so markedly different than other prizes, that I dug a little further. One thing that I suspect is also a likely contributor to the reputation issue is not just narrowness of focus but also insularity. The CSK had a far higher rate of multiple repeat winners. Basically there were a handful of authors winning the prize year in and year out. Don't know if that was a function of few authors or something in the judging process but it was notable.
The upshot is that, for a variety of reasons, the CSK is currently an award with a narrow focus of topic and a constricted pool of talent which I suspect is what is contributing to the low numbers in terms of duration, editions and translations.
Charles
-----Original Message----- From: Christine Taylor-Butler [mailto:kansascitymom_at_earthlink.net] Sent: Tuesday, February 04, 2014 1:58 PM To: CCBC Network Subject: Re: [ccbc-net] "Marginal" Awards
I've been at a child lit retreat all weekend and trying to follow the conversation between sessions. But thought I would respond to this issue of
"marginalization." The original comment is accurate - and not in the way that other awards are "marginalized" but in the way many of the players involved speak of them.
I sat through several days of the Notables discussion in Boston several years ago and heard, with my own ears, the complaining and "whining" about having to include CSK award winners on the Notables list because it WAS NOT A MAJOR award. The comments were reinforced by the committee chair who added that CSK winners needed to be voted on separately because they are not grandfathered like other awards. At which point two librarians complained it would cut their yield re: the books they wanted to vote for. I then reviewed my notes and realized that all of the books (except one) written or illustrated by African Americans were criticized as substandard during the discussions. No people of color were present on the panel.
There is a sense that our books are considered "less than". And while I'm loathe to paint an entire organization for the attitudes of what may be a small percentage of members, but I'd been hearing for years from other ALA committee members that there is a pervasive attitude that books by African Americans can be dismissed for consideration for a Printz or Newbery because African Americans have "their own" category.
Likewise, the Amazon and Barnes and Noble email announcements don't include CSK. A recent search for American Library Awards on their site yielded Caldecott, Newbery, Printz, Children's Choice Awards, but not the ethnic awards.
But looking at it from a consumer point of view - I would also task CSK to look more broadly at the books they choose. Part of the marginalization comes from the target consumer which may stem from the narrow range of topics. Even when you have a book such as P.S. Be Eleven, the audience is already trained to turn a deaf ear to the award winners because, in the past, the books have been so heavily skewed towards civil rights and slavery or are historical and set in the past. They've developed a reputation for being written by "those people" FOR "those people" and as such have little presence in a bookstore and garner little interest from independent readers who are kids of color exposed to and devouring a wider range of topics.
There is no simple solution. There are problems throughout the entire supply chain. And the problem rests squarely on the disconnect between the adults making those decisions and the end user which is a child hungering for both knowledge AND escape. Isn't time we stopped making every month "Black History Month" in terms of what we choose to offer?
But I felt comparing the strong internal and external bias surrounding CSK to the other awards seems a bit misplaced. So just wanted to throw it out there. There are "off-campus" conversations going on among authors of color
(all ethnicities) and I'm finding there is a shared and common experience. That we often hear, "I don't see color" from those in the majority who want to believe there is no true specific bias as it relates to these issues.
Those of us who are raising children or working with students and teaching them how to navigate through the world don't get that luxury.
I think we get what we measure in terms of book sales and recognition. Maybe its time to rethink the entire issue and rebuild book acquisition and its subsequent celebration from the ground up.
Christine Taylor-Butler Curmudgeonly children's author Regional Chair, MIT Educational Council
>
Date: Tue, 04 Feb 2014 14:54:00 -0500
Christine,
I can't speak to your other points but I can provide some empirical meat regarding broadening CSK. A couple of years ago I was looking at a range of adult and children's literary prizes in terms of how effective they were predicting commercial success and book longevity (years continuously in print). CSK had the worst performance of any of the prizes. Books went out of print much sooner, there were fewer editions produced in the US, and there were many fewer foreign editions and foreign translations.
Part of this, as you say, is probably a correlation with topical issues rather than race. Foreign markets are unlikely to have the same level of interest in US Civil Rights history or slavery and therefore fewer translations. Similarly in the US. If there is a high correlation between AA authors and books about Civil Rights history, and there is declining interest in new titles about that history, then an observed decline in AA authors is not so much about an antipathy towards AA authors but instead would be about a decline in interest about their chosen subject. The direction of causality can sometimes be obscure.
The CSK numbers were so markedly different than other prizes, that I dug a little further. One thing that I suspect is also a likely contributor to the reputation issue is not just narrowness of focus but also insularity. The CSK had a far higher rate of multiple repeat winners. Basically there were a handful of authors winning the prize year in and year out. Don't know if that was a function of few authors or something in the judging process but it was notable.
The upshot is that, for a variety of reasons, the CSK is currently an award with a narrow focus of topic and a constricted pool of talent which I suspect is what is contributing to the low numbers in terms of duration, editions and translations.
Charles
-----Original Message----- From: Christine Taylor-Butler [mailto:kansascitymom_at_earthlink.net] Sent: Tuesday, February 04, 2014 1:58 PM To: CCBC Network Subject: Re: [ccbc-net] "Marginal" Awards
I've been at a child lit retreat all weekend and trying to follow the conversation between sessions. But thought I would respond to this issue of
"marginalization." The original comment is accurate - and not in the way that other awards are "marginalized" but in the way many of the players involved speak of them.
I sat through several days of the Notables discussion in Boston several years ago and heard, with my own ears, the complaining and "whining" about having to include CSK award winners on the Notables list because it WAS NOT A MAJOR award. The comments were reinforced by the committee chair who added that CSK winners needed to be voted on separately because they are not grandfathered like other awards. At which point two librarians complained it would cut their yield re: the books they wanted to vote for. I then reviewed my notes and realized that all of the books (except one) written or illustrated by African Americans were criticized as substandard during the discussions. No people of color were present on the panel.
There is a sense that our books are considered "less than". And while I'm loathe to paint an entire organization for the attitudes of what may be a small percentage of members, but I'd been hearing for years from other ALA committee members that there is a pervasive attitude that books by African Americans can be dismissed for consideration for a Printz or Newbery because African Americans have "their own" category.
Likewise, the Amazon and Barnes and Noble email announcements don't include CSK. A recent search for American Library Awards on their site yielded Caldecott, Newbery, Printz, Children's Choice Awards, but not the ethnic awards.
But looking at it from a consumer point of view - I would also task CSK to look more broadly at the books they choose. Part of the marginalization comes from the target consumer which may stem from the narrow range of topics. Even when you have a book such as P.S. Be Eleven, the audience is already trained to turn a deaf ear to the award winners because, in the past, the books have been so heavily skewed towards civil rights and slavery or are historical and set in the past. They've developed a reputation for being written by "those people" FOR "those people" and as such have little presence in a bookstore and garner little interest from independent readers who are kids of color exposed to and devouring a wider range of topics.
There is no simple solution. There are problems throughout the entire supply chain. And the problem rests squarely on the disconnect between the adults making those decisions and the end user which is a child hungering for both knowledge AND escape. Isn't time we stopped making every month "Black History Month" in terms of what we choose to offer?
But I felt comparing the strong internal and external bias surrounding CSK to the other awards seems a bit misplaced. So just wanted to throw it out there. There are "off-campus" conversations going on among authors of color
(all ethnicities) and I'm finding there is a shared and common experience. That we often hear, "I don't see color" from those in the majority who want to believe there is no true specific bias as it relates to these issues.
Those of us who are raising children or working with students and teaching them how to navigate through the world don't get that luxury.
I think we get what we measure in terms of book sales and recognition. Maybe its time to rethink the entire issue and rebuild book acquisition and its subsequent celebration from the ground up.
Christine Taylor-Butler Curmudgeonly children's author Regional Chair, MIT Educational Council
>
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Received on Tue 04 Feb 2014 01:55:11 PM CST
