Roger Sutton: "I loved terrible books" (an interview)

What's more fun, Roger Sutton (editor of The Horn Book) or the Scott O'Dell Award? Happily, we don't have to choose, because Roger Sutton is the chair of the Scott O'Dell Award committee.

Here's what the medal
looks like, on a book chosen 
totally at random.

I love the Scott O'Dell Award. I love it because twice it wasn't awarded when the committee didn't think anything was good enough--a bold move when the award is given for juvenile historical fiction set in the Americas, which makes up about 80% of kids' books published today*. I love it because once they awarded it to Scott O'Dell himself. I love it because there's a cash prize attached** and most authors I know*** are not rolling in independent wealth.

I love it because I love historical fiction. The website is great. You can get a list of the books grouped into historical periods. They say this is for teachers; I say it's for me, because I am more interested in some periods than others, and because it makes posting those statistics I love**** so much easier.

Roger Sutton is a busy man, as well as a witty one. He generously took some time out of his day recently to discuss the award with me. I borrowed his five-question format. Because otherwise I would have tried to talk historical fiction with Roger Sutton all day.

Wendy: When you are choosing books for this award, what works really well? What makes great historical fiction?

RS: We're always looking for a book that needs to be set at the time and place that it is. Not just a story kind of thrown into another era, nor is it a book that has great history, but there's no story.

Wendy: That's interesting, because it was suggested on Heavy Medal that Dead End in Norvelt wouldn't win [the Scott O'Dell] because it didn't have enough history in it*****.

RS: Well, when else could that story have taken place? I thought that story not only told us a lot about that time and place, which in itself was historically significant--I think what also pushed the committee in its favor was that its character is so interested in history himself.

Wendy: What is something that you see over and over again in the books you read, a common mistake that authors make [in writing historical fiction]?

RS: The thing that always bothers me the most, both judging this award and reviewing books, is undigested historical information thrown into a story. There was this great article in School Library Journal by Joan Blos called "Bunches of Hessians" where she talks about the various mistakes that are made in historical fiction. She said to take something from a historical novel--for example, a mother making dinner--and translate it into contemporary fiction. And then she wrote this hilarious passage about "Mother stood in front of the white box and carefully adjusted the black dial." It has to be natural to the person telling the story. They shouldn't be noticing things that only an outsider would be paying attention to. That always pulls me right out of the story.

Wendy: Now, considering this award, I'd like to know something about the logistics--how many books each of you read, and what it's like for three people to come to a consensus.

RS: Probably about sixty books were submitted [by the publishers], but the committee is not limited to books that were submitted. I would say, personally, I probably read close to 50 books. Some of them I could dismiss very quickly; carefully read... maybe 20 books.

Wendy: Was there a list of books that you discussed seriously as a committee?

RS: It's a very casual process, because we've known each other for thirty years. I would say we seriously discussed fewer than half a dozen books.

Wendy: A very different experience from the Newbery, I imagine.

RS: Oh, yes. I mean, there are criteria that you can see on the website--the author has to be an American, the book has to be set in the New World--which I'm guessing is a term we're not supposed to use anymore. Do you know?

Wendy: Yes, I was describing it to someone who wasn't familiar with the award and said "it has to be set in the New World--I mean, I guess I should say that it has to be set in South, Central, or North America"--and then I wondered why they didn't say that in the first place.

RS: Well, I'm guessing that's Scott's wording. And he was very big on that, that he thought we needed more books told to American kids about their own history, rather than books that go back to Europe.

Wendy: So, speaking of setting, is there a particular setting or historical period that you'd like to see more of?

RS: I haven't really thought about it... The last two books have been set in the sixties. I feel like we're doing pretty well with colonial times, Civil War does well. In more recent years it's been the twenties and the thirties... what are we missing?

Wendy: I would love to see more books about Latinos and American Indians, South America.

I have one more question. This award has only been around since the early 80s. Is there a work of historical fiction that stands out to you from your childhood, a classic, or something that you feel like is a great exemplar of historical fiction?

RS: Oh, I loved terrible historical fiction when I was a kid. I loved the We Were There series. That's what I read over and over and over again. Don't look to my personal reading history for excellence here.

Thank you, Roger! I found this most enlightening.

^{* not intended as a factual statement↩}.

^{** Scott O'Dell donated his prize money to charity.↩}

^{*** Read: "who have twitter feeds I follow"↩}

^{**** 17% of winners have a World War II setting.↩}

^{***** What Jonathan actually said, which shouldn't be taken as a criticism of the book: "I also think they tend to prefer books where the history is front and center, rather than a backdrop. So I’d be inclined to think that because OKAY FOR NOW, DEAD END IN NORVELT, and THE TROUBLE WITH MAY AMELIA don’t have those easy taglines–WWII, Civil Rights, etc–they might not contend as strongly as some of the other stuff."↩}

I am contractually obligated as a Betsy-Tacy fan (you think I'm joking) to mention Maud Hart Lovelace on every occasion, at least where it's applicable. So let me sneak in that Scott O'Dell was buddies with Maud Hart Lovelace and her husband Delos, and they gave him advice about writing, and Maud read the manuscript of Island of the Blue Dolphins and was the first to tell him he'd written a children's book, a very good one.

Best Plot Ever, Where Are You Now?

My sister Laurie is a middle school librarian, and I am surfing her couch. To be more specific, I am sleeping on the bottom bunk of my seven-year-old niece's bunk bed ("ONLY THE BOTTOM"; Iris sleeps on the top bunk even when no one's in the bottom, and why wouldn't she? Everyone knows the top bunk is way cooler). I moved to Seattle last Wednesday. After a thorough, exhaustive search, I finally rented an apartment on Sunday. Today all my stuff is being delivered. (When I say "all my stuff", I mean "books and a few other things".)

Anyway, as I said, Laurie is a middle-school librarian. A couple of days ago we were sitting at dinner and talking about our days. Laurie said a couple of big classes of kids had come in to take out books. "Did they take out science fiction and fantasy?" Iris asked. "No," Laurie said. "Some of them probably wanted to, but their teacher wanted them to take out real estate fiction and memoirs."

I opened my mouth to ask incredulously if there was really "real estate fiction" in Laurie's library. But before the words were even out, about a dozen examples of real estate fiction flashed before my eyes, so I didn't bother.

"It's hard, because on the one hand there's so MUCH real estate fiction, but on the other hand, what exactly constitutes real estate fiction?" Laurie's husband Matthew nodded sagely. This is just the kind of topic all four of us like to wax eloquent about.

Of course, it was not long before I realized that what Laurie was actually saying was "realistic fiction", and not "real estate fiction" at all.

It was a disappointing moment.

Not that we didn't discuss real estate fiction ANYWAY.

I mean, it's a really common plot in older books, once you start thinking about it. I call it "We move to a new house and everything is awesome."

Do I even need to start listing examples of books like this? I can start with Return to Gone-Away, probably the best book about buying a house and redecorating it ever, and then there's The Four-Story Mistake, and Go to the Room of the Eyes. There are variations, like Dandelion Cottage. There is a book I just read by Hilda Van Stockum called Canadian Summer about a big family moving to rural Quebec. There is Anastasia Again, where Anastasia cleverly tries to prevent her family's move by choosing impossible things for the "must have in the new house" list her parents invite her to contribute to, but instead she just ends up in the Best House Ever. (Please to put more examples in the comments.)

Clearly, moving to a new house and everything being awesome was a topic of Great Interest to previous generations. BUT WHERE ARE THESE BOOKS NOW?

I don't really buy the thing about how all kids' books are problem novels now--I don't think anyone who actually reads kids' books does--but I can't really conceive of a book about a family house-hunting, moving, and redecorating, written now, being a book with a plot other than "we move to a new house and everything is not awesome".

I tested this by doing a quick scan of the books I've labeled "award possibilities" over the last few years. It's hardly an exhaustive list, but I don't see many books about moving at all, and none about it being awesome or fun.

Is this a lost plot? Did it get tired, or is it just Not of General Interest to readers today?

Buzz Begets Buzz

We were talking on Heavy Medal about which books might be getting overshadowed in the award discussions for one reason or another. Nina mentioned The Book of the Maidservant, which she hadn't heard talk about much of anywhere.

I first heard about this book in July at ALA, at the wonderful Random House presentation of books coming for fall. I seized a review copy eagerly afterward; I couldn't wait to read it. But it's been sitting in my to-be-read pile ever since. Why?

I'm sorry to say, folks, it's in large part because I put a lot of effort toward reading the books everyone else is talking about (or the books I think everyone might be talking about soon). I want to join in the conversation. And when I review a buzzed-about book, people respond more here. There's nothing wrong with that, in theory. But I think most bloggers do it... and what happens then? Books with buzz get more buzz. Books without buzz get left on the to-be-read pile. Even when I read a book that isn't getting a whole lot of attention--even if I LIKE it--sometimes I don't bother reviewing it, especially here (I review some books on Goodreads and not here).

What if I put that effort in another direction? There's still a dearth of books being published by and about people of color, and even more of a dearth of buzz about those books. As things stand, I'm missing a lot of those books.

It's going to be a struggle, but I'm going to try to do something different this year. Instead of making it my priority to read the books I hear about the most, I'm going to put the same amount of effort into reading books by authors who are people of color. I know I won't actually make a change in my reading unless I sacrifice something else for the sake of these books; I know it's unrealistic to think I'm going to read more and can just add those books to what I'm already reading. It wouldn't happen. So what you're going to see is a conscious effort (I hope and plan) to rechannel my energy into "books I really want to read, and books by authors of color"--instead of the current "books I really want to read, and the books everyone else is talking about" focus.

I've been debating for a while having a post-tag that links to my/our posts reviewing or discussing books with protagonists or authors who are people of color, but I've never done it because I wasn't sure how it would appear to others--I thought it might seem insensitive, or white-guilt induced. And I couldn't think of the right tag. But I think it will be necessary for this plan to have maximum effect. Should it just be "authors-of-color"? or "POC", and then include books I might read by white authors about people of color? Suggestions/comments needed.

I hope those of you who read our posts and then go put the books we review on hold, or on to-read on Goodreads (you've no idea how exciting it is to see that happen!), will be just as open to the books I review in the future. Thanks for reading, thanks for commenting, and I'm looking forward to this new year.

Shelf Discovery Chat (or, Exactly What You'd Hear If You Spent an Hour With the Burton Sisters)

Lizzie Skurnick’s column, Fine Lines, frequently featured some of our very favorite (or at least, very familiar to us) books. Born in 1973, she falls right in the middle of the three Burton sisters. Kathleen is slightly older than Skurnick, and Wendy and I were always delving into Kathleen’s books. Like Skurnick, we read many popular titles of the ‘70s and ‘80s, along with earlier classics and ‘50s favorites.

So we’d been looking forward to Shelf Discovery, subtitled “The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading.” While not all of them are teen, not all of them are classics, and several of them we have never read, a quick skim of the Table of Contents assured us that we are the “We” of the title.

Wendy and I opened our books together one Saturday morning to talk about Shelf Discovery.

[Online chat transcript has been edited for clarity, brevity, and to remove side comments about PG Tips, Constant Comment, and Wendy’s zumba class that she missed while were chatting.]

Wendy: I'm really afraid to read some of these because they might get my ire up, for two reasons. One: if she disrespects books I think are awesome. Two: if she makes the points that I always make about these books, except she published them first.

Laurie: OK, take a look at the Table of Contents.Several of the authors--Zindel, Peck, etc.--I never read at all, but she read a lot of L'Engle, which led me to find her a kindred spirit (though she was clearly much more interested in Judy Blume than I was; that seems true of everyone I know).

I've spotted several I've NEVER HEARD OF.

And You Give Me a Pain, Elaine. To Take a Dare.

Wendy: First one I haven't read: Harriet the Spy. I TRIED. I was bored.

Laurie: My favorite Fine Lines post (which was not actually written by Skurnick) is included: Laura Lippman on Willoughby Chase. It’s titled, "Life's a Bitch, and So is the Governess."

So, let's read one.

Wendy: Oh, this is hard. I pick Stranger With My Face.

Laurie: Oh, goody. (Not Goodwife Cruff, though.) I find Lois Duncan holds up very well, re-reading as an adult.

Wendy: When I think of SWMF, I think that it's a sexy book.

Long black hair and almond eyes--twice over! and gorgeous guys that are accessible to slightly awkward girls because their faces are half burned off.

Laurie: Oh yes--the gorgeous guy who is literally smoldering. (sorry)

Wendy: HEE.

Really, all that stuff where Lia is telling Laurie about their past and astral projection, it reads like a seduction scene.

Kind of vampiric, I guess.

Laurie: And it has SECRET ADOPTION, which is something all kids/teens love to read about

Your parents aren't your real parents!

Wendy: Secret adoption with exotic past!

Everyone knows it is cooler to be "ethnic" than generic Caucasian.

Laurie: Indeed. It's practically wish fulfillment.

Wendy: It's also one of those books I bemoan where the heroine is plain and then suddenly gets beautiful and then Life Begins.

Laurie: You're right--just like in Moon by Night. Actually, the guy in SWMF is not unlike Zachary. OK, I'm going to page 277.

Wendy: Hey, what's it like to read a book where the main character has your name? Especially a SCARY book. It seems like it could be awesome.

Laurie: Yes, I always liked that about this book.

Wendy: I was reading the excerpt from SWMF and getting so into it that I was both startled and disappointed when it ended and went back to commentary...

When I was a kid I couldn't picture Jeff Rankin; I had trouble believing his face was really that messed up. Now that I've seen a lot of burn victims, I get it.

I like that she's pointing out all the dichotomies in this book. Clearly, this is a book Lois Duncan worked hard on, and that's what makes it so good.

Did you realize when you were a kid how shocking and horrible it was to split up twins? I didn't.

I mean, really, that makes the parents seem kind of cruel. But I was FASCINATED (and still am) by the idea of the evil baby that the mother didn't like holding.

Laurie: I think I had an idea splitting twins wouldn't usually be done, but I never questioned it in the context of the book because we all knew LIA IS EVIL!!

Laurie: Yes, this is a good piece. It reminds me why I like Stranger with My Face, which I assume is the goal of the book (Shelf Discovery), along with, possibly, sparking our interest in some we haven't read before.

Laurie: So, before we conclude this chat, I have two questions

What book are you very happy to see included in Shelf Discovery?

What book do you wish was included in Shelf Discovery?

I'm happy to see: Tell Me if the Lovers are Losers

Wendy: I was going to write that, too! It is so of this era.

Laurie: Like with other Newbery winners, Cynthia Voigt's other books tend to be overshadowed by Homecoming/Dicey's Song and Lovers is really, really good

Wendy: Also very strange, but yes.

Laurie: You should pick something else, though, since I picked that first

Wendy: Okay, then. Are You In the House Alone? I've never been that interested in Forever, which I find so one-note. Are You In the House Alone? is a book about rape, obviously, but it is so much more than that, and is also a book about teen sex during that era, just like Forever is.

Laurie: I wish she had included: at least one book by Lois Lowry. Preferably Find a Stranger, Say Goodbye, which would have been my choice. A Summer to Die seems an odd omission. And of course I love Anastasia Krupnik. NINE Judy Blume books, FIVE Lois Duncan books--but not a single Lois Lowry?

Wendy: I was just thinking that there ought to be some Norma Johnston up there.

Laurie: Yes, I would have been interested to read her take on The Keeping Days. But I wouldn't be surprised if she had missed Norma Johnston growing up; we easily might have, if Kath hadn't had that one paperback Keeping Days.

Wendy: Oh, there's so much we might have missed; it's scary to contemplate.

Laurie: So, what do you think about the Lowry? Is Keeping Days your answer to what you wish had been included?

Wendy: Well, I knew you were going to say Find a Stranger, Say Goodbye, but I probably would have said that, too...

Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones, maybe, which might be too old for Skurnick's teendom. Plus it is too precious to me; no one's allowed to snark that but ME.

Wendy: Let's do one of our favorites.

How about Tell Me If the Lovers, since you brought it up?

Laurie: no, something more fun. Westing Game?

Laurie: or Basil E. Frankweiler? or Moon by Night?

Wendy: Westing Game, I'm already there. I remember the magic I immediately sensed, the first time I read the first page of this book. I think you might have read it to me, actually.

You used to laugh aloud at books, and I would ask you what was so funny, and if you were in a good mood you would read it.

Laurie: I just remembered to tell you that I am not a big Harriet the Spy fan either. Never read it as a kid. It always strikes me as one of those books that people who have never read anything cite as their favorite (you know, like George Bush and The Very Hungry Caterpillar.)

OK, The Westing Game.

Wendy: Ah, "oh, yes, one was a bookie, one was a burglar, one was a bomber, and one was a mistake." That's the line you laughed at and the one you read out loud to me. Though I didn't know what a bookie was.

Laurie: "Denton Deere was troubled. Just what did Angela mean by 'nun'?"
Yes, this was the first time I had ever heard of a bookie.

Wendy: Angela is probably my favorite character, although of course I resented her beauty.
I certainly didn't understand that being a bookie was illegal until I saw them on Dragnet years later.

Laurie: Angela is the most satisfying character, because she changes the most.

Wendy: I really like this Westing Game essay. It's solid.

Laurie: I like the Westing Game essay too. "A profound meditation on how humans, given a set of clues, miss what's actually missing right in front of them, and instead project themselves onto the negative space."

Wendy: And that is why it is the best Newbery winner of them all.

Laurie: The End.

Now I have to wake up Iris, and some time after that I am going to read your latest post on Six Boxes. Bye!

Wendy: Ciao!

Lizzie Skurnick very kindly spoke with Wendy for an hour about Shelf Discovery and YA then and now. Look for the interview piece coming soon.

Shelf Discovery also spurred an interesting and humbling conversation about the lack of racial diversity in our childhood reading, which will also be its own post, eventually.

No Afterword, Thanks

I liked The Witch of Blackbird Pond, but I really think there should have been an author's note explaining that some women (and one man) really were executed as witches, along with something about the real-life persecution of Quakers (or Friends, as they prefer to be called) in New England. I'm not sure kids would get from the book what a very serious situation this was.

You can relax that horrified expression now; that isn't a real quote. But it could have been.

Have you noticed how common lengthy afterwords are on kids' historical fiction these days? In fact, I think we've come to expect them. When I read The Green Glass Sea (Ellen Klages), one of my favorite books from the last several years, I felt something odd when I'd finished it. Something refreshing. It was... the lack of an author's note.

One major complaint: Where's the explanation note? I cannot believe Klages ends the book without one. Her list of further reading materials doesn't take the place of something on the topic in the book. What happened to the scientists and their families? How did they react to what they created (hinted at in the story) What about radiation poisoning? Etc. Etc. There are dozens of additional questions readers could ask. Several have come to my mind since I finished the book. I don't expect her to answer all of them fully but I do expect her to say something. What the scientists created changed the world. Surely this deserves more than a footnote's worth of explanation.

That IS a real quote, from Goodreads, and it pretty much sums up most of what I don't like about afterwords.

I commented about this before on a post in Marc Aronson's Nonfiction Matters blog, Historical Fiction Seminar. I said "there was nothing to take me out of the book [after finishing]" Marc responded "Seems Wendy is one of those readers who wants to stay within the dream between the covers of the book". We were talking about whether people read historical fiction for a hallucinatory experience, so I can see why he thought that's what I was getting at. But it isn't that I don't like author's notes because they break the spell; it's because I think too often they interfere with both the enjoyment and the learning experience of the book.

The person who commented on The Green Glass Sea above said that "dozens of additional questions" came to her mind after she finished the book. She wanted them answered in an author's note. My question is--if there had been an author's note, would she ever have had those questions? Would she have spent time pondering the answers? Would the other Goodreads reviewers who were troubled by the ambiguity of the book have spent that time clarifying their own positions?

Let's take another classic, On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder. One of the central incidents in that book is the plague of grasshoppers. If it was written now, the author's note might include other descriptions of the devastation caused by the grasshoppers. Maybe there'd be a map showing how widespread the damage was. Maybe we'd get information on how the grasshoppers affected other families and whether there was any government relief.

It'd be factual. It'd teach kids something. Some of us would read this additional information with great interest. But the book is so well-written that it doesn't need any of this; in fact, I think it would only take away. We read On the Banks of Plum Creek and we get a clear picture of how the grasshoppers affected the lives of one family. We know the creepiness of the grasshoppers getting into our clothes, of hearing the neverending chomp-chomp of their jaws; we know the helpless feeling of watching our year's worth of work be destroyed in a matter of hours.

The last thing I want--or need--after experiencing something like that is to read an author's note where someone tells me what to think about it.

In most cases, if a book is written well enough, we get everything we need from the text. A curious reader can investigate the subject more; and we can say "but most kids won't do that"--if the book is good enough, that won't matter. If it's so important you have to say it, say it in the story.

I read The Rock and the River (Kekla Magoon) recently. I enjoyed the book. I hated the author's note. This is a Black Panther-positive book; most of those who review it comment on how good it is to have a book showing another side to the Black Panthers. But not only does the author's note pretty much reiterate the information that's already integrated in the text, but it makes the last sentence of the book--this book that shows the Black Panthers as a force for good--"In 1982, the Black Panther Party officially disbanded." So what, exactly, is my take-away there? How do I align that with the note the actual story ends on?

Magoon actually has the perfect author's note there. It's similar to the one at the end of The Witch of Blackbird Pond; it says the story is fictional but contains some real people. She's even got a line there that would have been a great last sentence, one that wouldn't destroy the power of her story's end. She could have finished her author's note with "The struggle that Sam faces in the story is based on the real-life challenges that many teenagers went through."

Do we need any more than that?

Oops! I Didn't Mean To Say That.

I was talking with the lovely author Laurel Snyder recently about her book, Any Which Wall (a thoroughly modern Edward Eager homage I enjoyed very much). I can’t remember how we got on the subject, but she mentioned that after it was published, she found things she wished she had written differently; I think she said she even has notes in her copy about what she would have changed.

I’m sure this is common among writers. “Actually, some authors really do that,” I told her.

Madeleine L’Engle was the first one who came to mind. Her first young adult novel, And Both Were Young (it’s really good--takes place in a Swiss boarding school, lots of fun stuff about skiing), was published in 1949. In 1983, she released a newly-edited version, which, she says in the foreword, is more accurate to the book she wrote. The 1949 editor insisted she tone down the main character’s grief over her mother’s death, the gentle romance between the teenagers, and the woman who’s after Philippa’s widower father.

I’ll be honest: I like the original a lot better. And when I say “original”, I mean what was published first. I think it’s sharper, clearer, more even in tone. Of course, it’s also what I read (and internalized: I read it many times) first.

I’m not sure how many times L’Engle did this in smaller ways. When I was re-reading a new-to-me copy of her book The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas, I kept thinking “huh. I don’t remember it that way”. On comparison, I discovered several small differences in the text between the edition of this book I knew and the one I own now. I don’t know why L’Engle or the editors might have made these changes, or which is the original, or which L’Engle might say was more authentic.

PL Travers did it in Mary Poppins. She has a chapter where Jane, Michael, and Mary Poppins go time/space traveling with the help of a compass. They visit the four corners of the world, and meet stereotypical people from the north (“Eskimos”), south (Africans), east (Chinese people), and west (American Indians, or, as many people in England call them even now, “Red Indians”). The chapter is charming in structure, but the stereotypes are awful. They’re worse than what you’re imagining right now. In 1981, Travers revised the chapter completely, having them meet animals in each corner instead. The writing isn’t as good as it was in the original, which is unfortunate but not surprising. When this chapter of Mary Poppins comes up in discussion, I always ask the same question: if you were the author, wouldn’t you be embarrassed? Wouldn’t you welcome the chance of a rewrite? (Amazingly, the original illustrator, Mary Shepard, was also around to do new illustrations for the chapter.) And Roald Dahl did something similar for the American edition of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; for some reason that’s not as well-known, though the book is more famous. In the original, the Oompa Loompas are pretty much happy lazy African slaves. I’m not kidding.

Debbie Reese of American Indians in Children’s Literature has an interesting post discussing a passage from the book Dear Genius, in which editor Ursula Nordstrom talks about a small change Laura Ingalls Wilder agreed to make to a new edition of Little House on the Prairie--agreed wholeheartedly. While I don’t agree with the suggestion that the publisher might have stopped publishing the book entirely instead, I think it’s an interesting point to wonder what else Wilder might have changed in this book and her other books. Certainly her intent was never to depersonalize American Indians.

What else might Madeleine L’Engle have changed in her books? Did she mean for A House Like a Lotus to be underminingly homophobic? I don’t really think so. After she became a Christian, did she think back on her early books and wish she had written things differently? Would Jean Webster take the eugenicism out of Dear Enemy (sequel to Daddy Long Legs)? Would Ann M. Martin surgically remove Mallory Pike from the Babysitters Club? (Actually, she did eventually send Mallory to boarding school, to the great relief of all.)

We’ve posted recently about the ways Scholastic Book Fairs has asked authors to edit their books to make them “safe” for the school market. (Laurie pointed out elsewhere the funniest example of this: in Lois Lowry’s Anastasia On Her Own, Freddie Valente is changed in the [edit: not Scholastic's fault this time] Weekly Reader edition from a bra-snapper to a hair-puller. I guess bras are mature content, just like gay parents.) Laurie urged authors not to make changes in content after their books are published, at least not for Scholastic Book Fairs’s reasoning. What do you think? When is it okay for an author to change something, and when should the book be let stand as is?

Scholastic censors Luv Ya Bunches

The headlines last week read:
Luv Ya Bunches Will Be in Middle School Book Fairs
Scholastic reverses decision regarding 'Luv Ya Bunches'
Scholastic to Sell 'Luv Ya Bunches' at Middle School Book Fairs
Scholastic Reverses Decision to Exclude Gay Friendly Book from Fairs

An accurate headline, though, would read: Scholastic Sells Censored Luv Ya Bunches in Middle School Fairs; Refuses to Include Gay Parents in Elementary Schools.

Luv Ya Bunches is about fifth graders. Publishers Weekly recommended it for ages 9-13. Clearly it is intended for both elementary and middle school students.

Let's talk a little about book fairs. Scholastic dominates the U.S. school book fair market. From 2003-2007 I hosted a Scholastic book fair at my middle school (continuing the previous librarian's tradition). On the appointed date the deliverymen wheel in giant carts that open to become book displays. The middle school fairs offer certain titles, which have been advertised in advance to students via posters and book fair brochures. The books, published by Scholastic and other publishers, range from paperback classics to brand-new releases. Schools can make special requests; I always asked for more multi-ethnic books to reflect the interests and diversity of my students. The person in charge of the book fair can choose to remove items from the display if they don't want to sell them. Most librarians I know do: expensive software, toys with small parts, books you don't think students are interested in might stay packed in boxes. At my last Scholastic fair I didn't display the posters for sale, because space was tight and I wanted to focus on books.

My point is that with any book fair, including Scholastic, you can choose what to offer from the books provided. No school is forced to offer a book for sale.

If you (librarians or book fair chairs) live in a community that is so homophobic that parents will protest a book with gay characters, and you are not willing to take a stand and offer the book, you don't have to. But Scholastic Inc., whose credo says they strive "To enlarge students' concern for and understanding of today's world," should not pander to this homophobic constituency by refusing to offer Luv Ya Bunches or other books with gay characters in its elementary school book fairs.

Michael A. Jones of Change.org writes, "This was a victory for us all." I see no victory. Scholastic Book Fairs concluded their review process and decided to include an expurgated edition of Luv Ya Bunches in its middle school book fairs. This may be what they were already going to do before last week's outcry. It represents no brave stance on the part of Scholastic, despite what Lauren Myracle claims. Here's what needs to happen to achieve a real victory.


School librarians/Teachers/PTA (anyone who hosts a book fair in a school): Look into other options, such as local independents, for book fairs to reduce Scholastic's corporate monopoly. With any book fair (Scholastic or otherwise), be sure to request age-appropriate books that include LGBT characters. Let the book fair provider know that these books are both welcome and necessary in your school book fair to meet the needs of your community.

Scholastic Inc.:
1) Make your book fair criteria public and transparent. Are books with gay characters automatically excluded from elementary school? Sometimes excluded? As a customer of Scholastic Book Fairs (both as a school librarian and as a parent of an elementary-school child), I want an answer.
2) Apologize for asking Lauren Myracle to change the sexual orientation of characters in Luv Ya Bunches. Yes, you have a review process and you can only include a small number of books in the fairs each year. You can exclude books; it's your choice. But there is NO EXCUSE for asking to change gay characters to straight. NONE. You made a big mistake. Apologize, and make a donation to Lambda Legal or some other organization that helps families.

Authors: Do not agree to Scholastic Book Fairs or anyone else censoring your book. You wrote your book a certain way--maybe with hell, damn, Oh my God--because you, and your editor, believed it was right for your book. If it's not right, take it out in the editing stage. If it is right, DON'T CHANGE IT. This is disrespectful, dishonest, and deceptive to your readers. You can't champion the freedom to read while you are agreeing to sanitized versions of your own books.

Three weeks ago another librarian and I were talking about how there are quite a few picture books with gay characters, and more YA books all the time, but very few novels with gay characters for readers in grades 4-8. I mentioned Dear Julia by Amy Bronwen Zemser as a good new example: the main character's best friend has two moms. Children need these books. We need to keep the pressure on.

I'm indignant, as a consumer!

As usual, my first thought when I heard about the Scholastic Book Fair/Lauren Myracle book controversy (to sum up: middle grade author of non-gay-themed book asked to turn gay parents into straight parents for book fair edition) was a selfish one.

WAIT, HOW MANY ALTERED SCHOLASTIC EDITIONS OF BOOKS HAVE I READ?

I have fond memories of book fairs. We didn't have a lot of extra money when we were kids, and in my memory, book fairs were one of the only times I got to pick out my own books to keep. (My sisters may remember this differently, and I'm not even sure if book fairs were common when Kathleen was in elementary school. History of book fairs, anyone?) Why I wasted such opportunities on books like How to Draw Horses and The Ghost at Dawn's House is a mystery to me. (The fact that I remember buying these books specifically shows how significant the fairs were, I think.) I also remember buying a copy of Beverly Cleary's A Girl From Yamhill, though, and I think Daddy Long Legs.

Oh, how I remember the class visits to the book fairs to pick out what books we would buy when we came back with our parents, and how the teachers would try to shoo the kids away from the picture books once we were in upper elementary, which seems sad.

But how many of those books we bought at the book fairs had been changed from their original form? How many had words or characters or scenes altered? I learned about this practice a few years ago; I think it applies to the "book orders", too (those colorful fliers the teachers sent home every couple of months; I got a few books from there as well, like the first Pen Pals book). And I started to remember how occasionally I've noticed a difference in editions--like my ancient Scholastic copy of Anne Emery's Senior Year, in which teenagers are suddenly dancing the hustle instead of the original foxtrot.

I want to read the books as they're written. I think most people do. At the very least, I want to know I'm reading an altered edition. Are there disclaimers on Scholastic books now? I can't remember seeing one before. Don't we need a "this book has been edited for length and content" kind of message on there, so at least we KNOW the real book is out there?

If you were a parent and bought a no-gay-parents edition of Luv Ya Bunches (sorry, the sweetness of that title gives me the willies, too) for your kid, wouldn't you feel sort of dirty? I would.

Scholastic has put out a weird update on this situation of a neither-confirm-nor-deny stripe. (It makes no sense: if they "recognize Milla’s two moms as a positive and realistic aspect of the story", why would they ask to have them removed?) I'm puzzled that they mention carrying After Tupac and D Foster at book fairs. Is it an edited version or not? If not... why one and not the other? Perhaps it's because After Tupac skews slightly older; maybe it's the very middle-gradeness of Myracle's book that made someone think two moms were inappropriate. ("You can learn about different kinds of families when you're older, honey.") Maybe they know that the kind of parents who would be offended by Myracle's two moms would never, ever pick out After Tupac in the first place. Maybe they think the book is insidious because it looks "safe" but OMG liberal agenda!!!1!

Let's call it like it is, Scholastic. Let's put out Luv Ya Bunches: The Homophobic Edition.

You know you want to see Ed Young illustrate "One Night in Bangkok".

My brother-in-law (and Laurie's husband), Matthew Amster-Burton, has written both a delicious book about kids and food and a guest post for this blog.

Looking for a picture book set in modern New York City? I can think of about a hundred. How about a picture book set in historical, mythical, or rural Asia? Plenty of those, too.

But where are the picture books set in modern Asian cities? I'll bet you can't name many, and that's a shame. It gives English language readers an inaccurate image of Asia (all rice paddies and pagodas) and robs us of a potential treasure trove of children's stories.

Why the missing books? I have an idea. Come on a short trip with me; when we get back, I'm going to recommend some books.

1
I went to a slide presentation by Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee, author of two great Korean cookbooks. She talked about regional food and sightseeing in Korea (she's also the author of Frommer's South Korea). She showed at least fifty slides, of which one or two were taken in Seoul. There were several slides of an ersatz rural community set up for tourists, like a Korean Colonial Williamsburg. About half of all South Koreans live in Seoul or its outskirts. Seoul is one of the largest, most technologically advanced, safest, and presumably delicious cities on earth.

2
Around the same time, I had dinner with Dan Gray, a Korean food writer who has a blog called Seoul Eats. We talked a lot about Korean food and I told him that I'd never been to Korea but really wanted to go. He offered encouragement and a warning. "You have to understand," he said, extending his arm to indicate green Seattle, "Seoul isn't beautiful."

3
My five-year-old, Iris, is a fan of this cartoon called Ni Hao, Kai-Lan. Kai-Lan is a Chinese-American girl whose best friends are a monkey, a koala, a tiger, and a rhino.

Recently we watched a special 45-minute episode, "Kai-Lan's Great Trip to China," where the whole crew flies to China to visit Kai-Lan's great aunt and meet a baby panda. The first thing they do in China is stop at a roadside stand for dandan noodles. I heartily approved. Then they arrive at the aunt's house, which is a rural mansion.

Soon it's time to shop for presents for the baby panda's naming ceremony, so the crew goes into the city. The city looks like the China pavilion at Epcot, only with fewer people. The funny thing is, actual cities in China look a lot like this artist's conception of the original plan for Epcot.

4
We read a lovely picture book called Erika-san, by Allen Say. Erika moves to Japan to become a teacher. She begins in Tokyo, which she finds overwhelming. She moves on to a smaller city. Still
overwhelming. She ends up in a rural area, where she learns the tea ceremony and marries a Japanese man. The real Japan, the book seemed to imply, isn't in the city.

Phooey, I say.

In 2000, Laurie and I went to Bangkok. It was our first trip to Asia. We brought the Lonely Planet book, some travel pants from Lands' End, and a Seattle-honed appetite for Thai food. We arrived in the city at night, breathed a lot of diesel fumes, ate some bland stir-fried chicken from a street cart, and checked into our fleabag hotel thinking maybe we'd made a mistake.

In the morning, everything looked a lot better. We found a new, clean hotel with air conditioning. We rode the river taxi up and down the Chao Phraya. We ate perfect fried fish at a restaurant called Cabbages and Condoms, perfect grilled chicken at Sara-Jane's, and many perfect things at street carts. To say that the best food I ever ate was in Bangkok would be a huge understatement. Compared to the food I ate in Bangkok, most of what I eat isn't even food.

We spent a week in Bangkok and didn't bother with any side trips. A lot of people in Seattle, especially young people, have been to Thailand, and everyone we spoke to found our trip puzzling. You mean you didn't go to the beach? To the floating market? To meet the hill tribes? Isn't Bangkok a cesspool of traffic and sex tourism?

Because I'd been to Bangkok, I knew what Dan Gray meant when he said Seoul wasn't beautiful. Bangkok is, well, ugly. There's a whole lot of dirty concrete. It's also wonderful, with unexpected glimpses of beauty everywhere, like smooth mounds of colorful curry paste at the market, orchid sellers on the street, a truck piled high with pineapples.

Rice paddies and historical Asian architecture are picturesque in a way a Bangkok streetscape isn't. Instead of seeing this as an artistic challenge, authors and illustrators (or maybe publishers) have largely surrendered. Imagine if Ezra Jack Keats looked around the streets of New York and said, "Nothing to see here; I think I'll head to Central Park."

When I traveled in Asia (specifically Bangkok and Vientiane), I saw children involved in all sorts of play, especially rambunctious, unstructured street play, the kind American parents like to lament the passing of. I'm not saying urban Asia is a children's paradise, but--like Keats's New York--it's a rich and untapped well of stories.

The few urban Asian picture books I've found have left me with an appetite for many, many more. Here are a couple of my favorites, mostly set in Japan:

* The Way We Do It in Japan, Geneva Cobb Iijima, ill. Paige Billin-Frye. Gregory grew up in the US but moves to Tokyo with his parents when his (Japanese-American) father is assigned to the Tokyo office. They live in a small apartment outside Tokyo. Gregory has to get used to rice and fish for breakfast; putting his bed in a cupboard every day; Japanese toilets; and school. This book wrings a lot of interest out of the profoundly ordinary, but my favorite thing about it is how it shows, without saying it outright, that a lot of things about being in a new country are cool and annoying at the same time. This is a perennial favorite in our house, even though the end is kind of dumb. (Also, according to School Library Journal, "some of the 'way we do it...' elements are a bit stereotypical of the traditional way of Japanese life." I'm not sure whether this supports or negates my thesis.)

* Tokyo Friends, Betty Reynolds; My Japan, Etsuko Watanabe. These are essentially vocabulary books, not great for reading aloud, but with fabulous, colorful artwork. Reynolds is the author of a series of adult picture books about Japan, the best of which is Squeamish About Sushi. My Japan has a great page about Japanese food which includes like ten of Iris's favorite foods.

* City I Love. This book combines poems by Lee Bennett Hopkins with artwork by Marcellus Hall. It does a great job of making Asian cities seem dramatic and cool. The Tokyo page features the dazzle of Ginza, complete with wild-eyed anime characters, and the Shanghai page highlights the insane Shanghai skyline. There's a fun scavenger hunt aspect to the book; on each page you need to find the traveling dog and figure out which city he's in. (Cities from every continent feature in the book, not just Asia.)

City kids--all kids--in the West deserve to know more about their counterparts worldwide. To cover one of my favorite continents, I'd like to see more good urban picture books set in China, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, and elsewhere in Asia.

Thanks, Matthew. Hungry Monkey includes kid- and adult-friendly recipes for pad thai, larb gai, and bibimbop, as well as an appendix with kids' books about food.

Yes, Virginia, there was YA when you were a teenager.

I have no idea why this topic heats me up so much. Maybe I've never gotten over my Ramona-like demand for precision from adults.

I keep hearing phrases along the lines of "we didn't have YA when I was a kid"--most recently among the comments to a post of Roger Sutton's about books being too long, here. (Someone else carried the torch there, I was glad to see. Also, in one of those sisterly coincidences--I was chomping at the bit to write this post yesterday but had to go to work; now I see that Laurie commented on the blog yesterday with the same point I was going to make.)

Yes, there were books specifically aimed at teenagers when you were a kid. Lots of them. This is true no matter what age you are. You might not have read them, but they were there.

I don't mean to claim that there isn't lots and lots of excellent YA today, maybe more than ever before, but there's been a lot for a long time.

One comment I hear often to make this point is that when we were kids, there was only a small YA shelf at the library(if that); this is what I found, also, at my library. Yes, these days most libraries seem to have huge YA sections. But from what I see, the difference here is largely in reclassification. If you go to your library and look at your YA shelves, you'll probably see lots and lots of books that were published before that shelf existed. Where were they before that? In the children's or "juvenile" section. That doesn't mean they weren't YA. The YA shelf at my library in the 80s and 90s seemed to be reserved specifically for books that had very explicit sex in them--but even lots of books with sex were shelved in our children's section. A House Like a Lotus, for instance. Annie On My Mind was shelved in YA, but other books with gay characters that were perhaps not so well-known were shelved in children's.

We can go back further than my youth. One of the comments in Roger's blog has an excellent list of the YA from the 70s and 80s (much of which was yes, shelved in my children's section also), and I'll let her speak for that era; I want to point out specifically Are You In the House Alone? which is definitely an "older teen" kind of book (yes, no matter when you read it), dealing as it does with teen sex and acquaintance rape and a sophisticated POV on teen dating.

I have a big collection of YA from the 1950s and 1960s. I discovered these books in middle school and devoured them and reread them and was fascinated by life back then. These books are sometimes tossed off as "malt shop books", acceptable to read only for nostalgic value. A few of them are pure fluff, but mostly they deal with serious subjects, and the very same subjects we get in YA today--I mean, yes, they talk about sex (and racism and cheating at school and failing college because you spend too much time with your boyfriend and so on). They don't use the same words, and the things kids worry about are slightly different because social mores were different.

After Pat has an argument with Tim, for instance, in First Love Farewell by Anne Emery, copyright 1958, a book about two college students:

She made her good-night kiss a special effort to show him she loved him more than ever. The trouble was, she had to make the special effort...she did not realize that she was beginning to use their love-making for special purposes: to cheer him up when he was melancholy, to reassure him when he was pessimistic about their future, to persuade him that she was deeply in love with him and that he was passionately, single-mindedly in love with her. Making love now meant that she wanted to kiss and caress him not only because she loved him, but because there was some misunderstanding that must be smoothed over, and making love as and when Tim wanted to was the easiest way to keep him content.

Later:
"You don't have to go in for a while," he whispered. "That's why we left by ten."
She pulled away. "Tim, we've got to take it easy."
He looked at her in astonishment.
"What's the matter with you? Don't you love me anymore? Don't you trust me?"
"Of course I love you, darling," she said, feeling weary that it had to be proved and asserted over and over. "But we can't go on like this indefinitely. It's getting harder all the time and --oh, I don't know. I just don't feel like being quite so--"...
"Well," he said angrily, "I guess I don't know what's going on any more. I figure if a girl doesn't want to make love, she isn't interested in a guy."...
"You know I love you, Tim. I've shown you that over and over. But tonight I just don't feel that way, somehow."

I do know that "love-making" didn't carry the same definition then that it does now, but I'm struck by how these scenes would have spoken to a variety of teens--the ones who didn't do much more than kiss AND the ones who were actually having sex. Nicely done, Mrs. Emery.

I think sometimes these books are not considered YA by people because for the most part there's nothing in them that would be too much for a middle-grade reader who happened along them--but that doesn't mean they aren't YA. All media at that time was less explicit--TV shows and movies, too. These were books written for teenagers, displaying the same kinds of characteristics that define YA today--seeking identity apart from one's parents and finding a place in society.

We can go back and back, to Seventeenth Summer published in 1942, to Anne of Avonlea, checked out by Ella and Henny (from the adult section!) just before World War 1, to The Little Colonel's Knight Comes Riding, which Betsy Ray read when she was no less than 15 in 1907. Have I got you convinced?

And I think there's another important reason YA is more plentiful now--a number of adult books published back in the day probably would be published as YA if they were written now (I Capture the Castle, To Kill a Mockingbird, A Separate Peace). My mother, born in 1949, remembers loving Edna Ferber when she was a teenager; I read Show Boat at 16 and loved it, too. Ferber might have been marketed as a young adult author, these days. And it works the other way, too--let's look at my beloved Tender Morsels--Margo Lanagan has mentioned that it wasn't written as a young adult book. In 1940, it definitely would have been in the adult section. Some publisher saw a market (and, I hope, a message) for teens there. And it's still being published as both an adult and a teen book.

Perhaps what bothers me about the claim "there wasn't any YA, or at least any good YA, when I was a kid" is that besides being untrue, it derails what could be an interesting conversation--how is YA different today from how it used to be? In what ways is it similar?

Negative reviews, and Catching Fire

I decided not to post a review of Catching Fire today. I didn't like it very much.

I've been thinking about whether I WOULD post a review, ever since I read it back in July--before that I was sure I would, because I was sure I would like it.

And this got me thinking about the purpose of negative reviews.

It doesn't seem like most bloggers post them; I know some don't because if they don't like a book, they don't bother finishing it. There've been several ARCs in the last couple of months that I tossed aside because I wasn't enjoying them enough to finish them and they weren't "big" enough that I really wanted to read them so I could understand what everyone else was talking about.

I got started in book-blogging when I was reading all the Newberys last summer; since I also wrote short reviews of all of them, naturally some of those reviews were negative. Getting started that way may have made me feel more comfortable with posting negative (or more often, middling) reviews. But I still don't do it much, except on Goodreads, which serves a different purpose for me.

So what's the point of a negative review? Especially of Catching Fire, which you're all going to read anyway? I would, no matter how many negative reviews I read. I wanted to find out what happened. And I hoped to replicate that "Oh, I see I'm not going to be getting any sleep tonight" experience of reading The Hunger Games.

Wait, does that mean I sometimes I do write negative reviews in order to dissuade people from reading a book? That sounds awful. Okay, about ten years ago I remember writing a post to a listserv about why exactly I hated ...And Ladies of the Club and feeling very satisified when someone wrote to me and said "Thank you for ridding me of any desire I had to ever read that book." But otherwise I... don't care what you read, don't care what books you buy, am usually happy for the authors of books I dislike if other people like them (unless said book is truly offensive to me, hello ...And Ladies of the Club).

Really, I think I write negative reviews for the most part in order to have a conversation--with myself, even if no one else. It's often in the writing of a review that I'm able to really clarify my thoughts about a book. It makes me dig deeper into the book for concrete examples of what I'm trying to say. And when I read a negative review of a book I loved, it helps me see the reasons that I thought the book was so good. Either that, or it gives me a few moments of righteous indignation--if I'm of the opinion that the reviewer's dislike is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the book--and usually results in me calling my sister to complain.

I'm not sure that anyone is interested in having that conversation about Catching Fire, based on the reaction to the Entertainment Weekly review (which had some factual errors, but don't all of our reviews, from time to time? of course, we're not being published in big magazines, but you know; anyway, I thought it was pretty much spot-on otherwise), but hey, I'm around if anyone does. In exchange, you can tell me why you thought, like, A Swiftly Tilting Planet was bad.

Surreptitiously Gay: The Westing Game?

All right, this piece was written several months ago, and just brought to my attention today via Worth the Trip, but since as you know The Westing Game is my favorite Newbery, I was intrigued by the question of whether there's a gay subtext. Before I read the piece, I quickly scanned my memory for guesses as to what the blogger might be looking at. Angela's friendship with Sydelle Pulaski (those matching checkered outfits!)? Turtle's tomboyishness? Judge Ford's... Judge Fordness?

It's nothing so straightforward as that, and I think this is really more about one person's response to The Westing Game than anything I'd pick out as being queer. (Really, the most surprising thing to me was the author's comment that some of his students wonder about A Separate Peace, even though "sex and sexuality don't feature" in it. I honestly thought that was what A Separate Peace was about, even if it isn't written explicitly. Isn't it?)

Philip mentions a few other books with queer subtext, or possibly queer subtext, like Harriet the Spy. What other children's books have you considered in this context? Since Betsy-Tacy is the hot topic right now, I'll say that I've never noted the slightest hint of a queer subtext between the two of them, though it's questioned occasionally by fans--but in Carney's House Party, in the Vassar chapters, it's barely even hidden. The Sue Barton nurse books are crawling with it (this is probably not a revelation to any of you by this point, but the author of Sue Barton, Helen Dore Boylston, was Rose Wilder Lane's life partner). The boyfriends in Nancy Drew were never anything but a joke. The first Babysitters Club/Friends Forever book, Everything Changes, practically reads like slash fanfic--and speaking of Ann M. Martin, when I read the final California Diaries book (this series is AMAZING, I'm not kidding) I almost cried because she and her ghostwriters never came right out and said Ducky was gay, although they left enough hints for people in the know. My most recent discovery was A Solitary Blue, which I loved loved loved and thought was very gay. Oh, and for a newer book, I haven't got a doubt about one of the characters in The Green Glass Sea and White Sands, Red Menace.

I could (and do) go on like this for a long time, but any other offerings? Or thoughts on The Westing Game? (By the way, my vote for Newbery-with-most-queer-subtext is probably The Twenty-One Balloons.)

TOO DEPRESSING

Liz Burns has a terrific analysis of a recent WSJ article about young adult fiction. I agree with almost everything about what she says, so I'm just going to point you there.

The article is riddled with the factual errors you usually find in articles about kids' and YA books, and Liz details some of them. (It occurs to me that probably most articles are riddled with errors; this is just the stuff I happen to know about.) But overall, for once, they're on the right track. And what I especially liked, and what Liz didn't like, was that the article cited "Mary Ingalls going blind" as an example of how YA literature has always included some dark stuff. I didn't like that they said she went blind in Little House on the Prairie, when everyone KNOWS it was By the Shores of Silver Lake, which actually is a YA book. But I think it was a great example to use. Mary's blindness really is very dark and sad, though I think I see that more now, as an adult. And I love it when people writing about this stuff look at a broad historical range. (You've all heard my Newbery rants, I'm sure, about how if anything Newbery-winning books used to be even darker, like Strawberry Girl and Roller Skates.) Liz would prefer Robert Cormier as an example, but by using Mary Ingalls, the journalist reaches back further and makes a less obvious example that will really make people think.

I would also like to note that:
-I don't really think The Hunger Games is that dark, and
-Please, tell me WHEN YA has chiefly consisted of "fizzy escapism". NOT EVEN IN THE FIFTIES, PEOPLE.