Thoughts on Newbery: Something Old or Something New?

2. Each book is to be considered as a contribution to American literature. The committee is to make its decision primarily on the text. Other components of a book, such as illustrations, overall design of the book, etc., may be considered when they make the book less effective.

That is the current criteria #2 for the Newbery award and I’ve written here before about my frustration with it. (Thoughts on Newbery: The Design Thorn.) As I complained in that post and Betsy Bird points out today, it keeps the committee from being able to recognize some of the most exciting books for children being created these days, those where art and design are intertwined with the text in original and innovative ways.

Betsy’s solution is a new award and while I’m absolutely fine with that something new, it doesn’t satisfy my problem with the something old — the Newbery.  After all, it is the most prestigious award for children’s books in this country.  It is the only one most people know. One Frederic G. Melcher proposed it to ALA and they approved it in 1922. This is from his formal agreement with the ALA board:

“To encourage original creative work in the field of books for children. To emphasize to the public that contributions to the literature for children deserve similar recognition to poetry, plays, or novels. To give those librarians, who make it their life work to serve children’s reading interests, an opportunity to encourage good writing in this field.”

“Original creative work for children.”   88 years ago Melcher and the others who created this award wanted books for children to be consider literature on the level of works for adults.  Can we agree that this is now moreso the case?  A few years back Anita Silvey wrote a provocative article asking if the Newbery had lost its way.  She felt it had because young people were not longer “rushing to read the latest Newbery winners.”  However, as many pointed out in response to the article, that wasn’t the original intent of the award at all.  Nor is it today.  If the books end up being popular, that is just grand. But the award isn’t about that; in fact, some of the least popular winners have been the most creative (say, ahem,  “my” winner).

But, to steal from Silvey, I do think the Newbery may be losing its way if it continues to leave art and design outside the circle of consideration.  Some of the most exciting and original books (and these are still very much books) for children being created today have these elements as integral parts. For those books not be recognized as the best because of this or for them to be recognized in spite of this frustrates me tremendously.

How to do it is a huge problem, I realize.  But I hope somehow it can be done so that the Newbery continues to truly recognize the most original and creative work for children of the year.

Initials (with Apologies to the Creators of Hair)

MRE took the ACELA*
Down to DC USA
When she got there
What did she see?
The librarians of America at ALA

ALA ALSC
DC 95 DS**

ALA NCB***
DC 97 DS

ALA BBB****
ALA AAA*****

ALA CSK******
DC 99 DS

ALA PPP *******
ALA FFF ********

DC ACELA
NYC 62 DS

*poetic license
**degrees in the shade
*** Newbery Caldecott Banquet
**** books books books
***** authors authors authors
******Coretta Scott King Awards Breakfast
******* publishers publishers publishers
********friends friends friends

Congratulations, Betsy Partridge!

Betsy’s Marching for Freedom, winner of SLJ’s 2010 Battle of the Kids’ Books, has won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the Young Adult Catagory.  Bravo!

Thoughts on Newbery: Subjectivity

“Reading is subjective” is how Julius Lester begins his SLJ’s Battle of the Kids’ Books decision. It is, it is.  And this is why we have different books receiving different awards the same year.  It is why I might love this year’s Newbery winner yet you might not.  It is why the chances are good that two different groups of people might chose two different winners the same year (as happened with Heavy Medal here and here).

People have been surprised by some of the judges’ decisions at the Battle, but I’m not.  While I may not agree with their reasons I respect them.  Because they are doing what the Newbery Committee does every year.  Yes, unlike the Battle, there are criteria, but in the end each person has to figure out how their favorites work with that criteria.  And it isn’t just the Newbery.  It is true for all awards.  J.L. Bell wondered about The Storm in the Barn winning the Scott O’Dell because he didn’t think of it as historical fiction. However, the committee that gave it the award clearly thought it was.

When on the Newbery Committee you want to be able to listen, consider, and also be passionate about what you care about. Passion is all about subjectivity in the end, isn’t it?  So while you may not agree with Julius Lester today (and some clearly don’t) you have to acknowledge that he showed his cards in that very first sentence.  We are human. We care. We are subjective.

The Children’s Book Committee Bank Street College of Education

This committee selects and awards a stellar collection of books.  Their annual awards breakfast is this coming Thursday, March 18th and you are invited! Sadly, I won’t be there (teaching, you know), but some day I hope I can make it as they’ve an excellent list (and the college is literally around the corner from my home).

Behind the Scenes at the Awards

Thanks to ALA for this one (and Stacy Dillon for alerting me to it and pointing out that you can see the two of us very briefly at the end as we waited to get into the ballroom for the press conference).

Happy Day

My horse won!

Yes!! Claudette Colvin Wins Young People’s National Book Award

Congratulations to all involved in the creation of this year’s young people’s winner of the National Book Award, especially author Phillip Hoose, editor Melanie Kroupa, and Claudette Colvin herself.  As I think I made clear in this post, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice is one of my favorite books of the year.  Hurray!

I’m a big fan of the runners-up too:

Deborah Heiligman, Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith
(Henry Holt)
David Small, Stitches (W. W. Norton & Co.)
Laini Taylor, Lips Touch: Three Times (Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic)
Rita Williams-Garcia, Jumped (HarperTeen/HarperCollins)

Thoughts on Newbery: Retrospective Voice

Nina Lindsay reminded me of this series of posts, begun when I was on the 2008 Newbery Committee.  Now I’m having a grand time following and occasionally participating in the discussion over at Nina’s and Jonathan Hunt’s Heavy Medal blog.  Both are old and good friends; both are passionate, smart, and thoughtful about books for children; both are worth paying close attention to even if you don’t agree with them.  And they’ve been discussing two books, Richard Peck’s A Season of Gifts and Jacqueline Kelly’s The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, that I’ve been wondering about for a very particular reason:  the “looking back” voice.

The authors of these and another highly-lauded book, Fran Slayton’s When the Whistle Blows, have older narrators telling us about earlier times.  And it strikes me that when you are using an older voice to look back in a book for children you are walking a fine line — while you may have a nostalgic view of that time your audience may not share that view.  That is, we adult readers have a fund of background knowledge that we bring to a reading of the story that child readers do not have. And so we may see things the way you (the adult author) does that they may not (or see as the adult author may not have intended).   I also think there is the fine line of how much to include — all the stuff we adults find fascinating may simply slow down the action for a child reader.  Finally, I wonder if we adults, having experienced all of childhood already, can appreciate a broader range of growing-up than can those readers in the under- 15 age group.  Perhaps not, but it is stuff I’m wondering about.

For example,  57 year-old me reads A Season of Gifts with a degree of familiarity that a 9 year-old cannot.  I remember my babysitter’s besottedness with Elvis Presley whereas I would guess that a child today might have no clue who he was.  I remember playing “Cowboys and Indians,” westerns, and calling outhouses “Indian toilets” (a term my parents came up with when we were camping for some reason I can no longer find out about) whereas my students would say Native Americans, are very aware of the importance of respectfulness, and tend to be unaware of the careless behaviors that I recall from my past and are in this story.  Now Peck, to my mind, does a terrific job having his narrator tell his story in an immediate way that is likely to engage a young reader, but I do wonder about whether or not they need some background knowledge to navigate the complicated terrain of that Kickapoo Princess.  Does this particular issue of context matter?

Then there is the retrospective voice of Callie in The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate.  She is also looking back, how far back is no clearer to me than in Peck’s story.  But since author Jacqueline Kelly did not personally experience the time she is looking back to I don’t see the issue of background knowledge that I see for the Peck.  She is in the same chronological space as her intended child readers and brings in the necessary background beautifully, raises issues (say the roles of girls and women) from the same perspective (but without being anachronistic — an impressive feat) as her intended child readers.  But that raises for me a different question — is there too much of it?  I did find it languid at the beginning and wonder if the desire to bring in sufficient background knowledge (however subtly) slowed things down.  Will children be as engaged as adults by the slow layering of information and thought, elegantly brought in scene by scene?  Or is there in this case something about using a looking-back voice that resulted in a bit of an overly-information-rich story?

Not yet discussed in depth by Nina or Jonathan is Fran Slaytor’s When the Whistle Blows.  A lovely and very moving book,  it takes place over a number of years — each chapter a year later in the narrator’s life.  And so I wonder, what age group is going to enjoy this book?  It ends when the narrator is 18 and something about the chapters leading up to that final one made me feel that it wouldn’t appeal to my fourth grade students. Yet I also wonder if it would appeal to an almost-15 year-old (the high-end of the Newbery age range).  Anyone have some firsthand experience with kids reading it?

Popularity, despite much discussion to the contrary, is NOT a Newbery criteria.  But child appeal is.  And I do wonder about the retrospective voice in these three books and its appeal to children.  I’d love to hear from those of you who know of kids reading them and whether the three concerns I raised are significant or not.

Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Speeches

These were presented last week and now we who weren’t fortunate enough to be there can see all the speeches here or on youtube.  As you will see below the honorees are a mighty distinguished lot; their speeches are well worth viewing.  (Gaiman uses a very interesting prop for his, for one.)

Fiction and Poetry

Winner: Terry Pratchett’s Nation

Honors: M. T. Anderson’s The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II:The Kingdom on the Waves and Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book.

Nonfiction

Winner: Candace Fleming’s The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary

Honors: David Macaulay with Richard Walker’s The Way We Work and Tanya Lee Stone’s Almost Astronauts

Picture Book

Winner: Margaret Mahy and Polly Dunbar’s Bubble Trouble

Honors: Kevin Henkes’ Old Bear and Leslie Patricelli’s Higher! Higher!