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Yesterday at 2PM, me and a hundred-ish fans from the WesterForum hung out for about an hour and a half, and I answered many questions. For those of you who weren’t able to attend, I’ have compiled them into this blog post, typos and all! (So. Many. Typos.)

Enjoy:

“What kind of juice do you like?”

There are many juices I love. Mango! Pear! (Especially pear cider.) Apple!

“So Scott there’s been a rivalry going on (on the forum obviously) , based on the question : If the crew of the Leviathan got in a fight with Special Circumstances who would win? What’s your opinion?”

I think in a close-quarters fight the Specials would win, because they’re too quick. But in a proper battle, the Leviathan could mess them up with strafing hawks or bat-poo without ever being in danger.

“WHATS GOING ON WITH CROY?! CAN YOU GIVE US ANY INFO ON HIM?! ”

That info will be released at Leaky Con and Comic Con. THAT’S ONLY A FEW WEEKS. But I can’t tell you anything now, except maybe . . . you will SEE HIM.

“Did you use the same models on the cover of Goliath that you used on Leviathan and Behemoth?”

Yes. Same models, same photo shoot on the same day. Sometime I’ll show you guys the unaltered photos.

“At any point in Behemoth, does Dr. Barlow know that Deyrn is a girl? It has been a topic of great debate.”

Hah! Not saying now, but you WILL learn the answer to that in Goliath.

“Have you ever met someone in real life who reminds you of your characters?
Or vice versa.”

Hmm, not really. Although sometimes I see someone and say, ‘Whoa, he/she’s a total pretty!’

“Nice to meet you, btw. (and tell hi to Justine (Mrs. Larbaleister (sp?)) for me, please!)”

It’s Dr. Larbalestier, in fact.

“Can Justine cook?”

She’s a great cook of Thai food, and she wants me to add that she’s a good boxer too. (She’s been taking lessons.)

“What TV shows do you watch?”

Game of Thrones, Treme, just finished Vampire Diaries,

“This isn’t really a question, just a comment. I thought you’d like to know that I used to like history, and Leviathan made me love it again. I might even try writing something historical-ish myself. ”

Yay!

“Is Lilit lesbian/bi? (Please say yes.)”

They didn’t really have those categories for women back then, but she would be if she was alive today. (Strange but true fact: Male homosexuality was illegal in England back then, but female homosexuality wasn’t because lawmakers REFUSED TO BELIEVE IT EXISTED.)

“In Uglies, there are many messages, some obvious, some not so much. What messages/lessons do you want readers to take away from Leviathan?”

Hmm. I think that the big theme is about how different sides of a conflict (war or just ideological/technological) see each other, and how that can change when people are forced to work together.

“What kind of music do you like? (Do you like Florence+and the machine?)”

I like minimalism and trip-hop, and I don’t know of this Florence person.

“What is your opinion on the Hunger Games? (Will you see the movie?)”

Want to see the movie. Liked the first book, but didn’t read the others.

“When will you go on tour?”

September 17. DON’T KNOW WHERE YET! NOT MY CHOICE WHERE.

“Would you like to join my band of Ninjas?”

I have already infiltrated your band of ninjas!

“Do you like writing about diseases? Peeps was about parasites, Innoculata had to do with a virus and in So Yesterday the main characters dad is a Epidimiologist (I think).”

I love all kinds of biology, like beasties too. Studied philosophy o

I spent yesterday morning listening to the indefatigable Maureen Johnson. She was on the radio with a Wall Street Journal writer best known for decrying the state of young adult lit. You know the drill: “YA is too dark, too depressing, and is bad for the kidz!”

I am not here to argue against fact-free trend pieces, however. Maureen and the internet have already done that and done it well. And, you know, haters gonna hate, and shoddy journalists gonna shod. There’s no way to stop that. Here’s the problem I would like to address instead:

When these issues arise, we writers, librarians, booksellers, teachers, and editors know that the media is overblown and out of touch. We know that the huge boom in YA is helping young readers, because we see it in our in-boxes, our libraries, our stores, and our twitter feeds every day.

Sure, some books aren’t right for some kids. But it’s not like that challenge has recently grown insurmountable. In fact, connecting the right book with the right reader has never been easier. There are more specialist teen librarians than ever before, teenage readers are relentlessly networked, and book reviews from all perspectives are more plentiful than at any other time in human history. (Thank you, the internet.)

But someone has to think of the parents. Especially those who randomly turn on the radio or read the WSJ and are exposed to this alarmism. They may not know how to check out all those amazing stories tweeted on #YASaves. They probably don’t follow comment threads on blogs like this one, where bookish teens prove hourly how smart, supportive, and savvy they are. Many parents don’t know what “DFTBA” means, and thus may not realize how awesome their kids are not forgetting to be.

And the other side in this debate sounds perfectly reasonable. “We just want a conversation! We just want parents to be aware!” And they couch everything in that scary questioning tone: “These books MAY be turning your kids into cutters.” Like when local news promos ask, “Are your cleaning fluids making you hate America? Story at eleven!”

Here’s my problem with this brand of “reasonableness”: Conversations have contexts, and awareness is always flavored by its catalyst. Let’s take two examples . . .

A parent goes into a teenager’s room and says, “I just heard from the wise people at the Wall Street Journal that the books you kids read these days are mostly dark and horrible and will make you cut yourself and take drugs. Let me check your books so I can make sure this is not true!”

Seriously. How do you think that conversation’s going to go?

Eyes will be rolled, tempers will rise, and more than likely this parent will be made to feel dreadfully foolish. (Teenagers are good at this last bit.) Frankly, being easily manipulated by alarmists in the media is not a good look for anyone.

But let’s say a parent goes into that same kid’s room and says . . .

“Hey, I just heard that young adult lit sales have grown by double digits every year for the last decade. You teens read so much that it’s the only profitable part of publishing! And now Hollywood wants to make everything you read into movies, and more adults than ever before are reading YA! And I heard that huge crowds show up at bookstores and rented venues when popular YA writers are in town! And that many YA writers have tens of thousands of followers on the Twitter machine, if not hundreds of thousands! And that every November countless teenagers support each other in WRITING THEIR OWN NOVELS! Holy crap, we didn’t do that in m

Tonight (Thursday, December 8th) at 7PM EST in the US (4PM in California and 11AM on Friday morning in Sydney), I’m doing a chat about high-stakes testing and how schools teach writing. Are those five-paragraph essays going to turn you all into novelists? And how about those syllogisms on the SAT?

I’ll be joined by David Levithan, Robin Wasserman, and Lauren McLaughlin, whose book Scored inspired the panel.

Click here for details.

To prepare for this, Lauren and I took the essay section of the SAT, and had ourselves scored by a professional examiner. You can read our essays and see what grades we got here at the Huffington Post. (Note that we had exactly 25 minutes to write those essays! Just like you guys did/will!)

Click here for more about Scored, which is out now. It’s set in a dystopian world where every kid gets a Score when they turn 18, determining their prospects for the rest of their life.

Hope to see you all tonight! (Tomorrow morning for me.)

Just finished my forward for an anthology called Willful Impropriety: 13 Tales of Society, Scandal, and Romance. As you can tell from the subtitle, it’s a set of stories about people young people flouting Victorian-era convention in various ways. There are a few girls-dressed-as-boys tales in the bunch, which is perhaps why I got the chance to read it early and write a forward.

Here’s the rather awesome cover:

And the cover copy:

The Season has finally arrived, filled with the magnificent balls, scandalous gossip, and clandestine romances that every lord and lady in good society has come to expect. But far within the walls of lavish estates and in the dark corners of the city lies a world that the aristocracy dares not touch, with rules and risks that glamour cannot overpower. Yet true love has no boundaries, and heiresses and street thieves alike must use their savvy and strength to create new beginnings and happily-ever-afters. Sometimes luck is enough, but every once in a while, a touch of magic may be needed.

Deliciously alluring, these thirteen historical romances from a talented array of YA authors will make even the most cynical heart swoon.

How can you resist it?

Edited by Ekaterina Sedia, Willful Impropriety comes out September 4, 2012.

Oh, and here’s the full roster of writers:

AT WILL by Leanna Renee Hieber
THE UNLADYLIKE EDUCATION OF AGATHA TREMAIN by Stephanie Burgis
NUSSBAUM’S GOLDEN FORTUNE by M. K. Hobson
THE COLONEL’S DAUGHTER by Barbara Roden
MERCURY RETROGRADE by Mary Robinette Kowal
FALSE COLOURS by Marie Brennan
MRS BEETON’S BOOK OF MAGICKAL MANAGEMENT by Karen Healey
THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS by Caroline Stevermer
THE DANCING MASTER by Genevieve Valentine
THE GARDEN OF ENGLAND by Sandra McDonald
RESURRECTION by Tiffany Trent
OUTSIDE THE ABSOLUTE by Seth Cadin
STEEPED IN DEBT TO THE CHIMNEY POTS by Steve Berman

I sort of missed it, but yesterday was Ada Lovelace Day!

Ada Lovelace, of course, is the patron saint of Dess, the hypernumerate character from my Midnighters series. She’s also one of the towering figures in the history of computing, given that she wrote the world’s first computer program . . . back in 1843. This achievement is as amazing as it sounds, given that the computer didn’t exist back then, except in theory. But that didn’t stop Ada.

It’s stories like this that make me realize that history itself can be quite steampunk. That is, ideas and technologies don’t all appear in a neat, predictable order. Sometimes theory gets ahead of practice in ways that are profound and mysterious, and imagination is never limited by the engineering capabilities of the present.

That’s a good thing to remember, so happy belated Ada Lovelace Day.

Also thanks to everyone at Marrickville High School, where I had a great visit yesterday. About 40 students (mostly Year 9s, or what us USians call freshmen) were stuck with me for about two hours. That’s a long stretch, but they all stayed focused and smart and full of brilliant questions.

Thanks for a great day, Marrickvillians, and good luck with your NAPLANs.

I just got a new telescope. It’s happily snoozing in the guest room at the moment, and doesn’t wish to be photographed, but here’s a picture of the moon I took with it last night. This was with my iPhone camera held up to the eyepiece, so you’d think it would suck. But my telescope makes even this silly procedure AWESOME.

Observe:

That’s a tiny bit of the moon, because from now on I am magnified. Must now learn the names of all the craters and snack bars on the moon.

Here are Four Other Things of possible interest:

Thing 1
The Uglies series is launching in Brazil this week, complete with a really cool website:

I love the look and feel of it, and hope it does well for my publisher there, Editora Record. If you speak any Portuguese, check it out here.

Thing 2
Just noticed that Behemoth has an Amazon page now, but no cover. (Amusing reviews for some other book are there at the moment.)

Thing 3
Justine are about to head back to NYC, where we have an event for Read This, a charity that collects books for people who need them, including schools, hospitals, homeless shelters, troops overseas, etc.

Justine Larbalestier, Bennett Madison,
Scott Westerfeld, & Cecily von Ziegesar
Reading and Q&A
12:30PM-1:15PM, Saturday, 10 April
Center for Fiction
17 E. 47th Street, Second floor
(between Madison & Fifth Ave.)
NY NY

The price of admission? Your donation of two or more new or gently used board books through grade 12. Cool idea, huh?

Thing 4
The next New York Review of Science Fiction Readings features three awesome YA authors!

Barry Lyga, Marie Rutkoski, & Robin Wasserman
curated by Carol Cooper

Tuesday, 6 April, Doors open 6:30 PM, event begins at 7:00 PM
SoHo Gallery for Digital Art
138 Sullivan Street (between Houston & Prince St.)

Admission is by a $5 donation. (If circumstances make this a hardship, let them know and they will accommodate you.)

A Russian fan recently directed me to this site, which gives a full accounting of books by my Russian alter-ego, Скотт Вестерфельд. (Technically, Скотт is not an alter-ego, given that he is, in fact, me. But I prefer to imagine him as an actual other person, reading this post and chuckling as he consumes champagne and caviar, surrounded by all the author’s copies that my Russian publishers never bother to send me.)

I’ve always enjoyed Скотт’s covers, which have a pulpish fabulosity that makes my own covers seem restrained, almost priggish, in comparison. So I thought a series of posts examining his work would be fun.

Let’s look first at Скотт’s Midnighters series. These books have had no fewer than three separate sets of covers. Whether this is because Скотт is astonishingly popular or simply because this series has never gained traction, I have no idea. (Someone would have to send me some royalty statements in order for me to take a guess. Hint, hint.)

Anyway, here are the first two Midnighters covers, published in 2006:

These covers are fairly true to the books in their details (13-pointed stars, small-town buildings, all sort of metal weaponry) but the central figures are somewhat bizarre. First note that Jonathan Martinez (um, Hispanic) and Jessica Day (textually a red head) are both blond and blue-eyed here. That’s whitewashing in its most aggressive form—Aryanization.

Also odd is the subway train looming up behind Dess in Book 2. Note to Russian artist: there are no subways in Bixby, Oklahoma. The stimulus bill wasn’t that big.

But it turns out that these covers have been replaced, so let’s move on. This is what they looked like in 2008:

Holy guacamole, that’s a different look. The whitewashing is pretty much over with Jonathan, and Jess has arguably reddish hair. Of course, everyone is suddenly in bondage leather, which might not be strictly canonical (or even purchasable in small-town Oklahoma). But the energy in these covers is lovely.

I also like that Dess is on Book 1, while Jessica and Jonathan have been moved to Book 2. Because everyone likes Dess better. Plus, this Dess is much more awesome than wimpy oop-I-fell-over Dess from the first set of covers.

But this take on the series didn’t last either. A little book called Сумерки came out, which was about some dude who sparkled, and there was a sudden call for everything to look a bit more . . . vampire-y.

So these are the books in their current form:

A little more urban fantasy, and apparently a bit more successful, given that we finally have a cover for Book 3 in this style:

Back in the US for two measly weeks, and already I’m getting back on a plane. To Chicago!

On Monday night I have a public event at Anderson’s Bookshop in Napierville with D. J. MacHale, author of the Pendragon series.

Here are the details:

Monday, April 26
7:00PM – 8:30PM
Scott Westerfeld & D. J. MacHale Joint Event
Anderson’s Bookshop
123 W. Jefferson • Naperville, IL 60540

Then on Tuesday I’m headed to the International Reading Association’s annual do, where I’ll be speaking on a panel and signing. You must have an event pass to get in (which means you’re probably a librarian or English teacher or something cool like that).

Tuesday, April 27
9:00 a.m. – 11:45 a.m.
Symposia: “The Illustrated Teen: An Intersection of Text and Image in Contemporary Young Adult Literature”
Featuring Scott Westerfeld, Holly Black, Henry Neff, Stephen Emond, and Elizabeth Patridge
Educators: Lisa Morris-Wilkey and Susannah Richards
Location: McCormick Place South Building • Room S403b

2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Signing at the Simon & Schuster Booth (#1725)

Hope to see some of you Chicago folks there!

BONUS Update:

Just got a sneak preview of the Italian cover for Leviathan. Non è molto
bella?

Look what I got today . . .

And as you can see, I ignored the label. Bwah-hah-hah! (But seriously, don’t try this at home, or especially at your bookstore. I’m what you call an expert, with years of training that keeps me safe.)

Now, some of you have been asking in the comments of my tour details post exactly what my appearances will be like. That is an excellent question!

Here’s roughly how they go:

1) The events are in a bookstore and somewhere between 30 and 100 people show up. These numbers seem to be completely random. (Sometimes at book festivals or other large venues, hundreds appear.) Those who come early sit closer, but no one is turned away! You can always buy my books at my appearances.

2) First I do a half-hour talk about how Leviathan came to be, and how Keith and I work together. This presentation has many slides of his boo-tiful art, which allow me to make hilarious visual jokes! Later in the tour, my schtick is smoother, but it is always stirring.

3) Next I answer all your burning questions about everything—the Leviathan series, the Uglies books, the Midnighters and New York trilogies, my adult books, writing advice, or whatever you want to know. Pro tip: Raise your hand early on when everyone else being a weenie, and your question will be answered.

4) I sign stuff. This can take a while, but your patience is rewarded by me signing pretty much anything put in front of me. I pose for pictures too. In case of very long lines, some stores have rules, like, two things signed for every book you buy there. And I would strongly encourage you to buy at least one book at the store hosting the event. I mean, it’s in your interest to keep them in business! (But please come up and say hi, even if you are penniless.) And please assume I don’t how to spell your name, even if it’s “Rick.”

5) Sometimes Justine is there. If you like her books and say so to her, she will not harm you. She may even sign things or amuse you in other ways. But there are no guarantees!

That’s it, really. So if you live in or near . . .
Exton, PA
West Chester, PA
Pittsburgh, PA
Glen Rock, NJ
Houston, TX
Allen (near Dallas), TX
Austin, TX
New Orleans, LA
Alpharetta, GA
Decatur, GA
Raleigh, NC
Cincinnati, OH
Ft. Thomas, KY
Naperville, IL
Novi, MI
Ann Arbor, MI
Provo, UT
Paris or Nantes, France
Miami, FL
or Vancouver, Canada . . .
then please check out my Appearance page for when I’ll be there.

See you on tour!

Behemoth is out NOW in the US, Canada, and in the UK! (Sorry, Australia, you have to wait one more week, till October 12.) The audio book, read by the awesome Alan Cumming, is also out now.

For a bit more about the book, click here for an interview with me on Tor.com about researching Behemoth, writing process, and FOOD.

I’m on tour right now and will attempt to blog from the road, but it may be patchy.

Am I coming to your town? Well, do you live in . . .

Exton, West Chester, or Pittsburgh, PA THE NEXT THREE NIGHTS!
Glen Rock, NJ
Houston, Allen (near Dallas), or Austin, TX
New Orleans, LA
Alpharetta or Decatur, GA
Raleigh, NC
Cincinnati, OH
Ft. Thomas, KY
Naperville, IL
Novi or Ann Arbor, MI
Provo, UT
Nantes or Paris, France
Miami, FL
or Vancouver, Canada?
Then please check out my Appearances page for when I’ll be near you.

And finally: THE COMMENTS ON THIS THREAD ARE SPOILERS!
ABANDON NARRATIVE TENSION, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE . . .

ALERT! Behemoth is out NOW in Australia. Enjoy!

I’m heading off to Texas, but I wanted to share some cool reviews, interviews, and images from the Behemoth tour so far. In no particular order:

You can now download Behemoth, read by the awesome Alan Cumming, as an audio book! Click to download from Audible or iTunes.

Check out this guest post I did for Figment, about the art of the Leviathan series.

And here’s another post I did for the Steamed blog, which is cool for all things steampunk.

Here’s an interview with me at Eve’s Fan Garden.

And here’s a slightly spoilery review of Behemoth at Boing Boing.

I AM ALL OVER THE INTERNETS.

But I’m also on tour, so if you live in . . .
Houston, Allen (near Dallas), or Austin, TX
New Orleans, LA
Alpharetta or Decatur, GA
Raleigh, NC
Cincinnati, OH
Ft. Thomas, KY
Naperville, IL
Novi or Ann Arbor, MI
Provo, UT
Nantes or Paris, France
Miami, FL
or Vancouver, Canada . . .
Then please check out my Appearances page for when I’ll be near you.

Right now, there are exactly a hundred comments on the Behemoth spoiler thread. Maybe we should keep going there for book discussion, and use this thread to talk about the interviews or whatever.

And now, because I missed Fan Art Friday, here are some fan art images from the tour!

First, a great life-size version of Alek, which greeted me at River Dell Middle School.

And here’s Deryn, me, and the artists! (Sorry I forgot your names!)

And the drawing on the left was given to me at a signing in Pennsylvania by Patrick. It’s modeled on a real WWI propaganda poster, but changed to show Clanker sensibilities!

Justine and I are finally back home from touring, and want to say thanks to all the teachers, librarians, booksellers, students, and fans who made our trip so much fun, and for helping to make Behemoth a success. I’ll be posting some cool pictures from the trip here soon. But in the meantime, here’s something for those of you who didn’t get a chance to see me live.

Tomorrow at 6PM US Eastern time, I’ll be doing a live video chat for everyone and anyone who wants to come. Please click the banner below to RSVP, so that we can set up the bandwidth for the right number of participants.

Unlike a text-only chat, you’ll get to see and hear me. I’ll start by giving some of my usual appearance talk, and then will answer your questions. You can send them in via Facebook, AIM, and MySpace through Ustream’s social stream. On Twitter, I’ll also be monitoring the hashtag #ChatSS. (For details, click the banner above to go to Ustream’s site.)

I hope you can make it.

Here’s the rest of the tour:

New York City
Wednesday, November 3
6:00-7:30PM
Reading at NYPL, Jefferson Market Branch
425 Sixth Ave. at 10th St.
With Rachel Cohn & David Levithan, Sarah Beth Durst, Barry Lyga, Lena Roy, and Kieran Scott.

Nantes, France, Utopiales Festival
November 10-14
Many things. See the festival schedule.

Paris, France
November 16
4:00PM
Virgin Megastore
Centre commercial des Quatre Temps
92 La Défense
Métro: Grande Arche de la Défense

Miami, FL
November 21
Miami Book Festival
No details yet

Vancouver, Canada
November 24
7:00 PM
West Point Grey United Church Sanctuary
4595 West 8th Ave
Vancouver BC
Those dressed in Victorian/Steampunk costumes are eligible to win a signed framed print from Leviathan by illustrator Keith Thompson!
Tickets: $5.00 (can be used towards the purchase of a book at the event)
Click here for tickets.

Just got back from France last night, and have TONS of cool photos and videos to share. But I must get them organized first! Give me a day or two.

In the meantime, there are exactly TWO more events in the not-quite-endless Behemoth tour:

Miami Book Festival
w/Darren Shan and Ellen Hopkins
November 20 1:30PM
Prometeo Theatre
(Building 1, 1st Floor, Room 1101)

Vancouver, Canada
November 24 7:00 PM
West Point Grey United Church Sanctuary
4595 West 8th Ave
Come dressed in a Victorian/Steampunk costume to be eligible to win a signed framed print from Leviathan by illustrator Keith Thompson!
Tickets: $5.00 (goes towards the purchase of a book at the event)
Click here for tickets.

Alas, Justine won’t be at either of these events. But she says hi.

And check out this awesome trailer from the Portuguese publisher of Uglies, Vogais & Companhia:

Also, I like this photo from an interview in the French press. (Mmm . . . French press. Must get coffee now.)

UPDATE

This interview with Suvudu at New York Comic Con is also cool, in that I talk for 17 minutes without saying anything stupid:

NYCC Video Interview: Scott Westerfeld from Suvudu on Vimeo.

The postings have been slim here. Justine and I have done our bisummeral relocation to Sydney, where the weather is rather better than it is in New York.

I haz proof:

Yes, this is the view from where I work. Neener-neener.

Check this out. It is TOTALLY FAKE, but cool.

JarredSpekter of Deviant Art.

And it comes with this awesome FAKE poster, also by Jarred:

I quite like the fake movie trailer/poster art form.

But yes, this is me just being lazy, posting random stuff. I GET TO BE LAZY. I’ve been traveling all over the world the last few months, after all. And I’ve spent the last week working on a s3krit project, which I can’t even tell you about. (Yes, so why tell you that I can’t tell you? I dunno. Just to sound cool, I guess.)

Oh, also! Those of you who are e-book readers (or who know one) here’s a cool new thing:

It’s the Uglies Quartet all together in e-book form! Check it out here. And here’s a list of the many reading devices supported.

Anyway, I will get back to more regular postings in the new year. In the meantime, happy holidays to everyone.

If you came to this blog for the Leviathan fan art, maybe you should skip this post. But if you have a few minutes to kill, you’ll see what goes on inside the heads of writers when they deal with media kerfuffles about their books.

But first a little background . . .

Last week (decades ago in internet time) an organization called BitchMedia made a list of 100 YA Novels for the Feminist Reader. There was great celebration on the YA interweebz, because the list included many fine novels. Moreover, certain writers of a certain vintage always liked Bitch Magazine when it was an edgy west coast zine in the late 1990s, and being listed by it provided validation to our aging souls.

But then bad things happened. A handful of commenters on the blog questioned three of the titles: Jackson Pearce’s Sisters Red, Margo Lanagan’s Tender Morsels, and Elizabeth Scott’s Living Dead Girl. A weekend later, BitchMedia decided to yank them. A few hours after that some of us authors on the list (Maureen Johnson, Justine Larbalestier, Diana Peterfreund, E. Lockhart, Ellen Klages, and possibly more) commented to express our disappointment and request that our own books be removed from the list.

If you go to that post now, you’ll find several hundred comments of varying degrees of relevance, vitriol, and snark. I have waded in a few places, but it’s a red hot mess over there. So to better address all the questions directed at me (or not to me) in one place, allow me to share with you this dialog, in which I mercilessly decimate a straw man.

In other words, here’s all the stuff that goes through us writers’ heads while we are reacting to examples of not-quite-censorship:

Q: Why are you so crazy angry about this?

A: I’m more disappointed than angry. Particularly saddening was these words from the staffers at BitchMedia about one of the challenged titles: “This book came as a recommendation to us from a few feminists, and while we knew that some of the content was difficult, we weren’t tuned into what you’ve just brought up. A couple of us at the office have decided to spend the rest of our weekend re-considering this choice by reading the book.”

Hmm, by “reading the book.” A good place to start, and yet . . .

Just put your mind in this staffer’s place. You go out into the YA world and ask for recommendations for a 100-long list of books. You don’t read them all, of course, because you are an un- or little-paid staffer at a blog, not the frickin’ Printz Committee. When your list is posted, suddenly someone is accusing three of these books of being morally bankrupt and evil. So you hunker down and read 1000 pages over two days, with these comments lingering uppermost in your mind. You may not have a firm grip on why your original sources recommended the book, because you haven’t asked them specifically to respond to the disparaging comments. And you don’t have time to think about the issues raised here in comparison to those raised in the other books on the list, because you also haven’t read all of those either. So you cave into the tiny group of protesters, because that seems easier, especially having just read the books with those commenters’ objections in mind.

In other words, this whole process unfolded in much the same way that school library challenges do. A small group of people complain, and then people who haven’t really read these books before hearing awful things about them (and who, more important, haven’t immersed themselves in the entire set of books involved, challenged and unchallenged) have to make a snap decision.

This is what has disappointed me and many others, because we’d thought better