How to use this Page

good for them. It's common sense that if a word will get a child in trouble in school, it shouldn't be in books either. I doubt any teachers want a student telling them "go to hell"

Well, Anon, there's language I use in school and then there's the language I use "out of school," so to speak. I wouldn't want children's reading experiences to be limited to school settings. I wouldn't want them limited by the language appropriate in school settings, either. I'd like to see people respect children's ability to tell the difference between language they can use in school and the kind they can't. I am confident that they know the difference.

Anon2

Anon1,
It's probably just bait your casting, but I'll rise to it just a bit. The logical extension of your argument is that any language not used in polite adult conversation should also not be used in books for adults. Your line of argument is fouled.
IF

I went to read 6Boxes's commentary. I really don't like the Scholastic book fairs. In the twelve years since my kids started school I have seen them go from mediocre to worse. They push off the cheapest, cheesiest, tacky, vacuous schlock on an audience that--for once in a YEAR probably--has the money in pocket to buy a book.

There's huge social pressure to give your kid money for the bookfair, so parents who would otherwise never buy a book for their kids, cough up the ten bucks. And what can the kids buy with it? Remainders that have sold nowhere else, overpriced pencils, posters, and TV tie-ins.

At the same time that I hate it, though, I have to say--it makes money. 6Boxes laments that Scholastic has a monopoly on bookfairs, but maybe this is WHY they have a monopoly. They don't ever push the envelope. They keep everything mainstream to a fault. When everyone cries out for a book to be included, then they know it is time to add it to the bookfair, but not before.

Anon2

As a Canadian who is often baffled by America’s policy on things like censorship particularly when free speech is in the country’s constitution, I’ll say this, it is up to the individual to put up the good fight. Now your rights Americans then make certain it is upheld.

I agree Roger. The "homosexual content" bit was about the lamest thing ever.

Seconded. Is it "sexual content" if a kid has, well, parents? What about all those books about kids with a baby sibling on the way? Does anyone have a problem with those? I don't think so.

My middle grade novel was considered by Scholastic Book Club-- they wanted me to take out the word "butt," any reference to the girl's period, etc etc. I was mayyybe willing to take out "butt" but come on, getting your period is biology. You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the Facts of Life. I see nothing controversial in the Facts of Life.

"Unexplained feline wanderings in illustrations" give me great delight, I have to admit. If there's a cat in an illustration, my attention immediately is fixed on it -- I suspect that's true of children, as well.

Must look for Applesauce Season!

Thank you for this tempting issue of troublemakers! The Sept./Oct. Horn Book has just arrived and, alas, I am busy planning next week's story times. No time to read this yet. However, I did procrastinate long enough to enjoy the six-word memoirs. I will be trying to compose some of my own. And I think "wild thing king all rumpused out" will look great on a baby blanket for my newest grandbaby. Thanks for a wonderful issue. I guess I can wait until after work on Saturday to start it!
NHbook_lady

I am thrilled to bits.

oversurli

I don't know the history of why the chapter in Mary Poppins was changed--whether PL Travers was under any of this commercial pressure--but I have always thought, while noting regretfully that the rewritten chapter doesn't have nearly the charm of the original, that if I were an author, I'd be embarrassed by a chapter like that and want to rewrite it, also. Wouldn't you?

In terms of "lucrative book club sales" I can tell you that they aren't all that lucrative for the authors. I'd love to see an article sometime on the monopoly Scholastic has on school sales and what that really means for quality books and authors.

Here in Aus, I've long been disturbed by the power Scholastic wields - aware authors grapple with whether or not to include that scene where the 12 year old tastes wine at a party, because they know that it will probably exclude the book club sales. And really, how can you make your gritty YA characters declare 'Heavens to Betsy!' or 'my giddy aunt!' with any credibility.

The Billabong books I read (for anyone who doesn't know, a series of Australian books from early 20th century that form some of the foundation of our children's literary tradition) had a note at the end basically saying 'yeah these books are horrendously racist and often sexist, but that was the era, be aware as your reading it'. I think this is possibly a better solution to books that are tied to a distinct time and place. I'm not sure about something that sits in more of a fairytale tradition for younger children though...I find it really hard to explain racism to my (disturbingly Aryan, what happened to my Welsh gypsy genes?) five year old.

(as I wrote this my daughter said: 'what does blue taste like?' and I said 'well, colours don't really have a flavour' - seemed like the premise of a kid's book about racism to me!)

Sorry, I feel like whenever I come here I write enormously long comments. I really do enjoy your blog very much (and Collecting Children's Books too - his post about The Flying Nun was excellent)

This is a knotty problem, and one that perplexes me. If you ask me whether it's right to censor books, I will of course say, no, it is absolutely not right. But sometimes a lovely African-American child comes to me, and asks me, with eyes shining in anticipation, if s/he can read Dr. Doolittle or Mary Poppins, and I go over to the bookshelf, where we have both the old-fashioned versions and the new ones--and well, I pick out the re-edited ones every time. I don't want that child to bite into a peach and break a teeth on the stone. But of course I am censoring, and I am convinced that censorship is wrong.

This kind of thing has always frustrated me. Children don't have problems with prejudice - PC is an adult hang-up. I read the now heavily edited Enid Blyton extensively as a young child, and at no point did I ever associate Gollywogs with any racism. Or get damaged by characters called Dick and Fanny.

Any questions that children do generate should be answered honestly - it was a different time, people thought differently - not by avoiding the subject and hoping it will go away. Nervously looking away whenever the issue comes up does nothing to help change attitudes. Censoring old children's books is like abstinence only sex education.

"at no point did I ever associate gollywogs with any racism"--see, that's part of the problem right there.

Kids DO absorb racism, and sexism, and any other kind of stereotype--why do you think they're so deeply ingrained? I don't know about you, but I didn't ask my parents questions about everything I read in books; I tended to assume the authors knew what they were talking about.

I'm not saying I necessarily approve of this kind of censorship, or that kids' books cause most of the racism in the world. But it seems to me like YOU'RE the one nervously looking away from the problem.

Book-club bowdlerization is despicable. A few years back I picked up a Weekly Reader edition of Anastasia On Her Own by Lois Lowry, and was deeply disturbed to see that in Katherine Krupnik's recollection, Freddy Valente, 7th-grade bra-snapper, had been changed to a hair-puller. Ridiculous, and the scene no longer made much sense.

Although I agree Wendy, I agree most with Anonymous. It's a knotty problem. How big of a stink should you make when you don't really care in the specific case, but you care in Principle? My editor asked me to remove a couple of "bastards" from a book and I did. They weren't that important to me--pre-publication. If Scholastic wanted me to do it, though, I'd be so much more cranky-- post-publication. Even though the words weren't that important to me, I think I'd have to refuse, "lucrative" sales or no.

"Well, tough: why would we want to reward authors for caving to commercial pressure? The money would have to be enough."

This reveals a naivete that shocks me in you, Roger. Authors might receive 5 or 6 cents a copy for each book fair book. They're not caving to commercial pressure nor to the desire for filthy lucre, but to fear that their publishers will not publish other books they've written, nor treat their current books well, unless they do as they are told. They also hope the additional exposure from the book fair will lead to better marketing treatment for future books. (It rarely does.)
-Nancy Werlin

The most dramatic de-fanging of these classics with racist content takes place when they're completely reworked. "Sam And The Tigers" by Lester & Pinkney, as the mechanism whereby "Little Black Sambo" becomes repositioned in society is the case in point.

Perhaps similarly, children these days are most likely to encounter the Eddie Murphy "Dr. Doolittle" movies long before reading the books.

Where am I naive, Nancy? Everything you cite is an example of how making or allowing word changes for a book club edition means better commercial prospects for the author. I don't blame them--but I'm not going to hold them up as exemplars of intellectual freedom, either.

Re: Gollywogs - In cases where the characters are actual people and there's racial stereotypes involved, I can see where children would absorb those stereotypes. But there's certainly no question that allegories like gollywogs and goblins went right over my head at age 4. Of course, I can't speak for every child. I simply disagree with hunting down any implication of any prejudice and removing it, trying to cover up our racist past. There's no looking away from the problem here, it's thinking the problem's different from what the censors think it is.

"Where am I naive, Nancy?"

In saying, as you specifically do, that money is involved.

I'm not sure I understand. Does any change in a book make it no longer the book that won an award? What if it's a nonfiction book and the new edition includes a correction?

NW, I think it depends a lot on the change. A correction, no, or typos or newly appended info. But if words are changed because otherwise the book might get someone in hot water, then, yes, I think the award designation should be withheld from that edition.

That sounds a little punitive to me. Are you withholding it because the book has lost quality, or because you don't approve of the reason for the change? In every case, would the book not have won the award without the curse word or whatever has been removed?

We can't always know just why a book has won a prize or been named to a recommended list, and it's impossible to know what might have happened had the book been different in the first place. But the fact remains that a bowdlerized edition is different from the one that won the prize, and it is different for reasons actively disapproved (in this case) by the organization who gave the award or recommendation. Is In the Night Kitchen still Caldecott-Honor-worthy when Mickey has a bathing suit attached? What if Lucky loses his scrotum?

This discussion is making me very interested in knowing to what extent Scholastic and other book clubs continue this practice.

Lucky loses "its" scrotum, please. It's not a person, it is a book. Susan Patron could lose "her" scrotum . . . that would be exciting.

I meant ROY! If ROY loses his scrotum! In Lucky, I mean Lucky.

I certainly agree that when a book is changed so as to reduce its controversial character, this meaningfully alters the book.

I used to pull the copy of "Inner City Mother Goose" by Eve Merriam, (re-illustrated by David Diaz, re-published by Harcourt), off of the shelf to show to certain customers -- I would flip right to the page with "f*ck" on it (the book had all four letters and no asterisks!) and say, "This is the only book in this store with this word."

"Inner City Mother Goose" -- what a brilliant book. If it were sanitized in any way, why should it be considered the same book?

(Typically, the book went out of print again. BLECH on censorship.)

Andy Laties

Dunno, Andy. Is that censorship or market pressure? I might admire Inner City Mother Goose, but I'm not likely to buy it. What's the difference between censorship and business? If an editor asks you to pull the fucks out of your book? What if the editor reads your book, thinks it's brilliant, knows it won't sell, and passes up the fucks entirely. They won't even ask you to change the vocabulary words, because they don't want to censor you're beautiful book . . . which is still sitting in a drawer five years later. Is that censorship, too?

And Roger, no one is going to publish a book for kids where a character loses his scrotum. That shit is just not on.

Rofl Anon 2:54

This discussion makes me curious about a couple points about variations of award-winning books:

1. If one book says "fuck" and the other says "f---", are they considered the same book or different books?

2. When an award-winning book is translated into another language, is the translation still an award winner? Certainly in translating there is a lot of leeway to censor.

Anon 2:58--The character didn't lose his scrotum, but a rattlesnake bit a character's dog's scrotum. :)

You seem to be saying that "market pressure" is something that has an objective character. But I'm saying this isn't true, and that the market's tastes and desires are shaped in turn by what is actually available for consumption.

In other words: it is not true that demand and supply are one-way. Rather, if supply contains no swear-words, demand will not necessarily ask for them. But "Inner City Mother Goose" was a brilliant book in 1969, became a hit musical, went out of print, was reissued in 1994, went out of print...and, so, is this the end? Are you telling me there is no market demand for a brilliant classic poetry book which has had social significance?? Are you telling me that if the book were in print there would be no buyers? How can you know this what the book is not being supplied and thus no data is available??

What I'm saying -- what I didn't say in my earlier post -- is that I consistently was successful at selling "Inner City Mother Goose" in the late 90s. During that period in my career I owned the bookstore at Chicago Children's Museum, on Navy Pier -- the number one tourist destination in Illinois. I had all humanity through that store, and I worked pretty hard to keep "Inner City Mother Goose" selling. I kept it faced out, in multiple copies, and I hand-sold it regularly.

And I think it's appalling that it's out of print; I'm a bookseller, in close contact with the market.

I'm telling anyone reading this blog that "The Inner City Mother Goose," by Eve Merriam (especially with the fabulous David Diaz illustrations) ((are you listening, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt??)) would sell several dozen copies per year in my current store at Eric Carle Museum -- and I think it would sell nationwide. I am saying that the presence of the word "f*ck" in the book IMPROVES the book, and HEIGHTENS its saleability.

That's not to say there aren't plenty of people who will choose not to buy it BECAUSE of the presence of a swear word, but rather to say that there's a very significant segment of the market which would LIKE their young children to encounter that word in a book being read from parent to child, in a personal moment, where the word can be frankly discussed.

Every parent's duty is to explain to children why and which words are swearwords, what level of "swearing" is taking place with each swear word, the FACT that the word "f*ck" is one of the oldest words in the English language, dating back at least to the 11th century -- all sorts of useful and interesting facts about swear words.

Gee. Maybe I should write a book called "F*CK!" for children which would be non-fiction, and historical. The history of swear words is fascinating. "Sh*t" is similarly a grand old word, dating from a thousand years ago!

Andy, the fact that you can't write the word "fuck" without using asterisks suggest you are not quite suited for writing a frank and open book on the subject.

Sorry, your manuscript query is rejected.

hee hee. i'll have to publish it on kindle.

"Are you telling me there is no market demand for a brilliant classic poetry book which has had social significance??"

More shocking things have happened.

Oh, God, Roger, I reversed East and West in my award winning book and fixed it in later editions. Are you saying I have to peel the stickers off?

Anon 2:54

Well, I still say "Inner City Mother Goose" by Eve Merriam should be in print! Duh!

And I do not see how that reprinting COULD happen if the word FUCK were removed from its poetic setting.

So if what you're saying is that this situation is not soluble and thus the book cannot be produced -- I am truly perplexed by the society I live in. And I assume that in the future, at some point, "Inner City Mother Goose" will once again be in print.

I certainly hope Eve Merriam's heirs don't bow to any temptation to print to book with altered text, however.

Hmmmm. East v. West. I suggest you keep the sticker and laugh yourself silly about the stupid award committee.

"F---" v. "Fuck." The former would only get Scholastic in MORE trouble with more people. I have seen "feck" used to get around this problem and used to establish the awesome street cred of the author.

Had Eve Merriam decided to bow to the publisher or marketplace or the sensibilities or her grandmother, I would say "it's your book, do what you want." But had a prize committee chosen to honor it, I would expect any subsequent edition that blazoned the sticker to respect the decision of the committee and not fuck with its choice.

"So if what you're saying is that this situation is not soluble and thus the book cannot be produced -- I am truly perplexed by the society I live in."

Who's saying this? (Or should I say, who the fuck is saying this?) What situation? All anyone is saying is that sometimes books go out of print. This is too bad, but is it news?

Well I think Roger's original post was commenting on how the power of the large distributor (Scholastic) was forcing authors to make artistic choices. And how the awards committees felt that these authorial choices had meaning for the society.

Some of the responses have said, essentially, that authors have to be pragmatic. If they wish to be published, they have to be careful about what they include in their manuscripts.

So, this is a very good example of the way in which centralization of the publishing industry has an upstream impact on what exactly authors choose to write. Because there are too few publishers competing, and too few distributors competing, authors feel they have no alternatives. In an era when the market was being served in a fragmented fashion by many different players, there would have been many more opinions and types of expression represented. But we are dealing with a homogenizing impact resulting from a monolithic distribution system.

Now, meanwhile, of course, everywhere this centralized system is under attack.

So, I think that the argument about how authors ought to compromise, and not write what they want to write, to ensure that their book will be published, is wrong. It's bowing to corporate power. Art should not bow to Mammon. Better to solve the problem some other way. Self-publish, for instance. Don't compromise with the big companies.

If "Inner City Mother Goose" has to go out of print for a while because the culture can't figure out how to distribute it, fine. The heirs should wait until society is a bit more open-minded.

My friends in the industry told me that my book "Screw The Chains" could not be published. But Eric Carle himself wrote me a blurb promoting the book, and I found a small-press radical publisher to take it on. The buyer at Barnes & Noble told our sales rep that she probably wouldn't buy any more of my publisher's books since he'd published my book (it was ultimately published as "Rebel Bookseller"). B&N's statement was appalling and egregious. They were acting like a bully. You have to stand up to the bully.

Speaking as an author, I have never felt that my book should have been dumbed down to satisfy the powerful big corporation. My publisher did suffer because of publishing my book. He is proud of having published my book, though.

I'm proud of taking a stand. That's the author's job.

Well said, and I agree with almost all of it. I still am not sure about the construction "If "Inner City Mother Goose" has to go out of print for a while because the culture can't figure out how to distribute it, fine." Not sure because there's no way to know whether the culture can't figure the book out, or whether the culture has figured it out, and doesn't want to buy that many copies of it, thanks. I think you have to allow for that option. Not every personal favorite that doesn't sell is a masterpiece in disguise.

Anyway, like I said, I agree with the rest of your points and admire your stand. And am amazed (though I suppose I shouldn't be) at B&N's behavior. I suppose that's naivete.

The marketing director of the company which distributes my book warned me in an all-capital-letters email that if I went to the Wall Street Journal with this story (which he himself had just told me!) that I would be endangering all 400 small presses represented by that distribution house, since B&N might retaliate against the distribution house itself for merely DISTRIBUTING "Rebel Bookseller".

Here's what I wrote on my blog that day, in a post entitled "Self-Censorship":
http://rebelbookseller.livejournal.com/18181.html

I did censor myself -- I didn't tell the story to the Wall Street Journal. But at least the book had already been printed and was in full distribution.

As to whether "Inner City Mother Goose" would sell, if it were in circulation, of course you are right that I don't know for sure. But I would encourage you to read the book. It's absolutely brilliant. It was cutting-edge in 1969, and the 1994 edition, with illustrations by David Diaz, who had just won the Caldecott Medal for "Smoky Night," is simply a glorious production. It really wasn't a difficult sell: it's a book that should be in every collection. An American classic.

Oh, Fuck!
The scrotum and the bite by the rattle snake is all symbolic for the missing father. Just like the kid that carries around a copy of Are You My Mother. It's just really good writing!

which one of the new modes of communication is it which limits the "speaker" to 14 words? is it tweeter? - one of those things. Perhaps some such limit might be imporsed by the master of the HB Revels? things are getting pretty VERBOSE

Dear Roger,

I love you.

Anonymous

Stop, Jon! You're embarrassing me.

I can't believe you want to be identified with Gallant! You're a "Your Own Pages" all the way.

Another Anonymous

Goofus and Gallant always makes me think of childhood trips to the dentist office -- reading Highlights while waiting to meet my doom.

Gallant may have been the "better" boy, but don't you think he also got beat up more on the playground?

Barbara Kerley

I do, and I was. And I totally blame Jon.

I'll meet you by the monkeybars right after school.

Of course, when runescape gold comes to pot, you can have too much of runescape money.

Hahaha, I especially like the "How to Start a Flash Mob". Great find!

Hmm. Do not trust everything you read.

This reminds me of the classic "Anarchist's Cookbook" which in fact contained all sorts of misinformation (it was written by a guy on flat fee contract using the public library; the publisher Lyle Stuart refused to put the book out of print even though the author later sued him!).

The most famous page was about how to get stoned by smoking the scrapings from the inside of banana peels. Supposedly a substance called "bananadine" was there. In fact, the author simply made this "drug" up -- yet generations of youthful rebels attempted to utilize the recipe.

Andy--what did you find suspect on that link?

Well -- how about this response in the "comments" string, on the subject of RFIDs:

... You *ARE* kidding, right? Apparently you have never been to any shopping centers like Wal-Mart... those things that set of the buzzers? RFID... I've installed them. Just what do you think "Data" is made of? It is a string of 1's and 0's just like everything else.

Your entire second paragraph is already refuted... I refer you to http://travel.state.gov/passport/eppt/eppt_2788.html wherein this is already done as of August 2007. Also a google search reveals that there are dozens of passive tags already that can be read at 20 feet. Sorry to burst your "superiority" bubble but RFID already *IS* capable of most of the things you deny.

Please double check your facts before you dismiss something.

Andy, the comment you quote is directed toward a previous commenter, not at Doctorow's post about how to destroy or make undetectable an RFID tag. I think you're just working for Them ;-)

oh. it must be the bananadine I have been smoking all day.

BUY PHENTERMINE NO PRESCRIPTION.ONLINE PHENTERMINE
CIALIS WITHOUT PRESCRIPTION.DISCOUNT CIALIS
CHEAP GENERIC LEVITRA
ORDER XANAX NO PRESCRIPTION.BUY XANAX NO PRESCRIPTION
ORDER VIAGRA ONLINE.VIAGRA DISCOUNT

Oh, yes. I was in the public library looking for a book for my son's science project and the boy behind me asked his mother if she could check out a book (one of mine). It was by the same author as another book they had both liked. No, it isn't, his mother said. Yes, it is. No, it isn't.

Yes, really, it is, I said.

One of my secret fantasies is to catch a teen reading one of my books on a plane or in an airport, so when we're traveling and I see a girl around 14 lost in a novel, I wander as close as I possibly can without scaring her (with my teen sons murmuring "Mom the predator" in the background).

Alas, my dream has never come true, but at least if the reader looks up startled I can tell her that I, too, enjoyed Sarah Dessen's LOCK AND KEY, Laurie Halse Anderson's PROM, or Shannon Hale's BOOK OF A THOUSAND DAYS.

I heard John Irving tell a story once about seeing a reader on an airplane throw down The Hotel New Hampshire in disgust--possibly even tearing it in two? And then, some time later, faced with the tedium of a long flight, dig it out and resignedly start reading again.

I went into a well-known children's bookstore two years ago and had a conversation with the owner. After the owner had stepped out of the shop, the store manager approached and asked if I was the guy who had written the book she was secretly reading in her spare instants, and which she was keeping stashed in her purse, so the store's owner couldn't see her reading it?! (Thus the owners wouldn't realize that she was herself planning to quit and open her own children's bookstore...)

When I first started writing reviews for an alternative weekly paper, I was always trying to discern whether people I saw reading the paper were reading my reviews. Later I started writing a column for the same paper, and then people came up to me on the street, said, "You're Laura Crossett, aren't you?" and proceeded to tell me their thoughts. These were sometimes good thoughts, but not always. I think that sort of encounter is probably always a mixed blessing.

After years of looking at the books being read by kids in airport waiting rooms, it finally happened - I saw someone reading one of my books. The reader wasn't a youngster, though. She was a school librarian, and she seemed as pleased to meet me as I was to find her reading my book. It was the highlight of my trip.

In Portland, stopped in a children's bookstore in time to hear a mother asking whether they had a children's novel where at a Jewish holiday, a girl goes back in time.

The store owner, my husband, and I said simultaneously, "DEVIL'S ARITHMETIC" and the woman said, "Yes, that's it! Do you have it?"

And I got to do the Big Reveal, which was great fun.

But except for one other time, that's been it.

Jane

I was at the library Information Desk one day when a boy came up with my biography of George Washington in his hands. Is this any good, he asked? "Oh yes," I said. "I know the author." He went happily away, never suspecting that I WAS the author. _wendieO

Just heard Walter Dean Myers accepting the Kerlan Award in Minneapolis and he told a story of seeing a young woman reading MONSTER in the subway in NYC. He said she looked up for a moment from reading, staring off into space, and he felt very strongly that, at that moment, they were "inhabiting the same world."

I did just catch a girl in the Union Square Barnes and Noble reading my latest release, Violet by Design, while sipping Starbucks by the window. She turned out to be a teen model (like my protagonist) and we spent an hour chatting. It was just perfect timing and it made both of our days!

I had a funny experience in church, whereby a little girl was climbing on the pew in front of me with a coloring book I had illustrated for Golden Books years ago. Truly unexpected. I didn't say anything- you're not supposed to talk in church. That didn't stop the little girl, though!

Finding your book in the hands of an actual person is way more fun than finding it at a yard sale or flea market...

Will Max have a Coke in his very own room waiting for him and it was still cold in the next edition?

I'm also waiting for that certain publisher to realease their Oprah Children's book! It's coming right after the Jenna and Laura
Bush one about the boy who didn't like to read!

Man, it is so darn easy to pile on here. I could almost justify the use of product placement, really, but having the cojones to call it "authenticity?" This from the house that Ursula Nordstrom built? Does anyone know if Ms. Nordstrom was cremated? If not, she's rolling in her grave.

"She who for the first time" brings up a good point. Anyone want to defend this "authentic" enterprise?

Your post almost made me spill my Tetley tea all over my Microsoft keyboard!

I think I better go have some Dove dark chocolate and CALM DOWN.

B.

I keep tellin' you, B. There's no money in mass market.

The "balls" tag says it all, Roger, when authenticity=commercialism.

I remember what happnened to Dav Pilkey when Spam (the canned ham stuff) appeared on the cover of the First Dumb Bunny Book. The Hormel Company wasn't amused and they covered it (Spam) up with those silly Too Dumb To Win An Award Stickers. If you have a first edition you have Spam!

With a tip of the hat to M.T. Anderson--
STOP THE FEED!

I remember a few years ago when SpiderMan 2 was coming got, Bud Selig the commissioner of baseball wanted to rent out the base pads. They were going to put spiderwebs on the bases or something like that. Baseballs fans were outraged and spoke out. This idea never came to be thankfully. So maybe HC can learn from baseball. Hopefully if there is enough backlash this won't happen at all or not for long
Doret

And here I was hoping the word was "tween" or "embedded".

More news from the chilit industry: see today's New York Times art section piece on James Patterson martketing campaign. I particularly liked the bit on flap copy style. No mention of product placement yet, but that will come.

As a starving children's author, I could find a smidge of justification in it if the funds for having Mr. Jinx eat Friskies and only Friskies before he saves the world in Mr. Jinx Saves the World (and Friskies) would come to me, but I think we can safely say that isn't going to happen.

Hey, Roger. I tried my hand at product placement today. I hope it works!

http://kidslitinformation.blogspot.com/2008/02/place-me-and-what-she-said.html

There's a sour taste in my mouth and heart right now.

And think how DATED a book will seem--and it will happen almost instantly. If they think the tweens of 2008 will be carrying the shoes and wearing the same clothes as the tweens of 2010, they are not paying attention.

Ick.

Could she have meant that, by virtue of the author's using the names of real items as seen in real life, young readers will feel the characters actually exist in the real world? Bright Lights Big City for the younger set (sans cocaine). Ho hum.

Anon 4:42 AM (!)

I'm sure that is what she meant, and there is an interesting question in there somewhere about the extent to which our and kids' lives are genuinely tied up with brands and products. But the obvious problem with HC's approach is that when you accept money from sponsors as a way of deciding what products your characters will use for purposes of constructing (a shell of) an identity, then you undercut whatever interesting qualities the idea might have held.

In today's Metro there's a quote from a Kosovo imam explaining his nascent country's version of Islam: "Our Islam is 'lite'--like Coke Lite or Marlboro Light cigarettes." So, yeah, brands are part of our "authentic" discourse. But I'm with the most recent anon. in thinking that auctioning brand placement to the highest bidder nullifies whatever verisimilitude the author was attempting. And if it doesn't matter whether the character drinks Coke or Pepsi, than either name is merely a distraction.

if/thEn. Why can't we edit comments?

Roger, do you honestly think the authors of the tween series Susan Katz describes are going for "verisimilitude?" What does it really matter if a character has hair "the color of potato chips" or "the color of Lays potato chips?"

It sounds to me like this is just one more foray into the well-traveled Land of Dreck. You know Harper will milk money out of an idea in any way it can, and other publishers will be watching to see if it works.

The whole idea could backfire on them completely, though. The tweens who are so brand-name conscious that they care if a character carries a Juicy bag are the same tweens who will mock the character mercilessly for doing so when Juicy goes out of style. They are a cruel and fickle crowd, and the amount of time for a product to go from "What's Hot" to "What's Not" is, hmmm, let's see, about the same amount of time it takes to go from manuscript to reader.

I will laugh my ass off if the brains at Harper are so misguided they think they keep up with tween trends, and end up being ridiculed as just one more group of clueless adults.

Of course RS doesn't really think that. No one does. But it is the line that HC trots out as an excuse, so a critique of it is in order.

I’d like to see this brave new series develop along the lines of the old Choose Your Own Adventure titles:

“That was it, then. If Hendrik and his cousin from the city were going to be at Gerrit’s poetry reading, then Tamara knew what she had to do. She reached deep into the armoire and took a firm grip of her ____ jeans.”

J.Crew, hip-slung, resin-rinsed washed: Go to page 36.

father’s unwashed button-fly 501 Original Levi’s: Go to page 12.

Jordache: Step away from the book.

Live the brand! Live the adventure!

LMFAO @ Brian. I'd actually read that series!

Anybody who buys an American Girl's book knows that they are paying money for an ad, or anyway, they should. Thanks to the size of the series, they usually aren't even shelved with other books. They have their own shelf, or stand out in the middle of the floor next to the most recent celeb picture book.

And anybody who reads the Clique books knows that the product references are part of the atmosphere and expects them.

Anybody who watches television views it with a certain amount of skepticism.

But a middle grade book with branding? I don't want children to have to read books the same way they watch TV, with a little skepticism monitor going all the time. Ask them to do that and it means they will read less, because they will be less involved in the story, because they will HAVE to be less involved, keep a little distance, in order to be wary of being taken in by advertisers.

I only hope HC will have the decency to differentiate these Advertising-Books from real books. I know, small hope, huh?

I'm wondering if they'll put out a call for authors to submit stories with xyz brand? You know, the way magazine publishers have monthly themes-- so you can write to order. :-)

And then they might also want to indicate which books are "high end" and which cater to the cheaper crowd. Audience matters, after all.

Sheesh.

I want to learn how to tag my own blog posts the way you do.

I take issue with your initial assertion that if Rowling wanted us to know something about her characters, she should have put it in the book. Don't writers know a lot of things about their characters that aren't germane to the story they are telling, and because those details don't belong in the story, they are left out? Just because something doesn't appear in a book, the author can still tell us about it in other ways.

Jane Austen sometimes gave additional information about her characters. We know that Kitty Bennet went on to mary a clergyman, and the exact amount that stingy Aunt Norris gave to Fanny when she travelled home to her family, and other things I can't remember at the moment.

HOWEVER this does lead me to ponder something that's bothered me for years. I LOVED K.M. Peyton's Flambards Trilogy, and was still a romantic youth of 21 when, years later, Peyton published a 4th book that ripped apart the happy ending she left us with at the end of the trilogy. Now after many more years, I wonder (if anybody out there has read all 4) was what happened in the 4th book inevitable due to England's very deep class structure? Has Peyton ever said why she went back to write about those characters after such a long time? And are there any other children's writers who've revisted the same characters after many years, and in so doing really altered what we thought we knew about the characters?

I didn't know that about Austen--where did she write this further information?

But I still don't think the writer "knows things" about the character; I think he or she may think things about them, but the author's guess is no better than anyone else's. The book has to be able to stand on its own--if we allow that the author's further or second thoughts should become part of that book, then the book itself always remains a draft.

I don't think knowing additional things about the characters would reduce the original story to a mere draft. It might add to the story, or make you see things in a different light, the way that reading a good critic can make you say, "Oh, I didn't think of it in that way."

Elizabeth, Ursula K. LeGuin added "Tehanu" to the Earthsea trilogy ... what, about 20 years after "The Farthest Shore" was published. The characters are mostly the same, but "Tehanu" was more of a feminist novel -- not that Tenar was burning her bra or anything. It's less of the male-centered archetypical setup and more female-centered. I don't think I'm making any sense, but I have to get the kid ready for bed in a minute, so, moving on.

I didn't really like how "Tehanu" ended when I first read it (I wanted to see more ass-kicking taking place), but after I read LeGuin's comments about the choices she made while writing the book, I had a better idea of what she was shooting at. So in this case, it helped my reading.

Knowing that Dumbledore might be gay has not improved my reading of the HP books, but it's certainly made me go back and read it! Alas I am so easily swayed.

But that's a bit different, Melinda--LeGuin found she had more to say about the Earthsea world so she wrote another book. That's always an option. Or, like John Fowles, you can publish a revised edition of a book, as he did with The Magus. I'm just objecting to this idea that an author's back story for a novel, or her further thoughts on it, somehow become a fact about that book because the author has chosen to share something. That reduces every other reader's imaginings about a character to guesses.

This discussion brings up my anxiety about an author's public persona versus her books. Roger, taking your argument to the extreme -- and maybe it should go there -- we writers should stay home and shut up. Even when I'm not giving away backstories, I can feel like I'm undermining the book. Like when I'm asked where I get my ideas, and I talk about the bits and pieces of my life I've borrowed for my characters -- does that make my characters seem less "real," less all of-a-piece all on their own?

This is a tough one.

Jeanne Birdsall

Re. Jane Austen commenting further on her characters, I don't remember where I read that Kitty Bennet marries a clergyman. I got the information re. Mrs. Norris' gift to Fanny wrong, though--it is a gift to Fanny's brother William.

The information comes from Jane Austen's nephew, and I read it in a footnote in my Penguin edition of Mansfield Park. The note says "...J. E. Austen-Leigh talks of the 'parental interest' Jane Austen showed in her characters, and he goes on to say that 'She would, if asked, tell us many little particulars about the subsequent career of some of her people.' One of the additional details that Jane Austen gave them was the fact that the "considerable sum" given by Mrs. Norris to William Price was one pound.' Lady Bertram, of course, gives him ten pounds."

Pish-posh, Roger. I may be easily swayed, but I'm not THAT easily swayed. No reader reads in a vacuum. And no writer is going to keep mum about her books, that's for sure!

Let's say my main character is harboring a few vague ideas about being a mycologist when she gets older, but it's not mentioned in the text because it doesn't fit into the story. If I mention this to a reader, this might readjust her knowledge about the character ("So that's why she liked going mushroom hunting!") but I can't see that it would throw off the overall thematic structure.

Rowling mentioned that Dumbledore might be gay, but my reading of the HP books haven't changed. Let's get metaphorical: The book itself is like one big, finished jigsaw puzzle, and then there are some unrelated parts off to the side. They belong to a similar puzzle, but there's no way to fit them into the finished one.

I don't think authors need stay home and shut up (well, I guess I could give some examples of some who should but I'm saving them for my memoirs) but I would like them to recognize that, when it comes to commentary on their own work, they don't get to make claims that aren't borne out by the text. To take Melinda's example, the fact that the author thought of the character as a nascent mycologist is indeed a fact--but not one about the book. It's a perhaps valuable and interesting fact about the writing of the book, but that's a different subject. No points, either, for something "my editor made me take out." Which is why the heroine of the book not known as Tomorrow is Another Day is not known as Pansy O'Hara.

I was discussing Rowling's post-book comments when she started making them. As someone pointed out, Rowling has changed her mind before. (For instance, the character that was supposed to die and then didn't.) So, for all the information that she's supplying now, it might very well change if she were to write a sequel.

That said, I like to talk about those unknowns with fellow readers. And Harry Potter unknowns is a discussion that many people world-wide are having. Do Rowling's opinions not count in this matter?

Because of her mind-changing past, I won't say her interview comments are cannon, but I will respect her opinion more than anyone else's. If anything, she's spent a heck of a lot more time thinking about these books than anyone else has.

I'm still waiting for someone to find conclusive evidence IN THE TEXT that proves Dumbledore is gay. Rowling's saying the she always thought of Dumbledore as gay just isn't enough.. actually, doesn't weigh in at all as evidential.

Without evidence in the text, all of this is just nonsense going back and forth. The characters don't exist outside of what is written in the text. Not in Rowling's head, not in what readers imagine, not in biographical details of Rowling's life.. just in the text.

I suggested in my response to your initial post on this subject that it could have been a sort of publicity-oriented statement -- implying that J.K.R. might be planning to publish an encyclopedia.

This is from the latest edition of Shelf-Awareness, today (Nov 2):


"J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. filed suit against RDR Books, a small Michigan publisher that plans to publish the Harry Potter Lexicon, a book version of a popular website. According to the AP, the suit "claims that RDR Books will infringe on Rowling's intellectual property rights" if it publishes the book.

Rowling contends in the lawsuit that the book would interfere with her plans to write a definitive HP encyclopedia. "I cannot, therefore, approve of 'companion books' or 'encyclopedias' that seek to preempt my definitive Potter reference book for their authors' own personal gain," Rowling said in a news release issued by Warner Bros.

Roger Rapoport, RDR Books publisher, was "dismayed" by the suit, "but vowed that he wouldn't allow it to block plans to release the Lexicon next month."

Is it wrong that everytime Rowling gives out another fact like this from the Harry Potter universe, I feel cheated? I want to draw my own conclusions about Dumbledore and Grindelwald, darn it!

Thank you, thank you, thank you for posting those wonderful essays. I've only made it through three so far and I already feel as if light (or enthusiasm for children's lit, really) was shining through my skin. Brilliant stuff! Enough to banish down-heartedness and (whisper it) writer's block, forever. I hope...

Roger, I came across your blog randomly and noted that you are a Pitzer alum. My gf is a Pomona alum and now I"m an avid Sagecock/hen fan!

I wanted to introduce an new yet award winning children's series for your review as we would be honored to hear your thoughts. Becka and the Big Bubble (www.bbbubble.com) is truly an education and inspirational story.

Roger, are the sex of Big and Little Monkey even specified in that book? Your reviewer may have assigned the pronouns herself. Have someone check while you're out of town.

Signed,

Elizabeth, who's putting Roger up on his trip to NYC but isn't listed among the people Roger's visiting. How does the Ramada Inn sound?

Evil. Hilarious, but evil.

Elizaebth: Mars to Venus, Mars to Venus--Please forgive us.

(And PS to Eisha and all: this is not to say that the Guide Goddesses are chaste in their comments, either. I blush to think of some of the creative "editing" I've seen from them.)

I'm sorry to be so obtuse, but could you please explain what about the passage caused the click?

Anon — Oh, if you have to ask what caused the click — I mean, that's the point of the post (as I read it). The click is always there!

Oh, for God's sake, Little Monkey is Big Monkey's penis, at least in Roger's mind.

Cheeky monkey.

Monkey see, monkey do.

At least Little Monkey didn't get into trouble and Big Monkey didn't spank him. Okay, everyone into the gutter!

I feel just the slightest bit immature giggling about this, hee!

And I do love the fact that there is a "Children's Writers as Sneaks" heading.

Boys will be boys!!!!!

First person to post a monkey remark that RS feels obligated to remove wins!

Ok, I'll bring this back on topic. Are there any YA novels in which the habit of men referring to their penises by name is referred to? Has Adam Rapp ever tried it, for example?

And by the way, I acquired Little Monkey as a publisher, and none of us ever saw the innuendo which seems oh so obvious to Roger. And I ask again, are we sure the characters in the book are men?

Finally, will we ever see a children's book with the dreaded euphemism "Va jay jay?"

Oh, me....oh my....when Big Monkey's away, little monkeys will play....

Whoever said monkeys were CUTE and SWEET and desirable? I want to see more naughty monkeys in picture books.

I once got bitten by a gibbon when I was young...and once saw another gibbon nearly kill a family's pet dog by dangling it over a two-story veranda...and the trauma of those two epxereinces have left me alas forever unable to enjoy most monkeys, big or little, in most picturebooks, Curious George being an exception. And I am not intending any innuendos in saying, Anonymouses.......so don't monka around with meta monkey comments about what I just said....

I don't think that Roger was saying that the innuendo is in the book itself, just that it pops up (sorry) in that one choice sentence from the review.

Elizabeth asks: "Are there any YA novels in which the habit of men referring to their penises by name is referred to?"

Well, yeah, there is Burgess' DOING IT. One of the many reasons I couldn't stand the book was that one of the boys gave his, uh, member a cute name.

Elizabeth:

Judy's Blume's FOREVER, of course! Who could forget Ralph?

R.

And I quote: "When Little Monkey came back down again, Big Monkey put his arm around him."

So I'd say they are both boys. But thanks, Elizabeth, for checking.

And the day that Roger blushes, well, I'll be a monkey's uncle.

Chris Crutcher has a guy cut a hole in a popcorn bucket and sticks his norton through it. When the girl who's eating the popcorn figures out what's going on, she pours her pop on Norton and leaves.

That's the only name I could remember, though.

A group of monkeys may be referred to as a mission or a tribe.

Kitty--his ARM? Jeez . . .

tgeawr, Thank you for the explanation. (I'm the Anonymous who was being obtuse above.)

I don't personally have a penis (nor do I have brothers or a husband or many male co-workers) so insights into the "male" way of thinking don't come intuitively to me.

I wonder if you can work this discussion into the special issue. Well...maybe you shouldn't.

Oh, and Roger? Different strokes for different monkeys.

The first comment from tgeawr just made this my new-favorite-must read-blog.

Lerve it.

You mean she was using sleight-of-scrotum? What was it supposed to distract us from? Was there something weightier that I missed?

Maybe, in this case, the little white scrotum parades around the front of the stage to keep us from noticing that nothing's going on in the background. At least, nothing new.

We can only imagine what Patron originally put in the manuscript to distract the folks at Atheneum from "scrotum." Whatever it was, it worked! Nice job!

did anybody but me think that she botched Darwin's
theory? everybody was in an uproar about scrotums, but no one mentioned the bad science in any reviews I've seen.
h

Robert Heinlein said something similar, but ruder, about editors. One of his avatars is dictating a story to one of several amenuenses (sp?), who objects to one element. The author says (if I remember aright), "You have to let the editor pee in it so he likes the taste."

the long pen was actually invented by those who have met ms atwood. The pen, they declared, inventing at the speed of light, could not be long enough.

Man, you're as mean as the Gawker commenters on Alice Munro! (Sample: "Alice Munro has really only written 2 stories her entire life. But she's written them 4 million fucking times each.")

I have heard that Atwood can be more than a handful, but I'm crazy about some of her books, notably The Robber Bride. The children's books are better left unmentioned.

I also really like many of Atwood's books--her last one, Moral Disorder and Other Stories was particularly good, as was "Cat's Eye." I'm not Munro's biggest fan, but I know plenty of reasonable people who love her stories.

But the long pen? Weirdest invention ever. I just don't get the point at all. Are people that interested in having an author's autograph? If they really are, can't they just buy an autographed copy somewhere? Don't writers autograph boxes of books you can purchase via the publisher from time to time?

Then again, as much as I love to read and as much as I've read, I've never had a book fetish. The first thing that goes when I have a new book? The book jacket. They drive me crazy when reading. Not cool, I know, but there it is. My collection, when I go, will be worth approximately 3 dollars.

Margaret Atwood is definitely the kind of writer that should be read, not seen. Anything that keeps her home is fine by me.

I like how the long pen promo material refers to celebrities, not authors. They know their audience!

A few years back I was attending the Caldecott Newbery Award Banquet and was waiting to go in when Patricia Polacco and Tomie dePaola and a young Peggy Rathman struck up a conversation with me! I did get to shake the hand that shook the hand. Sometimes no pen or fancy camera are needed-Just a good memory made!! Today the autograph seekers really just want the books signed to sell on ebay!! Ha!!

Ah....and now we all can hope that those authenticated-with-a-real history/story-behind-them autographed items are just going to go up and up and up in prices in all those future Antique Road Shows....although I will say the pen DOES sound like a boon for all those author/artists with carpal tunnel syndrome and hand arthritis and rheumatism...

I THINK I'd rather read the books. Meeting authors for non-automatic pen autographs might destroy some of my my dearest illusions...

Melinda--the reason your libraries don't have it probably has to do with the fact that it was a late fall book, and not an award front-runner. Many libraries would not have ordered it until the award was announced, and the publisher immediately ran out of copies.

While controversy can boost sales for adult books, it doesn't do the same for children's books. And I have to agree with Jordan that most any public library that doesn't buy the book is in fact guilty of censorship of the most clear-cut kind.

Thanks, Roger, for highlighting the stupidest sentence I have read about this testes tempest.

Dean and I have been wondering all morning--WHICH BOOKS? WHICH WORDS?
I have never once heard this line of "thought." And, though certainly the reference to a DOG'S scotum was on purpose (she did actually type the all the words of her book), it does not mean that she (or any other writer) would "sneak in a single touchy word or paragraph" just to "leave librarians to choose whether to ban an entire book over one offending phrase."

Librarians banning books. Let me try to catch my breath.

I was greatly amused by the statement the word scrotum is not used in "polite conversation...excuse me, but if, for example, my husband had testicular cancer or some other cancer in the scrotal area, scrotum would indeed be a matter and a word used in polite conversation...and if a dog got bit on the scrotum in front of children, then use the word in front of them or anyone else.

As for sneaky writers, since neither I nor any other human being am not God and wouldn't be an authority on the actual condition of the minds and hearts of other writers when they write things...anyone using the label "sneaky" to describe another writer only highlights the his or her own stuipdity and arrogance...

As is far too often the case, I find myself stunned by another news item about what upsets the American public (and, worse in this case, librarians! and I used to be one!). In Higher Power? Not the death of the mother. not the abandonment by the father. Not the fact that a town of population 43 has more than one group of twelve-step program attendees, or that another character has a mother in jail and cannot be without "Are You My Mother." No, it's the use of an anatomically correct word. I despair, my friends. I despair.
ls

I guess children should not read the Bible since there is a lot of begetting-is that not a more suggestive word? My husband wrote this haiku
The dog's glistening
scrotum a big problem
for small minds"

"Authors of children’s books sometimes sneak in a single touchy word or paragraph, leaving librarians to choose whether to ban an entire book over one offending phrase."

Yes, and editors of major newspapers sometimes sneak in a single unfounded generalization, leaving readers to choose whether to abandon an entire newspaper over one asinine phrase.

Have you noticed that these guardians seem to think that we (the writers) are interested only in corrupting young, tender minds? When actually we're interested in making the big bucks while corrupting minds.

Roger, that makes sense. I saw just now that the first print run was only 10,000, so no wonder. But both libraries have it on order, which is good.

I wonder how long it will be until some local fundamentalist notices the word. Because they don't believe in scrotums; the devil created those for his usual devious purposes, whatever those happen to be.

Roger writes:
"While controversy can boost sales for adult books, it doesn't do the same for children's books."

I'm shocked and fascinated by this. Would you mind elaborating? It is, of course, easy to think of examples in which negative publicity increased sales of a book, movie or other. But instances in which an event caused a sales trajectory to drop are harder to recall. Right now, LUCKY is #31 on Amazon. That's not definitive, but it's not a bad indicator that a word, any word, from the NYT doesn't hurt. --m

I'm guessing that Lucky is #31 on Amazon because it won the Newbery--a huge boost to sales even for scrotumless winners.

Grownups love to read juicy stuff for themselves but don't like it in books for kids, and grownups buy the books. While plenty of people will buy Lucky despite its scrotum, no one will do so for its presence.

Okay, this is sure to be an unpopular position, but:

a) I'm sick to death about hearing about this book and its unfortunate scrotum;

b) While I think the word "scrotum" is completely benign and no more worthy of a brouhaha than the words "thighs" or "armpit", I also don't find any need for the word in the book. The passage in which it appears is just a silly little character-setting anecdote and if the word "scrotum" was removed, nothing important about the book would be changed (other than the controversy);

c) This book did not deserve the Newbery, scrotum or no scrotum. It's a good book. It has lots of nice writing and Lucky is a cute and sympathetic character. But the plot was about as linear as you can get, the characters somewhat sketchy, the climax predictable and clicheed (think kids falling in wells, etc.), and the subject matter somewhat at odds with the intended age group. So why, out of all the great books that came out in 2007, did this one get the Newbery? Because it was the last one out the door? Because of the cute drawings?

Maybe we should debate that for a while, and take a break from the obsessive scrotum licking.

Roger said:

"Grownups love to read juicy stuff for themselves but don't like it in books for kids, and grownups buy the books. While plenty of people will buy Lucky despite its scrotum, no one will do so for its presence."

I agree with your conclusion that people won't buy this book simply because of the presence the dreaded word, but sales will likely be great nonetheless.

The point is yes - some parents may not wish a benign word like scrotum to show up in a children's book, and some libraries may not either, and this may prevent the initial sales. But the publicity alone - good and bad - will get more people to at least be aware of this book as a Newbury winner.

Ask any 100 parents out there what the Newbury winners were for the last five years. I venture a guess that almost none of them will recall any titles except this year's. And this year's will stick in their mind.

In the end, the public's long term memory is poor. It is one of the main factors that drives politics. What will likely remain is the fact that "The Higher Power of Lucky" won the Newbury - the controversy will fall by the wayside.

M

Hear, hear, Shahairyzad.

I sometimes think that the real transgression within the world of children's books is in pointing out that the emperor isn't fully clothed, not in pointing out the emperor's scrotum. Or that of his dog.

I would have liked to see more discussion about this book and its merits, and about the Newbery award in general. I know there was a discussion of that nature here-- though very little such discussion elsewhere. And even here, I felt that people were very careful not to be critical of the book itself.

In this community of children's writers, publishers, librarians and reviewers-- a community which is close, small and warm (all generally appealling qualities)-- is it considered more appropriate to criticize the inclusion of a word than to criticize a lauded book as a whole?

There have been several well-received books this year that, while I certainly found them worthy of praise and attention, I also thought would have benefitted from more forthright, thoughtful, and critical discussion.

Is that where we are truly inhibited within this community?

Ruth

Our copies of Lucky arrived Thursday and I was able to read it over the weekend. With all of the discussion, I expected the word usage to be in a more graphic manner. It was used correctly and at the end of the story defined simply by Lucky's guardian.

I agree with Ruth, there were other elements in the book more deserving of critical discussion beyond that single word (no matter how many times it was utilized).

Sales of the book will be brisk; it is an award winner and many juvenile collections will have duplicate copies. I am lucky to be in an academic library with a strong teacher education program. There was no question of adding the book, students need to be aware of both the book and it's controversy so they are able to evaluate and address it's potential classroom use.

What a shame should a librarian determine it necessary to ban the book. The sheer "wrongness" of the move harkens back to a previous discussion on collection development and censorship. No one will say they have banned the book. It will be said the collection development policy determined it should not be added. And while librarians owe it to their patrons and constituants to make the best purchases possible, eliminating an award winner ...

And that is another can of worms.

Ruth and shahairyzad,

i don't like to say this, but i believe it is true: Lucky only won the newbery *because* it used the word scrotum. And if anything is more stupid than banning a book because of a single word, that is it.

this whole discussion is embarrassing. and I don't think that the person (mentioned previously) who pointed the NYT in the direction of the controversy did the community any service. how many librarians are banning the book? what tiny percent of librarians are they? seeing themselves in the NYT isn't going to change their minds. it only drives up the level of hysteria beyond any hope of measured intelligent discussion. now thoughtful open-minded people must rabidly defend this so-so book, and the NYT has made a few crackpots the voice of american librarians. thanks. thanks a lot.

i would also like to see a critical discussion of the book's value, but the NYT isn't the place, and neither is this blog, or almost any blog I know. a blog is usually an exchange of bumper-sticker like comments. i think that's why their discussions devolve so quickly to name calling. no doubt we will hear that anyone who doesn't like Lucky is a prude and anyone who does is an idiot.

-heron

Heron,

I think there are a lot of questionable thoughts in your post, but I'll confine myself to focusing on one:

Where in the world did you come up with the wacky idea that the word "scrotum" won Lucky the Newbery?

Speaking of critical discussion: did it bother anyone else that the knot-tying and "survival backpack" motifs were overly explicated? Show, don't tell!!
Kids can figure out the symbolism. Trust them.

I think that the explanations of the symbolism will take away lot of the fun of reading the book. And, after all, the book will live or die on the shelf based on whether or not kids like reading it.

Marion

jordan,

why the wacky idea? partly based on my impression of the book. I don't see anything else about lucky that makes it stand out. it's a nice book. i don't think the writing is distinguished, though. or the plot, or the characterization. and partly based on my impression of the newbery committee this year. i think the idea of using scrotum on the front page was so gosh-all exciting they just had to give it the newbery. i was happier when i didn't know anything about who was on the committee and i thought they were gods off in the atmosphere. instead, i find they are just people, and fairly pedestrian ones at that.

heron

M's comment: "Ask any 100 parents out there what the Newbery winners were for the last five years. I venture a guess that almost none of them will recall any titles except this year's. And this year's will stick in their mind"

Actually, I'd be willing to bet that not only would the parents not know the last five years' winners, that most parents wouldn't know this year's winner. We live in an isolated world in children's literature, assuming that everyone follows these awards as much as we do. Surprise. They don't. In some ways, the best thing to happen for The Higher Power of Lucky is showing up on The View because of the Scrotum Issue. At least parents may hear about the book.

Would other kidlit titles garnered more attention if the word "scrotum" had been thrown around more loosely?

Goodnight, Scrotum
Are You There God? It's Me, Scrotum
In the Night Scrotum
A Scrotum In Times Square
Ramona Scrotum, Age 8

mb

I don't have a problem with the use of the word "scrotum" in children's literature meant for tweens. IMO, the word "scrotum" is a more elevated term than others the author might have used:

nutsack
applesack
ballsack

Right? I mean, at least "scrotum" is the proper anatomical term.

excellent editorial in the
TIMES this morning!

I am curious to know whether this inane discussion among school librarians is in any way informed by the type of educational background they received. There are many school librarians with Masters in Education and little real "library" training in terms of philosophy of libraries and reading.
I would imagine that those with a degree in library science would support ALA's "Freedom to Read" and purchase based on the award and the positive reviews. I am sure children are much more mature about the content of this book than many of the adults raising the issue.
A School Librarian

and THAT can be found here (Thank you Mitali!)

Mother Reader said:
"Actually, I'd be willing to bet that not only would the parents not know the last five years' winners, that most parents wouldn't know this year's winner."

I agree one hundred percent. Two dear New England friends of mine, also avid readers of the Times, were very eager to to discuss the article with me, knowing I am "in the busines."

And we did talk about it. But here is the funny part: all they could remember was "scrotum" and the issues with the libraries. They couldn't recall the name of the book at all!

I recall back in 7th grade when I read Hal Borland's "When the Legends Die." It was a powerful YA novel that I loved, published in 1963.
I don't recall anyone complaining about the phrase (and I'm paraphrasing here) "the water felt like knives on his testicles." It was jarring for me to see the word in print, but hardly controversial.
Can't people find something more important on which to take a stand?