The whiteness of YA

Feministe does a nice recap of the recent Bloomsbury cover wars here, but one part of the argument struck me in particular:

“But let’s pull back to YA, because these book covers point to a specific problem with the genre. I’ve looked around many a bookshop YA section to see… whiteness. In the authorship, on the covers, in the stories. A good portion of young adult fiction is about addressing the issues involved in growing up in accessible and on teenage terms. I’ve read a lot of YA, but I rarely read anything in which non-white characters constitute anything more than one-dimensional and secondary presence. It’s not really about centring young adult experience. It’s about centring white adults’ perceptions of white young adult experience. It’s not only alienating, it’s denying non-white youth the same means of working life out as our white counterparts.

Books are precious, they’ve been heavensent for me. Books can change your life, change your worldview, change something of your very self. These constant little jabs of alienation tell non-white youth that the sort of thought provocation and lazy silly Sundays and transcendental change books can provide are not for us. These things are for the white kids, the kids important enough to get in the books. Not for us the dreams books foster.”

I’ll admit that sometimes I get my hackles up whenever anyone accuses YA of being something other than awesome (even though I am well aware that to say YA is a genre is unfair, because we don’t call adult books a genre on their own and I certainly would not make a blanket statement that all adult books are fabulous), but she does have a point. I went back and looked at the books I have reviewed this year and so far I can only find two that feature POC as the protagonist, and only a few other books that have POCs as secondary characters. Now part of this is skewed, because I am typically assigned fantasies and fantasies, whether we like to admit it or not, remain largely whitewashed. Looking at the books we’ve reviewed as a publication, I found a few more examples in realistic fiction and plenty more in nonfiction. However, the nonfiction tended to be about black history, and feeds into this poster’s argument that for some reason, the world of fiction, or at least the fiction that is being considered by review journals in the field, leaves large portions of the population out.

As a librarian, I’m not sure how to fix this, because I’m not even sure where the problem starts. Is it truly publishers who choose not to produce and promote books about/with a POC? Do they choose not to do so because there truly is no market for it, or are there other nefarious forces at work? Are people just not writing quality books about POCs? Are review journals just not reviewing such books? These are big questions but at the end of the day, as librarians we are left with the task of shaping our collection to best serve our patron needs and representing a diverse set of experiences. To do this, I think sometimes you have to look past the mainstream methods of collection development and choose nontraditional sources, such as blogs (the Brown Bookshelf is a good one for keeping up on books and authors) and yes, what some people might call “special interest groups” that take a stake in the literature produced about their interest (see the Oyate website). The problem doesn’t end with race either as there are few books about people with disabilities, and while there is far more GLBTQ fiction out there than there has been in the past, it is still an area that needs more promotion.

OMG!!

A new Libba Bray series coming in 2012!! Looks like classic Bray and I’m pumped!

It’s here!!

I’m way too tired to write anything of substance, but did want to at least share this.

Tomorrow’s the big day.  Cross your fingers for me!

Sigh

This is dumb. Don’t you think there are dirtier words in the dictionary than oral sex?

Teen Central Grand Opening!

It’s finally here!  As I wrote here many months ago, we have a new teen center opening at my library–THIS SATURDAY!!  A year ago, the managers at my library visited The Edge at the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library.  They had a focus groups with teens in April, I started my job in May.  Construction began in September, computers and TVs and bean bag chairs started rolling in about 2 weeks ago, and now we’re 4 days away.

Saturday we’ll be having a ribbon cutting ceremony.  Throughout December, I offered teens an opportunity to enter a drawing to cut the ribbon with the Chamber of Commerce members if they did a library scavenger hunt.  So now I’ve got one very excited 6th grade ribbon cutter, and a Teen Advisory Board absolutely brimming over with excitement–especially since we found out today that we’ll be having a red carpet!  My TAB also wanted a best-dressed contest for the teens who come–we’ll be working it as a fundraiser.  The party attendees can by 4 stickers for a dollar and then attach the stickers to the teen with their favorite outfit.  (No vote snatching here!).   Their theme is “Black & White with a Splash of Color.”  Should be fun.    The winning teen gets $25 and all the money we raise will go toward teen programming.

So my office this week is like Grand Central Station between all the phone calls and emails.  In retrospect, I should not have been ambitious enough to keep my book club and gaming programs on the calendar this week, because I was *way* unprepared for the book club today.  Thank goodness for forgiving teens!

Anyway, that’s what’s going down with me.  Wish me luck–I promise to post pictures next week once we’re allowed to show them off to the public!

Odds and ends

Hello, my old friends, its been awhile. The holidays sort of took over my life and I wasn’t quite ready to return to the real world, but alas, here we are and I have a few thoughts to share…

Award Winners!!!

I was surprisingly pleased with most of the selections or this year’s ALA Youth Media Awards. I felt like this year, the committees really nailed it on the head and seemed to be more attune to both the literary quality of the books and the kid appeal – a factor that while I know does not necessarily drive any of these awards, is still one that has been overlooked in years passed. The Newberry rocked it with both its award winner, When You Reach Me (one of my personal favorites), and the honor books. I was especially pleased to see the Claudette Colvin book on there, not just because of its representation of nonfiction but because it is a really wonderful story that I think many kids will find absolutely fascinating. I was happy about the Caldecott, congrats Jerry Pinkney on being the first individual African American illustrator to win the award (though I thought it was weird that his work wasn’t on the CSK list this year). And I was super happy with the two honor books, All the World, illustrated by Marla Frazee, written by Liz Garton Scanlon  and Red Sings from Treetops: A Year in Colors, illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski, written by Joyce Sidman. Those were two of my absolute favorites. As for the Printz and the Morris award winners, I wasn’t as impressed with the selections but I figure this was a case of to each their own. There was a huge amount of good YA books that came out this year, a fact that I was reminded of when I kept saying “Why wasn’t that on there?” in a discussion with a colleague, we finally realized that they simply could not put EVERYTHING on the list. I enjoyed Going Bovine quite a bit and I love Libba Bray so kudos to her I was also super excited for the Margaret A. Edwards award going to Jim Murphy because that man can make me, an admitted nonfiction nonreader, find the history absolutely delightful.

Cover Wars

Leila over at Bookshelves of Doom has an interesting introduction to and roundup of the latest cover controversy here and here. I read the book awhile back and I’ll admit that while I noticed the discrepancy between the descriptions and the cover, I’m often at a loss of how to handle the issue. As a reviewer at the Bulletin, we typically do not make judgments about the covers in our reviews because sometimes the art changes. We do talk about it at the table, however, and I can think of plenty of instances in which not only the cover was a misrepresentation of the protagonists, but the misrepresentation of the story itself because the very thing that the cover art does not show often drives a large part of the book. Its upsetting, and while I am not usually one to talk about the messages we do or do not send to teens, what the hell sort of message are we sending to teens when we try to give them diverse stories but whitewash (or “thin-wash” in some cases, i.e. making the protagonist much skinnier than he/she claims to be)  the art the represents such stories.  Its maddening! What to do about it though? Well, you can boycott it as Ari is doing at Reading in Color, but as is also mentioned in the post, that hurts the author just as much as the publisher and in this case, as in the Liar case, the author is pretty peeved about the situation as well and does not deserved to be punished for a decision she had nothing to do with. I find the other suggestions listed here to be much more useful, particularly when thinking about what you and the YAs you serve can do about it. Letters are powerful things, especially coming from mobs of angry teenagers,  the demographic that basically drives all marketing right now, and publishing houses will have to listen. Anyhoo, read the links and the links within the links about this contraversy and add your own suggestions

Best Reference Question This Month

Patron, a boy, about 9 years old: We’re reading a book ins chool. Its about a giant, he steals dreams and puts them in jars.

Me: Oh, is it the BFG?

P, eyes opened wide in delight: YES! How did you know that?

Me: I have magic powers. I can even get you that book right now and you can take it home with you tonight.

P: You are awesome. Do something else magic.

Me: Um……

Caldecott Honor Book Trailer

And the Winner is…

As many of you most assuredly know, the ALA Youth Media Awards were announced today…and as many of you most assuredly do, I have some thoughts.    Here they are…

I confess that my bookmark has been marking page 70 in Libba Bray’s Going Bovine for about 3 months.  Today, Bray won the Printz Award.  I *loved* Bray’s Gemma Doyle trilogy, but when I tried to read Bovine a couple of months ago I just wasn’t into it.  I feel certain I can get over the hump though because I must have started Graceling 6 or 7 times before I got through and ended up LOVING it.

Honestly, Printz Award aside, I’m willing to take another stab at this book if for no other reason than that Libba Bray is clearly incredibly awesome:

In other reactions, I was giddy with the Newbery announcement for Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me.  Here’s what I had to say on Goodreads back in August when I read it:

“This story unravels beautifully. I felt like Stead held enough back and revealed enough at the right moments to keep the story really engaging. The chapters are short (as is the book) but the story is big. And lovely.

My only real concern here was, do junior high kids know who Dick Clark is? Does it matter?”

I’m also super happy that the Benny & Penny book The Big No-No was recognized with the Geisel Award.  I think the Toon Books are immensely adorable.

No more reactions to share for the moment…just a promise to get reading!  I’m especially looking forward to picking up the Morris Award-Winner Flash Burnout. This one’s been on my list for awhile, but now I have an extra bit of motivation.

Local libraries

Each year there is the Metro Youth Services Librarian’s Read Challenge for all librarians in the Kansas City area. This year is the 12th year and the first in which I get to participate. Librarians from all over the metro area are reading juvenile and young adult literature and logging the number of pages. The library that averages the highest number of pages gets the coveted Reading Challenge trophy for the year. I’ve been challenging myself to read books that I’ve put off for a while and to read a few outside of my usual reading habits. One of my personal goals during the challenge is to read two of the William Allen White (state award) books – one down, one to go. (My to-read list of books on my nightstand is long!) Our little library is doing quite well and several staff who weren’t sure about participating are reading a lot. And I’ve become the Reading Challenge reader’s advisor for staff.

Earlier this week, I had the privilege of participating in a Mock Caldecott Award at the Johnson County Library. Librarians from the metro area and the public were invited to participate. As with the other mock award that I participated in during Nonfiction for Youth class, it was a lively discussion.  It was obvious which one was a leading favorite.

The Mock Caldecott winner was:
Alphabeasties by Sharon Werner
with honors going to:

Billy Twitters and His Blue Whale Problem by Mac Barnett
Duck! Rabbit! by Amy Rosenthal
Coretta Scott by Ntozake Shange, illustrated by Kadir Nelson
The Lion & the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney

A very cool challenge that everyone can participate in is the Support Your Local Library Reading Challenge that J. Kaye’s Book Blog is hosting. Most of my books come from the library anyway so this isn’t a huge challenge for me. With the economy as it is, I know our circulation is up, as are other libraries. I think it’s a great challenge for everyone.

And thanks to Erin Explores YA, I found out about a cool weekly event called Library Loot  hosted by Marg at Reading Adventures and Eva.

Finally,  many librarians are meeting at ALA Midwinter in Boston. I’m anxiously awaiting the announcement of the Youth Media Awards early on Monday morning. I’m not making predictions but I’m sure there will be some surprises.

Changes to Best Books for Young Adults

Cindy and Lynn have posted on the Book Blog a really interesting post regarding the major changes to YALSA’s Best Books for Youth Adults.

As someone who uses the YALSA lists a lot for collection development and creating my own booklists, I hope they come to a solution that will benefit teen librarians!

My Own “Call of Duty”

I’ve been working furiously over the last couple of weeks to expand my library’s circulating video game collection…looking at lists of what other libraries are circulating, pouring over issues of Game Informer and the lists on the web site What They Play…finally, I had a list.  A very long list.

Although I’m the teen services librarian, our video game collection is an all-ages collection.  Last time I went out to buy games, I came back with Curious George and Hannah Montana bagged right next to Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto (and of course everything in between from Lego Batman to Rock Band!).

Now I’m a librarian just about as liberal as they come and fully adhere to the belief that it is the parents’ responsibility to oversee what kids/teens check out at the library.  That said, I have personal issues with a game like Grand Theft Auto outside the fact that it isn’t necessarily appropriate for a 13-year-old, namely the fact that it is notoriously violent and misogynistic.

So, I’m faced with a challenge I never really expected.  In library school, you are encouraged to never be the librarian who restricts patron access by not collecting books with GLBTQ themes or moving controversial YA titles to the adult collection.  I knew I would never be one of those librarians.  What I didn’t necessarily bother to think all that much about was that there would be a flip side to that coin (and obviously every coin).  There would be a moment when I would be standing in the middle of GameStop with a need to confront my own biases and provide access to a variety of video games for my patrons, regardless of content.

And I did it.  I bought the games…even the ones that I can’t personally see the value in.  And I feel at once professionally proud and personally grody.  But, at least I’m not a hypocrite.