Category Archives: Views

Over at Horn Book, Roger Sutton, the editor in chief, recently published an editorial that sparked a bit of a discussion and controversy over the January 2014 revised Policy for Service on Award Committees. This is a publicly accessible document that governs various aspects of members of such committees such as Sibert (for nonficiton,) Newbery (for text) and Caldecot (for illustrations) awards for American Children’s Books published each year. I posted quite a few comments there but decided also to add some thoughts here. One of my biggest concern as a long-time ALSC member (and former Newbery member twice over and Notable Children’s Books selection committee, among other non-book related committees) is how the Division itself “regards” its member body. The preamble of this document states:

“ALSC affirms its confidence in the integrity of members who are invited to be nominated or appointed to serve on award committees, and in the integrity of the officers or nominating committees responsible for selecting candidates. Because of the nature of the work of such committees, those who serve on them must be especially sensitive to conflict of interest situations and the appearance of impropriety. The purpose of this policy is to clarify the eligibility and responsibility of candidates asked to serve on such committees.”

To me, the first two sentences are antithesis to each other — I mentally translated these two sentences to: Great, the Division states first and foremost that IT trusts implicitly the integrity of ITS members (librarians, classroom teachers, reviewers, professors, etc.) and that they will behave professionally and with civility while they serve on these highly sought after committee posts (paying their own way to attend conferences and donating at least a whole year of their time to read and think and discuss the eligible titles). Oh-but wait wait, the second sentence negate all that was implied in the first sentence. It seems to be saying that “since you, the DIVISION’S members who have the privilege (as pointed out later in the document) to serve on such committees really don’t know how to behave using print or online media, you must be told exactly what you can and cannot do because, um…. we actually don’t trust you at all without spelling everything out and without putting a muzzle on all your opinion outlets (in this newly revised guideline, the outlets include blogs, twitter, official and professional signed reviews, etc.)

In the older version of the document, it was pointed out that one can always express one’s personal opinions over eligible titles even while serving on the committee as long as one makes it amply clear that it’s a personal expression and the process is to be trusted — 15 people with 15 different opinions and affiliations and experiences tend to cancel out all the “personal” stuff and come to a communal decision that serves the public well. The new policy revision seems to me to put huge stock on a few people’s personal’s opinions and place little or no trust in the time-honored, although often seemingly mysterious, process of how Newbery, Caldecott, and other children’s book award winning titles are chosen.

Just want to clarify: you’re still allowed to verbally express your personal opinions with your colleagues or friends or patrons — just never to publish them anywhere.

I sent this rant to a group of high school students in the Science Fiction/Fantasy Club at my school after some kid (jokingly, she said afterwards) proclaimed to be all TEAM GALE….

A student responded first to the Team Gale comment:

Upon viewing this correspondence, I feel the need to inform everyone that the Hunger Games is not, and will never be, Twilight.

There are no teams like Team Gale or Team Peeta because that is foolish.

This is a book/movie about teenagers brutally murdering each other for the entertainment of a nation. Let’s keep it that way.

I added AND OPPRESSION after “entertainment” in my reply… and then followed it with:

I find the whole Team Peeta and Team Gale thing so irksome. This is NOT a Romantic Trilogy. If you read it or view it that way — you are just one of the Capitol People that the Media successfully has FOOLED!!!

And may I say that the more I think about it, the more I think that the Hunger Games Movie is a SELL-OUT. In order for them to make the movie to be PG-13, they toned down (WAY TOO LOW) the impact of all the deaths. So, to the audience, it has become simply a story that we root for Katniss’ survival and not to contemplate the underlying societal problems that ALLOW for such a thing to happen. The side characters were mostly rendered faceless at their death scenes and the few close-up deaths don’t really speak to the true horror that the book portrayed.

Suzanne Collins created the trilogy to challenge Media and Controlling Governmental Programs — but in the end, all it matters is how much $$ the movie has made and how much it has ENTERTAINED the young and old alike. Folks, we are JUST like the people (sheep??) from the Capitol!!!

Bully, the documentary that presents REAL life children in our REAL life U.S.A. refused to tone down the scenes and language and now went with NR and will only be shown at VERY limited theaters and won’t reach the intended audience.

THIS is the REALITY of your society and our proud Nation….

Sorry for the rant…

As I try to promote and raise awareness of School Library Journal’s 2011 Battle of the Kids’ Books using social network media, I received and followed some facebook negative comments regarding the nature of this “Contest.”  Some reasons why some people think SLJ’s BoB isn’t “good” and why I think actually are some of its strong points.  For the sake of simplicity, we’ll use Newbery (the big award of the year) as a comparing point.

A big disclaimer here: I don’t think Battle of the Kids’ Books is by any means a better way to “judge” books for kids, just a different way.

Selection Process and Criteria

“Book award committees work with terms outline eligibility and criteria, and the selection process starts with a very wide field of… books that committee members read, discuss, and ultimately select from as a group.” – quoted from facebook comment with permission:

BoB starts out our selection process with a wider pool of books to choose from.  Newbery is limited to books published in the U.S. and written by a U.S citizen or resident, while BoB has no such restrictions.  So we can have a book by John Green side by side a book by Jonathan Stroud.  Although on the surface, there are only three people who determine the finalists, we have a host of helpers: we read widely ourselves, we read reviews, we pay attention to online discussions, we look at “best of the year” lists, and we also talk to young readers.

Most award committees have criteria to work off of and BoB is completely wide open for each judge to determine for themselves what constitutes the “winning” aspects of their set of books.  Since I served on the Newbery once and taught graduate school courses addressing the Newbery selection processes and read, re-read, discussed, and re-examined the Newbery Criteria with my fellow committee members and my students, I feel confident to say that, no, there really isn’t a set-in-the-stone group of criteria with which we measure the books against each other.  Each committee has to figure out, based on the group of books in front of them and the fairly subjective views of 15 people at the table, what constitutes the “Most Distinguished” literary contribution of the year.  And, to me, that IS exactly the strength of this flexible, ambiguous, amorphous, and maddeningly unclear set of criteria. It does not PRESCRIBE to authors, editors, and publishers what qualities might “guarantee” them a winner.  Thus, it allows for fluidity and innovation.

BoB merely takes this ambiguity a step further and allows for each judge to make up their own set of criteria.  And, so far, if you read the judgments, it is very clear what each of them looks for and why they make their selections.  And if you have read all 30 judgments from the last two years, it is also clear that we passionate readers are looking for similar things in books for children: whether spelled out in a set of award selection criteria or stored in our own reading minds.

Part 2: Privacy vs. Transparency

“Committee discussions are done privately, and there is a reason for that: it allows committee members to be open and honest in their opinions. The fact that BoB is done in an open forum suggests to me that this is more about “the show” and less about the books.” and “BoB strikes me as a completely rigged process from the beginning, since the initial group of finalists is pre-selected by a few people, and then each leg of the selection process is the decision on ONE person, who can’t exactly claim to… have no conflict of interest.” — quoted from facebook comment with permission

This is actually an age-old debate: what is better – privacy or transparency? I say that either one is fine. Each serves a different purpose. Each potentially have its strengths and weaknesses. Taking my own experiences as examples again: I served on the 2002 Newbery and I served on the 2007-2008 Notables Committee. The former follows the jury model where all discussion and decisions and process are kept as top secrets. This, on the one hand, allows for everyone to openly express their opinions and on the other hand, also allows for those who are less scrupulous to be less well-prepared. My personal experience is that EVERYONE on my committee worked hard and read closely and prepared extremely well and were all courteous and professional at the Newbery discussion table. However, this does not mean that some Committees or some Committee members, since they are not on public view, might not feel more relaxed and less mindful of their opinions or how they express their opinions.

The transparent process of our judging decisions, on the other hand, is much like my experience on the Notables. We sat around tables, with microphones, and discussed books for an open audience. People came and went, and once in a while, we even received rebuttals from the editors themselves. I, for one, did not hold back my opinions, but I made damn sure that I had my evidences lined up and chose my phrasing carefully, either to praise or to criticize a book at hand. I believe each book from the BoB bracket deserves this kind of transparent and thoughtful analysis and lucky for us, all our 30 judges in the last two years (and the 15 more who are helping us out this year) do show their respect for every book on hand and do make sure that it’s not just about “the show” but really about the quality of these amazing books! (Of course, being writers themselves, it is not easy to just give a bland write-up and we savor the insightful, sometimes humorous, and always creative ways these judgments are delivered to us.)

And since there is really no prize that anyone gets at the end of the Battle and that author judges make clear whether they are friends with the authors of books they are judging in their write-ups, I simply don’t worry about the “conflict of interest” issue.
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As you can see, I am quoted at the Scholastic’s official blog site as someone who does not quite care whether Katniss ends up with Peeta or Gale. Actually, when Ivy first asked me if I was “Team Peeta” or “Team Gale,” I thought — but this is not TwiSaga where the story is all about Bella’s decision between a cold vampire and a hot werewolf. So I chose a different route: I’m Team Capitol.

No no no, I didn’t mean that I want Katniss to marry The Capitol or side with it or become its minion. I mean that what matters to me is the exploration of the societal structure and Katniss’ (and others’) realization of what’s wrong with the government and how they might be able to rebel against it. I can think of The Capitol as a character and it is the most compelling antagonist and really is the force that moves the plot along and the bedrock that underlies the theme of the story.

So, um, yeah, I’d rather read more about how Katniss deals with The Capitol than whether she’s going to choose Peeta or Gale. I was also asked to make a wild prediction on what I think might happen in Mockingjay. And this is definitely a random answer on the spot: I believe Peeta will be dead, sacrificing himself for Katniss or for the cause, by the end of the story. So, we shall see.