Ramblings on Librarianship, Technology, and Academia

I've been going interlibrary loan-mad lately (my to be read list at worldcat has gotten a little out of control what with all of the books you people recommend), and I've just finished Five Flavors of Dumb, by Antony John, this year's Schneider family teen book award winner. The award goes to that book which "embodies an artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences" which is actually not what I think this book does. I think it's a young adult book about a girl who wants to go to college, who wants to have friends, who's decided to challenge herself by making a punk rock band succeed when she doesn't care about punk rock, who is deaf, who may or may not be interested in boys, who has family difficulties, who has to learn to see other people and their problems as well as her own. This book embodies an artistic expression of the disability experience as much as it embodies an artistic expression of the high school experience, of the first boyfriend experience, of the high school rock band experience. And that's what's awesome about it. Of course deafness is integral to the story, but so are all the other elements. Presenting this book as a disability story does it a disservice -- and yet that's why I read it. Y'all should read it, as well.

Also, the happy nappy bookseller keeps reminding me about the Nerds Heart YA bracket which is explicitly the opposite of a popularity contest.

To qualify for Nerds Heart YA 2011 a book must:

Have been published between Jan 1st 2010 and Dec 31st 2010

Contain significant characters that fit into at least one of the seven categories of under represented groups that the Nerds Heart YA organisers have identified, or have been written by an author who comes from within one of these groups of people

Be young adult fiction

Be a book that you feel has been under represented by book blog coverage.

I'm thinking more about why I am upset about the history of the Margaret A Edwards Award for Lifetime Achievement. (I want to thank astern for helping me work this out in my head.)

Four authors who are not primarily known as authors for children or young adult have won the Edwards award, and all of them are F&SF authors -- and I think this is wrong. I'd like to state for the record that there are plenty of books by McCaffrey, LeGuin, Card, and Pratchett on my bookshelf, and there were a hell of a lot more when I was a preteen.

I think this is nerds (i.e. librarians) giving book awards to the authors they loved as preteens, and not paying attention to the requirements of the award, that it be for books that are for a wide range of teens. It contributes to the (now ridiculously outdated) stereotype that only nerds read for pleasure. It rewards the authors of crap books which had strong effect on geekery (Anne McCaffery) and ignores the authors of books which had broad effect on everyone else.

And if you think I'm wrong, ask yourself if Ann M Martin or Francine Pascal or R. L. Stine or Zoey Dean will ever win an ALA lifetime achievement award.

Or, hell, Stephenie Meyer. JK Rowling has at least a snowball's chance in hell, which is more than you can say for any of those others.

The point is, If you're lucky, you can give the award to high-quality authors who are heavily praised by book mediators AND have wide readership. If you are less lucky, you can give the award to the high-quality authors who are heavily praised by book mediators, but who might not get as much wide readership. Or you can give the award to books which really do have wide popular appeal and effect. But giving the award to books which have never been part of the young adult mediated readership AND who don't have wide appeal/readership outside of the very specific subculture? That's pandering to yourself and your own interests, and that's just embarrassing.

(I don't think it's impossible for adult authors who are popular with teens to write books which should win awards for spectacular young adult fiction. But that "mere marketing category" that differentiates books popular with teens from books marketed to teens is something that's really important and shouldn't be elided. Part of being a successful young adult author is negotiating the gulf between the book he or she wants to write, what the gatekeepers think is acceptable, and what teens choose to read. That's incredibly difficult, and part of what the youth media awards are designed for is celebrating the books that fall into that space. That doesn't mean books that don't fall into that cannot be wonderful, worthy of praise, and praiseworthy SPECIFICALLY for being beloved by adolescents. But it does mean that maybe they shouldn't be winning awards specifically for rewarding an underserved, well, marketing category. There's a genre difference between The Colour of Magic and The Wintersmith, and that marketing category has something to do with it.)

Laura's post in the DCA blog today makes me feel old: Kathleen Hanna's personal papers are being added to the Riot Grrrl collection at NYU. Laura asks what will be your archival moment; what will be the moment that makes you realize your youth is now being preserved for scholarship and historians?

How about those Youth Media Awards, eh? as usual, I've read almost none of the winners or honor books in advance of the award. I did read Punkzilla, and I quite enjoyed it, although I was initially confused by its selection as a Printz Honor. When I think about it, though, in some ways it resembles the 2002 Honor book Freewill, and I admit that one of the things I love about the Printzes is how eclectic they are. (Also, I'm quite pleased that Wintergirls didn't win anything. I thought it was beautiful, lyrical, and a lovely book aside from its rushed conclusion -- but I also thought it was a clever and detailed how-to guide about how to hide an eating disorder from your caregivers, and it was so effectively in the voice of the eating disordered protagonist that I came out of that book finding my body disgusting and food vile. As much as it was well-written, I really don't want to give it any awards which will increase the number of readers it has.)

Closing another tab, the Useful Chemistry blog has a fantastic post about learning what data sources to trust (and concludes, "none of them, at least not without caveats").

Hmm. I have a lot more I want to blog about but my department is downstairs having wine and cheese, and it seems illogical for me to be sitting upstairs while there is cheese downstairs.

I have such mixed feelings about Flora's Dare having won the Andre Norton award. On the other hand, I have mad love for the only other one of the nominees I'd had a chance to read so far, namely, Graceling. On the other hand, I think that Graceling seems to be getting a lot of (very well-deserved) buzz, while Flora's Dare Seems to be much less well-known, at least among children's literature folks. So here's hoping that Cashore and Wilce both get all of the buzz they deserve, and both get widely pushed on young adult fantasy readers as the splendid books they are.

And yes, I KNOW I have to read everything else on the list! I am so ashamed of myself. But first I have to review these five books sitting on my desk, and before I can do that I need to finish one of them, and then I need to *cough* write the paper I will be presenting in two months.