Where modern children’s literature (and librarianship) came from

If, like me, you don’t read a lot of the children’s publishing blogs and newsgroups, you might miss a fascinating New Yorker article by Jill Lepore called “The Lion and the Mouse.” It’s about the almighty Anne Carroll Moore of a bygone era, the original grande dame of children’s librarianship, who from her post “behind the lions” of the New York Public Library’s big main building on Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, established children’s librarianship, but also, for better or worse, passed judgment on children’s books published during much of the first half of the 20th century.

If you’ve never heard Moore’s story but work with kids in libraries, you should read this piece, because Moore had a big influence on how children’s books were written, illustrated, and promoted, and her influence continues. You can see a lot of the beginnings of children’s literature criticism in the article, too. Here also is the story of E.B. White, his wife Katharine - an early children’s book critic - and his first children’s book, the immortal Stuart Little.

Moore encouraged White to write it, but then ended up offended by the way White had mixed up fantasy and reality. A woman giving birth to an anthropomorphic mouse? Moore asked Harper, its publisher, and White’s editor, Ursula Nordstrom, not to release it. “I never was so disappointed in a book in my life,” Moore said.

It’s definitely worth your time. And there was a quote that caught my eye and drew me away for a few moments on a completely different path. Lepore writes:

Children’s literature, at least in the West, is utterly bound up in the medieval, as Seth Lerer, a Stanford literature professor, argues in “Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter.” Lots of books for kids are about the Middle Ages (everything from “The Hobbit” to “Robin Hood” and “Redwall”), but the conventions of the genre (allegory, moral fable, romance, and heavy-handed symbolism) are also themselves distinctly premodern. It’s not only that many books we shelve as “children’s literature”—Grimms’ Fairy Tales or “Gulliver’s Travels” or “Huck Finn”—were born as biting political satire, for adults; it’s also that books written for children in the twentieth century tend to be distinctly, willfully, and often delightfully antimodern. “The Phantom Tollbooth” has more in common with “The Pilgrim’s Progress” than it does with “On the Road.”

As I wandered around the publisher’s booths at the ALA Conference, I noticed that so many new books are fantasies - and I mean books for children, teens, and adults. (Have you noticed how many vampire romances appeared in the wake of Anne Rice? The Midnight series brought them to kids and teens, but now it seems as if there are hundreds, for all ages.) And have you noticed how little science fiction is being published and read these days? I feel that there’s something in so many modern middle-class Americans these days that longs for a good king who can command something and everyone must obey, or wizards who can wave wands and make wishes come true, and even vampires who can love us and protect us in this raggedy world. Science fiction reminds us too much of the pervasive technology that seems to be slowly strangling us as it daily transforms the world, and that so many people feel they can’t keep up with.

This is why I keep going on about the importance of libraries supporting literacy and the printed word. No medium develops our imaginations and stretches us the way the printed word can, whether we want to escape to a vampire romance or an article about global warming. But I digress.

 

Are tech manuals dead? Dying? I hope so

Here’s a post titled, “Are books history?” on the InfoWorld blog by Sean McCown; while it sounds as if he’s crowing for the triumph of e-books, I think he’s really asking, “Are tech books history?” And to that I say, “Hooray!”

McCown makes software and Net training videos, and he’s been seeing more and more requests for video podcasts that allow people who need to learn tech procedures to learn them quickly and easily. He says:

Let’s face it. With podcasts becoming more ubiquitous in IT, and with screencasts (like with Camtasia) becoming more and more engaging and popular, do we really need books anymore? Wouldn’t you rather learn by watching someone actually DO it?

What I think he means is: “Do we need those big fat tree-killer computer manuals any more?” The answer, of course, is “no way.” How many of those big fat phonebooks that train people in Macromedia Dreamweaver or Windows 98 or other out-of-date software do you still have on your shelves? Macromedia, of course, has not existed for a while - Adobe bought the company in 2005 - and of course, Windows 98 was about three operating systems ago.

But lots of libraries keep those big bricks of books on their 000 shelves just in case someone wants them - which they almost never do. I just weeded our software shelves and threw these books out, but I’ll bet plenty of other libraries still own them.

Computer books and printed instructions were inferior to seeing someone fix your tech problem from day one; we only used them back in 1995 or 1998 because there was nothing better or more reliable back then when we had to solve a problem on our own. And, of course, lots of kids never read them at all to begin with - or watched the videos, either; they just waded in and solved the mysteries of a new piece of software by trial and error.

I, for one, will be glad when we no longer need to buy or own those fat computer books that go stale so quickly, but sometimes (like when your Net connection goes out and you must get back online) they can be lifesavers. Videos, if they’re well-made, are much more effective than print for things that can be recorded and can demonstrate, step by step, how to operate your PC and use your software. But, unless I’ve misread his point here, it sounds as if McCown has carried on to suggest that books (I mean books in general) are on their way out because a tech-instruction video is better than a few pages in an elephantine computer manual.

Actually, I don’t think he has; but I can’t help, simply from the way he wrote the piece, daring McCown to create a video that discusses in detail the arguments between Darwinists and creationists on the kind of budget most tech trainers have. Or to describe for us on video the political forces at play in the years leading up to World War II. Or to read us a full-length novel. For the moment, there are things that print still does a whole lot better than video.

 

Tasha Tudor dies at 92

You’ve probably seen one of the mentions of picture book illustrator/author Tasha’s Tudor’s death at the pretty remarkable age of 92. Since I’ve been working in library children’s areas for a long time, I’ve always been aware of her books. But being more the sort who preferred Dr. Seuss and Dav Pilkey, I never paid much attention to her books, finding them far too feminine and fussy, and I can’t remember when I ever used one in a storytime. I know she had plenty of fans, but I was unaware until this weekend that she’d still been alive.

When I read her New York Times obituary, I was surprised to learn that she had lived the kind of life - in a 19th-century, close to nature style - that had been way hip before its time:

She wore kerchiefs, hand-knitted sweaters, fitted bodices and flowing skirts, and often went barefoot. She reared her four children in a home without electricity or running water until her youngest turned 5. She raised her own farm animals; turned flax she had grown into clothing; and lived by homespun wisdom: sow root crops on a waning moon, above-ground plants on a waxing one.

Who would have thought? Now I’m sorry I waited so long to learn more about her.

 

Kids say they still want books around - hooray!

Take a look at this new Scholastic-funded study described on CNNMoney, which I heartily endorse because (hooray) it verifies something I’ve known for a long time. It says that “75% of kids age 5-17 agree with the statement, ‘No matter what I can do online, I’ll always want to read books printed on paper…’”

We library folks know this, and we always have. We see kids checking out books every day. But I don’t think the average American who doesn’t spend his or her day around kids sees it quite as clearly. What I find especially interesting are these core findings:

One in four kids age 5-17 say they read books for fun every day and more than half of kids say they read books for fun at least two to three times a week. One of the key reasons kids say they don’t read more often is that they have trouble finding books they like — a challenge that parents underestimate. Kids who struggle to find books they like are far less likely to read for fun daily or even twice a week.

The 2008 Kids & Family Reading Report also found that parents have a strong influence over kids’ reading. They overwhelmingly view reading as the most important skill a child needs to develop, but only about half of all parents begin reading to their child before their first birthday. The percent of children who are read to every day drops from 38% among 5-8 year olds to 23% among 9-11 year olds. This is the same time that kids’ daily reading for fun starts to decline.

Again, not news for us librarians who know kids. But it’s reassuring to read it all the same; it’s a good antidote to all the stuff we keep seeing about how people are reading books less and Googling the Net more. Yet I sure wish that the researchers had also asked these kids whether they went to the library and asked the librarian for help finding great stuff to read.

 

Strawberry Shortcake reborn (and Angelina Ballerina, too)

Isn’t it funny how characters we remember from our pasts change as time goes by - or when at least enough time goes by for the characters we remember to grow unhip and embarrassing to kids of a new era?

Well, take a look at this article from the New York Times Business section that tells us about just that. I find it particularly interesting that our 80’s habits, like eating sweets, have grown embarrassing. And we librarians may groan when we see the Angelina Ballerina we know and love become a whole lot svelter when she reaches (gasp) Public Television. A quote from the story:

So [Strawberry Shortcake's] owner, American Greetings Properties, worked for a year on what it calls a “fruit-forward” makeover. Strawberry Shortcake, part of a line of scented dolls, now prefers fresh fruit to gumdrops, appears to wear just a dab of lipstick (but no rouge), and spends her time chatting on a cellphone instead of brushing her calico cat, Custard.

So the Strawberry Shortcake you see here isn’t long for this world. Go to the NY Times story to see the newer, thinner, one, (And well, ahem, um, some of us who never liked the original might not mind too much, but, ahem, I didn’t say that.)

Modern cartoon characters must be thin and politically correct. And book characters, too, I guess.

 

Paul Krugman’s thumbs-up view of e-books

Paul Krugman, the New York Times economics columnist, wrote about e-books the other day in a way that makes them sound as if they’re finally succeeding - or at least makes them sound that way if you, the reader, haven’t had any personal experience with actual e-books or e-book readers. Krugman’s been using a Kindle for a while now, evidently - although I wonder whether he actually had to purchase one at $359, which I consider an unreasonable price. He says that he likes it.

Krugman knows well that e-books have been claiming to be the Next Big Thing since about the year 2000, without actually reaching that goal. He jokes about it, but after reading about all the e-book promotion from BookExpo America, he feels as if things may be turning around at last:

Now, e-books have been the coming, but somehow not yet arrived, thing for a very long time. (There’s an old Brazilian joke: “Brazil is the country of the future — and always will be.” E-books have been like that.) But we may finally have reached the point at which e-books are about to become a widely used alternative to paper and ink.

He feels that the Kindle, which I’ll admit has a lot of good things going for it, may be the device that turns things around for electronic books. “It’s a good enough package that my guess is that digital readers will soon become common, perhaps even the usual way we read books,” he says.

But I still believe he’s wrong. E-books, and especially their readers, are too expensive for what you get. The e-book files can’t be resold or loaned to others. They’re harder to read than 3D books on their delicate electronic readers, and can’t be enjoyed as comfortably on the Kindle or similar devices while traveling or standing in line at the Post Office.

And they’re not in a format that appeals to young people, which I feel must happen before e-books really take off. All of these things are fixable, but the urge to make a big profit (not merely a profit, but a big one) restrains publishers from fixing them. We’ll see how long it’s going to take.

 

Is Ray Bradbury right about e-books?

Ray Bradbury told an audience at BookExpo America in Los Angeles last week that e-books were failures, just as I have and many other writers on books and libraries have been saying for a while now.

But Bradbury, who has been known for a long time as an anti-tech Luddite sort (A strange attitude for a writer who is - possibly mistakenly - considered an sf author), has a different view on e-books than most of us. (I’ve never really thought of Bradbury as an sf author because I feel he harks back to visions of the past, rather than toward the future.)

Most of us e-book skeptics simply feel that e-books aren’t well-designed by their paranoid publishers for their audience. But according to Alexander Wolfe’s column on the Information Week site:

“There is no future for e-books, because they are not books,” Bradbury said. “E-books smell like burned fuel,” he added.

Wolfe goes on about some positive quotes released at BookExpo by some publishing publicists, who say that they’ve been selling more e-books than ever. But if you’ll notice, none of these publishing people have released any numbers of actual e-books sold. So far, nobody involved with the selling of e-books (who I’ve heard of, anyway) have released any sales figures. Ever. At all. Which makes me, and a lot of other e-book skeptics, highly suspicious.

I still don’t see e-books replacing paper books, except as maybe textbooks. E-books are good for things such as textbooks, which no one reads for pleasure. (Let me ask you a question: Do any of you really enjoy reading more than a page of dense, book-style, narrative text online? That’s why my posts here never exceed 500 words.)

But for reading for pleasure? E-books aren’t making a dent, yet, as far as I can see.

 

Amazon drops Kindle price by 40 dollars. Snore.

Yahoo News reported today that Amazon is dropping the price of its Kindle e-book reader device by $40, to $359. Woo-hoo, I say. Not.

Until the price of a good reliable e-book reader reaches $100 or less - and I’m not holding my breath - I doubt that e-book readers will become must-haves for more than a very few people - and they certainly won’t be of much interest to young people. Why buy e-books that you can’t move among devices, and can’t sell used, when you can buy real 3D books? Last weekend I spent half my Saturday helping out with Austin Public Library’s Monster Book Sale, and saw all kinds of wonderful books - yeah, well, all kinds of discarded library books, plenty of which were pretty wonderful - for $2 to 50 cents apiece.

I bought a classic discarded hardcover library copy of Ursula K. Le Guin’s marvelous A Wizard of Earthsea, with its 1968 copyright date and its plastic-covered dust jacket all raggedy around the edges, for $1. At that price, I can carry it around easily and not care (too much) whether it gets any more beat-up that it already is, or whether it gets something spilled on it.

Try buying that book as an an e-book at that kind of price. Have you seen the wonderful article, “The Elusive E-Book,” by Stephen Sottong in the May American Libraries? I wish I could link to it, but ALA doesn’t allow access to non-members. If you can get hold of a copy, please read it. Sottong expresses exactly my feelings about the current unworkability of electronic books. He says:

The reason [the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle} will fail is the same one that doomed the Rocket e-book: Why would anyone pay $300 to $400 for a dedicated reader device when the display and interface are not as good as a paper book? As author Walt Crawford concisely put it, “Paper books work.”

Costs must come down, and flexibility must improve for e-books to succeed. We need to have e-books we can read on our cell phones and laptops without transfer hassles. And even then, I don’t feel that we’ll see e-books ever triumph - because, like Crawford, I think the 3D book works really well.

 

Teachers in UK aren’t using children’s books well

A recently released study from the UK Centre for Literacy and Primary Education (CLPE - is this group a rough equivalent of the American IRA?) reveals that many teachers aren’t using children’s books well with their classes. The CLPE has been running a study called “The Power of Reading” since 2005, with the goal of “enhanc[ing] teachers’ and children’s pleasure in reading and rais[ing] children’s achievement through developing teachers’ knowledge of literature and its use in the primary classroom.”

The study of the first two years of the project tells us that plenty of teachers don’t know children’s literature well, and aren’t using it knowledgeably with their classes. I have a fairly strong feeling - based on what I’ve heard over the years from public children’s librarians across the US - that things aren’t that much different in this country. We can only guess about this, of course, because I haven’t heard of a recent similar study in the US. Elementary teachers here aren’t required to take coursework in children’s literature, and often don’t keep track of what’s new and interesting in children’s books.

And many states, filled with school districts that are sweating to pay for their classroom teachers under No Child Left Behind, don’t require elementary schools to hire certified media specialists. That means, of course, that plenty of teachers don’t have someone to advise them about what’s new and cool in children’s books - except for the local public children’s librarian.

And it’s hard to make contact with local classroom teachers - unless we pick up that phone and call the schools around us.

 

Did a book traumatize you, once upon a time?

Here’s an interesting piece from the SFGate.com site - “Books that traumatized you as a child,” by Peter Hartlaub, who also wrote about movies that traumatized kids. Hartlaub doesn’t seem to have actually been traumatized by a book (in my experience, books don’t send most kids into terror and anxiety the way that visual and sound media - namely movies and TV shows - do).

But he does write that he doesn’t understand the appeal of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are.

I think part of the problem was it was introduced to me when I was really young, and had never seen anything more challenging in content than a Richard Scarry book. While I completely respect the artwork and Maurice Sendak’s story, the image of a little boy in his pajama-looking wolf suit wandering around without dinner in a spooky monster-filled woods was too depressing for me to enjoy.

It’s interesting, though, to see the books listed in the comments. Those who wrote in hated, or were frightened by, Bread and Jam for Frances, The Red Pony, and Where the Red Fern Grows. The last one, at least, is completely understandable, but I think that the books (and media) that bother or scare us as kids are often completely peculiar to our own experiences. Once, in a library where I worked years ago, there was a child who attended storytime weekly who was not only scared of insects of any kind, but he couldn’t bear to hear any story or song with bugs in it. If he heard “There was an old lady who swallowed a fly,” for example, his eyes grew wide, he’d start whimpering, and his mom had to scoop him up and take him out.

I hope he grew out of it.

Did I book ever traumatize me? I can’t really remember. I thought Where the Wild Things Are was an extremely cool story, myself. For me, it was scary TV shows. There are still a few episodes of Twilight Zone that I remember scared the bejezus out of me when I was eight or nine…