Publications about books for children and young adults
There’s a provocative new comment over on Yolanda Hare’s “Beyond the Friends.” It has me wondering if the CSK awards ever suffer from Newberyitis, where some kids see the sticker and think, “oh, this is one of those books that’s supposed to be good for you.” Because light escapist fare they ain’t. (Nor are they supposed to be.)
About Roger SuttonRoger Sutton has been the editor in chief of The Horn Book, Inc, since 1996. He was previously editor of The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books and a children's and young adult librarian. He received his M.A. in library science from the University of Chicago in 1982 and a B.A. from Pitzer College in 1978. Follow him on Twitter: @RogerReads.
Hmm. But the comment wasn’t about whether the CSK books tend to be more or less literary– the comment addressed issues of representation. (And hopefully there’s a wider, more diverse representation in the audience for these books as well. While I understand the importance of African-American children and YAs in particular seeing the wide range of their experiences depicted in literature, I would hope that this doesn’t mean that books about black kids are exclusively books *for* black kids.) Not being a member of the African-American community myself, I don’t think I could participate in the conversation about representation and class in any way but to listen. But I do think there’s often the same underlying problem at work in many of these discussions, which is just the need for more children’s books by and about people of color in general. For all kids.