Blogging the Kidlitosphere

irst came e-mail. Then increased web activity. Then, last but not least, came blogging. If you’re unfamiliar with weblogs (blogs for short), they are a kind of online journal, available for free to anyone with internet access and an e-mail address, that give their writers, a.k.a. bloggers, the freedom to update their postings as regularly as they like. Blogs relating to children’s literature display a wide variety of tastes and talents. The good news is that each blog has its own unique personality, and with the plethora available, you’re bound to find at least one that suits your needs. The bad news is that once you become a regular blog reader you will discover just how easy it is to spend countless hours gazing in motionless fascination at your computer screen. For good or for ill, blogging gives voice to anyone — a parent, a writer, a publisher, a librarian — with an opinion. So while the path to publication may be a long and arduous process, the path to self-publication is easier than ever before.

Children’s book blogging has erupted from its technobabble beginnings into a mechanism that has thrown everything, from book marketing and reviewing to award committee participation, for a loop. This fact was made particularly clear last year, when I was serving on the 2007 Newbery committee. I was initially informed that I could continue to post reviews of Newbery-
contending titles as long as I posted only my own opinions and not those of my fellow committee members. Then several incidents related to children’s lit bloggers serving on committees stirred up so many questions that I was asked to remove all reviews pertaining to Newbery contenders until the Association for Library Service to Children could come up with a policy on blogging. I soon found myself at the center of a whirlwind debate over the differences between reviewing professionally and reviewing on a blog, and whether or not ALSC could restrict a person’s electronically expressed opinion. In the end, ALSC revised its policy (at least for now) to allow blogging to continue while a member serves, insofar as that person does not discuss committee affairs. Bloggers will undoubtedly be watching ALSC with interest to see how this policy is re-evaluated in the coming years.

Telling a professional in the children’s literary field that you’re a blogger doesn’t exactly win you instant and undying respect. More often than not you get the nervous glance to the side, the half-a-grin and awkward chuckle. Due to its very nature (plunking thoughts down onto an online journal regardless of one’s mental state), blogging will never be considered as respectable as professional writing, what with little things like the lack of editors or pay. Yet when children’s book enthusiasts gather together, the subject of blogging is going to come up. Every day more parents, teachers, librarians, scholars, authors, illustrators, and readers are discovering and creating blogs of their own in an effort to add something to the general discourse surrounding books for kids. You can avoid blogs and suffer few consequences, but this new technology offers a remarkable way to talk about children’s literature while adequately supplementing already existing media.

My path to the blogosphere began with Amazon.com. I’d already been posting long, self-indulgent reviews of children’s books on the site just for the heck of it when I read an enticing article in the December 2005 School Library Journal (“Those Bloggin’ Librarians” by Gail Junion-Metz). It didn’t take much effort to transplant my Amazon reviews to my new blog, with some general kidlit information tacked on for spice. Over time I acquired a regular readership, and my blog, A Fuse #8 Production, has turned out to be a solid time-waster of an amusement.

Mind you, as a member of the child_lit listserv, I was not unaccustomed to the online world of children’s literary discussion. The thrill came when I realized that now I could single-handedly direct the course of the dialogue on my site. And unlike listservs, blogging brings people together with relatively little commitment. There’s no need to subscribe, and with a simple Google search, people can peruse my archives. The result is that a wide range of professionals in the field mingle with the merely curious every day. Editors can converse on blogs concerning the books they work on. Authors may take bloggers to task when they misrepresent a book or judge it too cruelly. I’ve seen teachers discussing the relative merits of a given post right alongside marketing directors and kidlit-loving parents. Children’s literary blogs are expanding an already rich dialogue.

For all its charms, there’s no getting away from the fact that, as a blogger, anything I write goes directly from my mouth to an electronic page. I have no editor and no restraint aside from my own, perhaps questionable, common sense. Should I choose to write something foolhardy or false about a topic, no one will stop me from making an ass of myself. The degree to which you trust a given blogger may thus depend entirely on something as amorphous as instinct or length of acquaintance.

This is why I am so grateful for comments, easily inserted by blog readers with a click of the mouse. Blogs that allow comments by anyone with an opinion make room for dissent and the further clarification that’s missing when you read an article in a magazine. My commentators are a regular, ribald bunch who feel perfectly free to offer additional insight on a variety of topics. I once posted a small piece on Playaways, those newfangled audiobooks that don’t require any outside hardware or downloading. Within a single day of my post I had comments from a number of librarians around the country offering tips on how best to use the little buggers in the library system, taking into account their advantages as well as their disadvantages. You might find such information in an article, sure. And these days, online magazine and newspaper articles offer the option of commenting, too, in much the same way that a blog does. Still, you could wait forever for a professional writer to discuss a topic that’s on your mind. As a blogger, I’ve had plenty of e-mails asking if I’d discuss such ‘n’ such a topic at one time or another. A columnist might not be quite as inclined to take suggestions from the general public.

I asked J. L. Bell, author of the Oz and Ends blog, to speculate as to where all this blogging might lead someday:

In earlier stages of internet growth, there were predictions that the new media would take over the old. But instead many of the large, established media outlets created online wings that had the advantage of name recognition. Radio stations didn’t disappear, for instance; they created elaborate websites. We’ll probably see the same developments in the blogosphere. Some blogs will become known as reliable brands, and then part of or allied with larger media organizations. And those companies, if they’re smart, will use the same technology to serve their customers, seizing the advantages of larger resources and established brands. Already we see the SLJ blog, Read Roger, and PW Daily.

Nor will blogging ever replace the older forms of discussion. Says Monica Edinger of the blog Educating Alice, “People have asked me if I think blogs are going to compromise child_lit, but I don’t think so. Here’s my analogy: with child_lit you are going to a large open space where a huge variety of folks come (a sort of flea market) while with a blog you are still going to someone’s private space (home, private office, etc).”

In terms of the future, I like to believe that big book publisher–driven blogs (and there are bound to be more of them as time goes by) and blog media organizations like Bookslut and Mediabistro.com will coexist peaceably alongside the scrappy independent sprouts. We may even see magazines and publishers woo some of the bigger kidlit bloggers onto their own webpages. But beware: insofar as a blog doesn’t make money, it isn’t beholden to anyone. The minute cash comes into play, all that will change. Some book bloggers already place advertising banners on their sites. How will readers take this into account when weighing a blog’s credibility?

Time-starved kidlit enthusiasts will have to be careful whom and what they read, as crossover between the online community and the print world increases. And certainly blogs may prove to be only a technological trend that gives way to something even faster and more interesting. Yet until that happens, it’s a helluva lot of fun watching the new names and faces pop up all around the kidlitosphere. More parents, librarians, editors, authors, illustrators, and enthusiasts are starting new blogs every day. We’re looking at a goldmine of talent, experience, argument, and information.

Elizabeth Bird is a children’s librarian at the Donnell Central Children’s Room of the New York Public Library. She runs the kidlit blog A Fuse #8 Production at schoollibraryjournal.com.