>But enough about you. Or me.

by Roger Sutton
Sep 10, 2008 | Filed in Articles & Opinion
>As we did late last year, Child_Lit has been discussing the U.K.'s age-banding proposal with some ferocity the past few days. While I am firmly in the camp of those who oppose the scheme, a speech Philip Pullman gave on the subject is working my nerves. It's very much a speech to the choir (which it was, being delivered at a conference of the Society of Authors), and at the beginning quotes from the research report that allegedly boosts the proposal: "A recent trade survey has shown a general preference to move to age ranging, although with some strongly held contrary views, but now what’s needed is a piece of research that delivers some definitive answers from the people who matter most – book customers and readers."

Pullman then clutches his rhetorical pearls for this response:

The people who matter most?

Whoever wrote that – whoever read that and believed it – needs to be reminded that without us, without our work, our talent, our willingness to put up with almost anything in the way of reduced royalties, humiliating treatment over jacket design, endless travels to this bookshop, that school, that library, anything to help our books reach the readers – without us there would be no editors, no designers, no marketing teams, no publicity people, no secretaries, no helpful personal assistants, no senior executives, no expense account lunches, no pension schemes, no company cars, no sales conferences in attractive places, no publishing industry whatsoever. Any of the people who do those other things could be replaced with very little difference. Take us away, and you’ve lost everything. The people who matter most? Authors and illustrators are the people who matter most, and no publisher with any sense of what’s right and true would have allowed that sentence, and that attitude, to stand.

While I agree it would have been both politic and useful to ask writers what they thought of the idea of printing suggested reading levels on book covers, jeez, Philip, get over your bad self. I ask, with similarly high-camp drama but equal sincerity, isn't anyone thinking about the children? They are the people who matter most in this question. They are the ones who will have to suffer walking around with a book they want to read but are officially too mature for; they are the ones who will be told "you aren't ready" for a book deemed Too Hard. The problem with the age-banding proposal is not that it ignores authors, it's that it ignores young readers.




Roger Sutton
Roger Sutton

Editor Emeritus Roger Sutton was editor in chief of The Horn Book, Inc., from 1996-2021. 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 MA in library science from the University of Chicago in 1982 and a BA from Pitzer College in 1978.

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arahsae

>Ha--Mary Higgins Clark was my favorite author as an eight grader.

Pullman's confidence is quite a counterpoint to the vulnerability Sendak voices in the NYTimes (which I'm sure you all read already).

I think Pullman is more likely to compare himself to Milton than Sendak's Keats, Mozart, Dickinson, etc.

Posted : Sep 16, 2008 04:41

Library Mermaid

>Ack, that age limiting stuff is such a horror - if one more parent comes in the library and insists the book only be such and such a reading level or their kid cannot read it (I will, of course, only scream silently in my head after trying to gently dissuade them - I am a librarian after all)...I like Pullman's little fit of passion however - his "bad self" can really go to town.

Posted : Sep 16, 2008 02:05

Anonymous

>As I said, back at 8:48, pedagogy gone wild. I'm so sick of it, and it makes me so angry, but every time the subject comes up there is someone with new evidence of its persistence. How come something intended for Good (directing children to books they might enjoy) becomes EVIL? And how come we can't stop it?

Even without clearly labeled book jackets, some helpful soul (or lots of well-intentioned parent volunteers who had better things to do with their time) spent hours to create the system anyway. It's like the worm Ourobourus or something.

Posted : Sep 13, 2008 01:10

Roger Sutton

>Sara inadvertently points out one of the many ironies of age levels--when I began work as a YA librarian, Mary Higgins Clark was one of the most popular authors among teens!

Posted : Sep 13, 2008 12:30

Anonymous

>I can't even understand Pullman's position on this issue, so I'll just say I'm thankful that the "other" people who matter (i.e. librarians and other literacy advocates) don't feel the same way.

But if you'd like to know how kids feel about book banding...my 9-year-old daughter came home crying from her new school last week. They had visited the school library, and were told they could only check out books with blue and green dots, because those books were at the 4th grade reading level. The school policy undermines the years I have invested in growing an avid reader (who is accustomed to making her own decisions about what to read). Needless to say, I'll be making a visit there soon.

I can't imagine how I'd feelif my reading material was restricted to the category of "middle class white woman in her mid-30s". After I finished the Mary Higgins Clark novels, I would probably stop reading and start playing more video games!

Sara

Posted : Sep 13, 2008 03:18

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