Comments on: Is American Library Association Ghetto-izing Black Authors?

By: 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom

1minutebookreviewswordpresscom — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 06:05:51 +0000

Ingrid: That’s such an interesting question: Are the awards less prestigious than they used to be? If you’ve been on Twitter lately, you may have seen tweets about how the “Today” show used to have the Caldecott winners on the program every year. This year, the ALA couldn’t get the winners on one big morning show. So the producers of those programs seem to support your view that the awards just don’t carry as much weight with the public.

A related question is: If the awards have less prestige now, why is that so? It may be that books are less important to our culture as a whole. But it could also be that the awards are flawed in a way that the ALA needs to address. Thanks for making me think about these questions!
Jan

By: Ingrid Kalchthaler (@Reving)

Ingrid Kalchthaler (@Reving) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 03:40:40 +0000

Thank you so much for this well written and thoughtful post! I couldn’t agree with you more about this year’s Caldecott choice and I have seen this with the Newbery as well. When I think about One Crazy Summer and After Tupac and D Foster, I get SO ticked! The only thing is…maybe with so many serious mis-steps taken by the Caldecott and the Newbery, well maybe they just aren’t as prestigious as they used to be. Maybe we just have to stop giving so much credence to these awards if they are going to continue to be so poorly chosen. Don’t get my wrong, some winners are awesome and fully deserving, but some years….oh man…
Thank you again for this post. I completely agree!

By: 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom

1minutebookreviewswordpresscom — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 18:44:43 +0000

Helpful quote, @speedytexaslibrarian. Thanks! I’m doing a separate post on the Caldecott shutout for women on Monday, and the link may relate to that one, too.

You may be right about the differences between “The Invention of Hugo Cabret” and “Heart and Soul.” The trouble is that the profusion of identity-based prizes muddies the waters for nonlibrarians like me, perhaps including many parents and teachers: It looks as though the ALA is shunting black authors into an awards ghetto even if, as you and Roger say, other factors may have counted for more with the Caldecott committee.

By: speedytexaslibrarian

speedytexaslibrarian — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 04:55:13 +0000

Roger brings up an excellent point, though. In the Caldecott terms and criteria (at http://www.ala.org/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/caldecottmedal/caldecottterms/caldecottterms) “a ‘picture book for children’ as distinguished from other books with illustrations, is one that essentially provides the child with a visual experience. A picture book has a collective unity of story-line, theme, or concept, developed through the series of pictures of which the book is comprised.” I think some would argue that the illustrations are essential to the story in “The Invention of Hugo Cabret,” while in “Heart and Soul,” they are primarily illustrations and, although gorgeous, not absolutely essential to the story. That may have been more of a reason for ruling out “Heart and Soul” than the thought that it was a shoe-in for a Coretta Scott King award or honor.

Thanks for a great post and links. BTW, it’s Sibert Medal, not Siebert.

By: Book Bits #130 – Michelle Obama’s ‘American Grown,’ Kim Thúy’s ‘Ru,’ and more writers’ links | Malcolm's Book Bits and Notions

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:01:17 +0000

[...] Viewpoint: Is American Library Association Ghetto-izing Black Authors? by Janice Harayda – “Kadir Nelson, a four-time winner of the Coretta Scott King Award, lost the more prestigious Caldecott medal — again — on Monday” – One-Minute Book Reviews [...]

By: 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom

1minutebookreviewswordpresscom — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:17:13 +0000

@RogerReads Thanks, Roger. I was deferring on the eligibility issue to Betsy Bird and other librarians who know more about these matters than I do and who thought “Heart and Soul” had a shot at the Caldecott. And people raised eligibility questions about “The Invention of Hugo Cabret,” which won in 2008 http://bit.ly/OMBRHC. So I’m not convinced that something more wasn’t at work with “Heart and Soul.”

By the way, I thought Mark Aronson’s Horn Book essay on identity-based prizes was terrific and recommend it to all http://bit.ly/HBslope.

By: Roger Sutton (@RogerReads)

Roger Sutton (@RogerReads) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 22:00:56 +0000

However, the thing about this Kadir Nelson book is that it's not obviously or self-evidently eligible for the Caldecott Medal, which is for a picture book, something very minutely defined in the committee's charge. I'm not saying a person on the committee could not have argued for its eligibility, but that cuts both ways. We will never know.

By: 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom

1minutebookreviewswordpresscom — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 07:56:52 +0000

Thanks, @bibliopirate. I hope not, too.

By: bibliopirate

bibliopirate — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 06:31:51 +0000

A really great article, thanks for sharing. It doesn’t sound like it is ghetto-izing African American writers. Maybe on a subconsciousness level but I hope not.