Room for Debate: "Just Right" Books and Libraries

The New York Times has a series called "Room for Debate" which invites a variety of "experts" in a given field to present brief opinion pieces on given topics.  This week, two of the debate topics are book related.

Thursday's topic was "What's Are 'Just Right' for the Young Reader?" and today's is "Do We Still Need Libraries?"  The answers seem pretty obvious to me!  Haha.  Let young people read what they want to read, and when they seek guidance, offer it based on their interests, not yours.  There is a book for every reader and when a mismatch occurs, the reader will likely stop reading or skim the parts that are too mature, too complicated, etc.  And on the topic of whether we need libraries? Yup. Sure do. Especially children and older adults, who use libraries and library programming extensively and depend on that access.  Plus, it's so cheap (less than $50 per person) to run a library.  It would be foolish to get rid of them.

Anyway, enough of my editorializing.  Go read the debate!

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Oops!...They Did It Again

Bloomsbury. Really? Again?

As if one cover featuring a white girl when the story was about a girl with dark skin wasn't bad enough. You had to go and whitewash the cover of Jaclyn Dolamore's Magic Under Glass.

I appreciate that you've done the right thing and responded to the public outcry* by ceasing to sell the book with the original cover, apologizing and creating a new cover. You did that last time, and it worked out well.

So next time, how about just doing the right thing the first time and creating a cover that reflects the story and the characters? And if you're queasy about putting a person of color on the cover, you could always take the easy way out and not put a person on the cover at all. Just stop it with the white girls on the cover of books about darker skinned girls. Ok?

I'm creating a "whitewashing" tag. Don't dare make me use it again.

...And Little, Brown, don't think you're not being watched. You are.

* Thanks to bookshelves of doom for rounding up all the posts!

The LibrariYAn is an Amazon Associate. If you click from links on this blog to Amazon and buy something (anything!), I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.

No More Pencils, No More Books!

There is much ado about Cushing Academy's (an elite boarding school in Massachusetts) decision to get rid of all the books "aside from a few hundred children's books and valuable antiquarian works" to make way for specialized laptop carrels, 18 kindles, 3 large screen televisions and a coffee bar.

I'm all about embracing technology and think that the idea of creating this "learning center" is pretty fantastic. It will clearly become the center of the school's community. They're clearly on the cutting edge and looking to provide the top-notch 21st century opportunities that the students' parents are paying for their children to receive. But what the heck kind of a school checks out only 48 books in a year? Do these students not read?

Something tells me these students are still reading books both for school and for the fun of it. No, not e-books downloaded to their readers, but actual ink on paper books. Most likely, however, students are required to purchase class novels along with the texts they need for their English and other courses, or they're otherwise kept in classroom libraries (i.e. maps and atlases in the social studies classrooms, scripts in the drama room, etc.). And when they want to read for pleasure? They buy the book from retailers like Amazon or Barnes and Noble and swap with friends from personal bookshelves. It isn't that "very few students actually read [books]," it's that they just aren't checking them out of the school library.

I work at a fantastic private school that is fortunate enough to have the ability to provide amazing opportunities for our students, including access to cutting-edge technology. Now, my students are middle schoolers, and they use the library in a different, less rigorously research-based way than high school students. Still, I venture to guess that not much was being done at this school to encourage student independent use of the library, or the function of the library (as it was) to serve as a center of the school's community.

Our program encourages students to develop a love of reading and provides room for independent reading selections alongside prescribed class novels. Reader's advisory is a big part of my job. Want to guess how many books I've checked out this year (read: over the past three days)? Over 100.

Little Victories

I am certainly not one for quotes, but...Margaret Mead once said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." Perhaps that's a bit of a bold statement to make in relation to the announcement that Bloomsbury will be publishing Justine Larbalestier's book Liar with a new cover, but I think it's rather fitting, and I consider it a victory, albeit a small one, against racism*.

The original cover choice smacked of racism and served only to reinforce the idea that books with black people featured on the cover don't sell. The new cover is more than I think anyone could've asked for; they could've just gone with the Australian cover like Justine initially requested, but Bloomsbury when whole hog, and the cover will not only feature a photo of a girl who looks a LOT more like Micah (though I will say, not exactly her), but it will be in color!

Of course, the battle is only half-won...now everyone needs to go and buy it! Thankfully, it's an awesome novel, so getting it into bookstores and libraries shouldn't be a challenge - but it needs to sell and it needs to circulate. Making this happen is the responsibility of booksellers and librarians, who need to go forth and feature the novel in displays, booktalk it, handsell it, and do whatever it takes to get it into readers' hands.

* This whole controversy kinda reminded me of when Magic Johnson had to fight (and commit has own money) to get Starbucks to open a stores in black communities. When Starbucks was initially approached their response was "black people don't drink our coffee." Seriously? Maybe if you opened up a store in a black neighborhood, they would. And they did.

Judging A Book By It's Cover

Just after I blogged about the cover for Justine Larbalestier's upcoming Liar, the author posted on her own blog, responding to the many posts about Liar's cover that had sprung up in the previous days. In her post, she explains the story behind the cover, expresses her personal disappointment in the publisher's choice to use the cover and goes a bit into the whole "black books don't sell" conundrum/self-fulfilling prophecy.

But I'm not here today to talk about that. I'm here to unveil to you the cover of my debut YA novel, Sip, which apparently - if one does judge a book by it's cover - centers around a fun and funky teen, Naomi, who works and/or hangs out a lot at a coffee shop...and maybe something about how she's never been one to jump into things, but now there's a turning point in her life, and she can't just "sip" life up slowly, but chug it down.

It's not exactly the cover or title (um, or synopsis?) I would've chosen for my novel if I could've chosen on my own, but isn't that just how it goes in the real world anyway? You write what sells, your title might be chosen for you, and the cover is almost definitely out of your hands.

But it's still pretty cool! So, go ahead and make your own debut YA novel cover, following these easy instructions from 100 Scope Notes. Here's how:

1. Go to http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/ to find out your pen name.


2. Go to www.websitestyle.com/parser/randomword.shtml. The word listed under "random verb" is your title.


3. Go to www.flickrcc.com/bluemountains.net/index.php. Type in your title. The first image that appears that features a person is your cover.


4. Using Photoshop, Picnik, or similar software, put it all together.


5. Post and share!

Oh! and since I thought it might be fun, I went ahead and looked to see what Liar's cover might have looked like if it had been randomly generated this way, and...

So, I guess that the cover they went with probably wasn't so bad at all.

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

Micah is a liar.

But she's promised to tell the truth.

Her (secret) boyfriend was brutally murdered, and everyone is looking at her like she had something to do with it.

She didn't.

You can trust her.

Liar by Justine Larbarlestier

Bloomsbury

Coming in October 2009

Recommended For: High School

************************************************************

Um...WOWzers. This book was amazing! I picked up an ARC of Justine Larbalestier's Liar from the Bloomsbury booth at BEA back in May, after reading Carlie's review over at Librarilly Blonde, and I'm sure glad I did.

When I think of Justine Larbalestier, I think fairies, not psychological thrillers. Liar is so cleverly written that you don't realize what you're reading until you're halfway into the book, and then your mind is pounding and spinning you can't put the book down because if you do then you risk losing your total absorption and disbelief.

I don't want to say any more about the story though. I want you to read it for yourself. What I don't mind starting a conversation about is the cover. As you may have seen elsewhere on the interwebs, there's a bit of a controversy over the American cover* of Liar (shown at the top of this post). The cover itself is really eye catching. The dark, blunt bangs against the pale skin, wide eyes and covered mouth of the model definitely pique the reader's interest. So what's the problem?

Micah's character is black. Within the first few pages she describes herself as being of mixed race, but looking and having more the skin tone of her black father than her white mother. And she keeps her hair really short, cropped close to her head. She passes for being a boy.

So what's up with the cover? Is it racism? Did the publishers not want to put a black girl on the cover for fear of not selling enough books to their white customers? Or is the cover supposed to be what Micah really looks like, and her description in the book is just another of her lies? Or is it just that the cover was so awesome, the publisher decided they just had to go with it, content of the novel be damned.

What do you think?

* I personally like the Australian cover better.