Morning Notes: Sweet Brevity Edition
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WHERE ARE THE LADIES, CALDECOTT?
If you look at the numbers, men have won Caldecott far more often than women. A recent post at the blog One Minute Book Reviews asks, “What the?!” With the insanely provocative title “American Library Association to Little Kids: Women are Second Best”, you know there’s going to be some pot-stirring. Click here to read.
RAIDERS OF THE ARCS
With the growing legions of book bloggers and advance reader copy (ARC) excitement, some less-than-savory behavior has been popping up in the ALA conference exhibits. Chasing Ray discusses the phenomena in a recent post. Plenty to consider here. Click to read.
AN E-READER, ONE DECADE LATER
What with Kindle and Nook dominating the discussion for the last few years, you forget about the early e-readers. Library Wire looks back at the RCA REB 1100. My favorite part is when the phone cord comes out. Click here to read.
(Thanks to LISNews for the link)
2012: YESTERDAY’S NEWS
Have you had enough of all this 2012 stuff? Looking for the books that might be making waves in the 2013 Newbery race? Head over to Heavy Medal for a 2013 Newbery reading list. Click here to read.
THE BATTLE IS BACK
The School Library Journal Battle of the Kids Books is back for another go round, and the contenders were just announced. Click here to check out the roster.
Filed under: Morning Notes, News
About Travis Jonker
Travis Jonker is an elementary school librarian in Michigan. He writes reviews (and the occasional article or two) for School Library Journal and is a member of the 2014 Caldecott committee. You can email Travis at scopenotes@gmail.com, or follow him on Twitter: @100scopenotes.
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Thanks, Travis. Yes, the Caldecott pot is boiling:). Did you see on @sarahw’s Twitter feed that the Smoking Gun has learned that Abdul Zeitoun (of Dave Eggers’ “Zeitoun”) was convicted of wife-beating? The ALA nominated “Zeitoun” for an Alex http://bit.ly/ALAzei, though it didn’t win. Jan
Thanks for your post, Janice. I appreciate your line of thought. It’s interesting to consider why the Caldecott numbers are so in favor of male illustrators. I don’t think my reasoning lines up with yours (call me naive perhaps, but I don’t feel there’s much of a bias to speak of, conscious or unconscious) but whenever the gap is this wide it is worth exploring – thank you for doing that.
My problem with the Caldecott/no women conversation is that none of this has anything to do with the criteria. As a member of an awards committee, you *have* to follow the criteria, and I think some of the lines in this article (like the one about in past years giving 4-5 honors, but this year “only 3”) are really a bit insulting… like the committee should have thrown another book or two in there as honors as an afterthought because they were illustrated by a woman?! The people on those committees work insanely hard to make their selections, and the gender of the illustrator should not (and does not) have any part in the discussion. It’s an unfortunate thing to be sure, but I bristle at the assertion that the various committees are to blame.
I’m with you on some of the particulars of the article, Sam. A couple of the arguments are a bit of stretch. The larger argument is definitely worth exploring – I’m curious to see if this sparks more discussion.
The women/Caldecott argument leaves me a little exasperated. As an illustrator with some perspective on the issue, I hope they do not (and will not) consider gender in that room. I am not sure what the endgame for this discussion is, and I feel it is not completely fair to the history of the award. The very first winner in 1938 was a woman, in a time when you could only be a secretary, teacher, nun, or a wife. We should all try to make good books. It is not as easy as it seems. If a man or a woman makes a very very good book, then I am happy that a very very good book has been made. There are other, larger problems in the industry and I’m disappointed with the apparent rise of this one. I’m with Sam.
Erin – While my normal mode in arguments is to come down somewhere in the middle, I think I’m with you and Sam here. I do like how Janice takes a hard look at possible causes of the gender gap (it is certainly surprising), but it does seem like there are a lot of variables at play here. I appreciate the discussion.
I’m sorry, but the “gender gap” is not at ALL statistically significant. Those numbers could EASILY have happened by chance, not bias. And I believe they did happen by chance. Last year, the speakers at the banquet are women; this year they will be men. This is not some nefarious plot; it’s happenstance.
The fact is, a 50% probability doesn’t really constrain things until you get to very large numbers. Even looking at a decade at a time (and certainly looking at only one year), there’s a wide wide range of values that could so easily happen by chance.
This, by the way, is why so many people have theories about how you can tell the gender of a baby before it’s born. Their theory is right half the time, and they can get quite a good streak going.