Biography Section Hall of Shame
I don’t know when it hit me exactly, but at a certain point I realized that our biography section was filled with athletes who have been through either a legal or personal scandal.
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Each time a new athlete is shamed, I think about their book in our collection.
In every case I can think of, we’ve kept the book. But it’s an odd feeling.
We recently added a few more recent athlete bios – fingers crossed they don’t end up in the Hall of Shame.
How’s your Hall of Shame?
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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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So tied to our hero-worship society, especially athletes. The harder they rise the harder they fall.
I recently had the same question. I was trying to decide between a Lance Armstrong biography and a Paula Deen kid’s Cookbook. I took the Armstrong biography out because some of the information was no longer accurate. I still haven’t decided about the cookbook….
I reread the biographies looking at them with the same criteria for weeding plus the current situation. Most have gone.. People make mistakes. It’s how the face them and alter their lives accordingly that makes all the difference.
I once read of a children’s librarian who never orders biographies unless the people are dead because things change so fast with living people. These are cases in point. Not to mention that athletes change teams so often these days and celebrities who are hot today are frequently forgotten in a couple of years. Then you have all these out-of-date biographies clogged the shelves. What do you think out there–is it worth it to order bios of living people? Is the demand that great that we’re willing to stock books that may be outdated in two or three years?
I don’t buy any very current celebrity bios and that includes athletes for all reasons you mention. Also there are now so many wonderful picture book biographies about people who changed the world.
If you weed based on that criteria, a lot of historical
people shouldn’t be there either- slave owners, adulterers,
murders and terrorists. I have a spectrum and weed
as needed. Just because they are alive doesn’t
mean we can’t learn about them. Just because
they’re dead, don’t automatically make them worthy.
Excellent point.
Here’s one I got rid of: Arnold Schwarzenegger: Man of Action (Book Report Biographies) by Daniel Bial. A little too much action.
Good points, everyone. I don’t have a definite decision either way (and I don’t order books) but I wanted to hear what other people thought. On the one hand, we have several of the “Who Was…” biographies here. Most of them are about historical figures but one of them is on George Lucas. He’s still alive and there will be plenty of kids interested in him. On the other hand, I saw a bio of Justin Beiber on our shelf a couple of days ago (a great big book) and winced, thinking, “Is he still popular? What will will do with this book in a couple of years?” And I didn’t mean to say that simply because a person’s alive or dead makes him or her worthy of a biography. George Lucas, for instance, certainly deserves one. A biography of Hitler wouldn’t be pleasant but useful.
Thanks for chiming in, folks. It’s a tough balance to strike between bios of important historical figures and more current stuff – something I’m always going back and forth on. Another option is to update some bios that address the issue. I’m willing to be there’s a new bio of, say Lance Armstrong, that talks about his scandal. Although, then do you want a book where the ending sort of voids everything that came before? I’ll keep adding bios of the still-living, but remain pretty judicious.