More About Neil Gaiman

When the Youth Media Awards were announced at this year’s ALA Midwinter Meeting, I took the morning off work, set up my computer to see the webcast, logged on to Twitter, too, just to see how the two compared, time-wise, and logged in to my public library account so that I could put holds on all the books that sounded interesting. When my husband came home, he said something like “wow, this is like the Super Bowl for you, isn’t it?” Yea, it kind of was like the Super Bowl. When a team wins the Super Bowl, do you think that any of its members ever swear? I’ll bet they do, and so did Neil Gaiman, when he was told that he won the Newbery for his The Graveyard Book. He didn’t swear on the phone (as he did when he was told he won the Hugo, for SF) but he did swear in his Twitter feed. “F---!!!! I won the F---ING NEWBERY THIS IS SO F---ING AWESOME. I thank you” Sure, it was a little over the top, maybe, but at least he was happy to get it! Apparently, at ALA, some librarians were upset by his use of adult language. One of the blogs I follow is by Roger Sutton, long-time editor of the Horn Book magazine, which reviews children’s books. Roger Sutton doesn’t let his involvement in children’s publishing stop him from publishing grown-up thoughts and links to even more grown-up thoughts. It strikes me as gutsy for these people who work with children’s books to communicate as adults. I am glad that they do, because I’m afraid that if we ask of our children’s authors that they live lives that are always fit for children’s ears and eyes, then no one who’s the least bit interesting will ever want to write for children again. Swear on, people.

Oh great, check out all the different kinds of censorship

I’ve been thinking, for a few days, about this article in School Library Journal discussing the various issues to be considered when shelving Neil Gaiman’s 2009 Newbery winner, The Graveyard Book. It says that shelving it in YA, instead of in little kids, is censorship. One thing that I was thinking was that there’s a bit of a niftier-than-thou aspect to the intellectual freedom scene, and that I want to avoid that. Yes, IF is really important, and it’s really important to me in this sort of emotional way. Still, there is a reality in which we operate and in it, we need real food, not Neverland pretend food, as well as shelter and stuff. It’s easy for me to say that I would lose my job to fight for principles that are important, but how can I say whether I really really would? Then I saw this article tonight and it made me wonder: how can I really trust myself to not self-censor? (Totally not at the barricades now, friends.) I think that, if I am really intentional in my consideration process, I can trust that I’ll be honest with myself, but what about the times when I just dismiss a book as not being high quality? I could see those kinds of decisions getting muddy for me. I need a tool, either developed by someone else or by myownself, to help me through rocky collection development questions. Do any of you nice folks have any suggestions for a resource that makes a lot of sense to you?

Vamos

I saw this post about Vamos a Cuba last week in Roger Sutton’s blog. Since no one picked Vamos a Cuba as for the book reconsideration assignment, I’ll go ahead and comment about it here. It turns out that the court cases involving this book are still going on, and it is an interesting book for this class to consider when it comes to intellectual freedom.

I don’t know about you all, but when I think of intellectual freedom, I picture myself (at the barricades, of course) protecting the rights of innocent, intellectually curious children to read really excellent literature, or sex ed books that provide factual information. In my mind’s eye, there I am with a copy of some Really Important Book clutched to my bosom while some fascists try to grab it from me.

The case of Vamos a Cuba is a serious buzz-kill (aka Reality Check.) Apparently, this just isn’t a very good book. It’s part of a series of not-very-good-books. Turns out that we, as librarians, will have to defend kinda crappy books, too. Vamos a Cuba is a juvenile nonfiction series book about Cuba that isn’t particularly accurate, or well-written. Critics say that the inaccuracies are meant to cast a deceptively sunny hue on the realities of Castro’s Cuba. The debate is occurring in Miami, where everything Cuba is big big news to the Cuban expat community there.

It’s a political issue, and worthy of the attention of librarians, to be sure, but if I ever have to lose my job defending for defending my students’ freedom to read, I sure hope it’s over a book that I like. Silly, but true.

Post #2: Back to High School Government

So, I’ve been thinking about the recent smackdown that COPA received when the Supreme Court declined to review the case for it again. The District Court Judge, Lowell Reed, said “perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if First Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection,” which is an awesome expression of the bigger picture.

I’ve also been chewing on the reminders that I received in the Intellectual Freedom Manual about the relationship between democracy and majority and the Constitution and this is what I think: since COPA was passed by both the House and Senate, and signed by President Clinton, that would imply that this piece of legislation was supported by the people (as the legislative branch of government is supposed to represent) but struck down by the judicial branch (Defenders of the Constitution). Any high school student would probably yawn at this observation, but it occurs to me that this speaks directly to the issues I’ve been playing with lately. Librarians, in this case, supporting the decision of the judicial branch and opposing the assertions of the legislative, are in the position of opposing popular opinion (potentially) – sort of saving the populace from itself.

Now, we all know that it isn’t that simple. It’s not as though a national referendum was held on the issue of the Internet and the majority of Americans supported this particular iteration of the urge to protect their children. More likely, the oversimplified version of this solution: “we need to protect our children from porn” was what drew the support of a vocal minority, convincing a majority of legislators to support COPA. Still, it is interesting to me to see theory played out in the real world.