CMIS Evaluation Fiction Focus

No, not for any radical ideas it may contain, but its manufacturing components. From the Publisher’s Weekly:

The children’s book industry is currently dealing with a new and pressing challenge that is threatening publishers, bookstores, libraries and schools. It’s not the economy or school spending or reading rates—it is a recent act of Congress, which has blindsided the industry with the implementation of stiff safety standards on all children’s products, and whose application to books is vague. It has left many publishers, retailers and industry groups scrambling to interpret the law and determine what kinds of compliance will be required, and at what cost.

It’s either taken a while, or taken a while to be reported, but UK librarians have now joined the campaign to oppose the prominent placing of recommended age ranges on books published in Britain.

The No to Age Banding Campaign has been a steadily growing movement since mid year, with Philip Pullman’s voice prominent in the debate.

Oh dear. As if the global monetary crisis wasn’t enough, here’s some doom and gloom on the literacy front from the UK’s Independent on Sunday newspaper:

Publishers must adapt titles to the demands of modern young readers who spend more time on the internet if they are to succeed in persuading the next generation to read, says Jonathan Douglas, the director of the National Literacy Trust.

He made his remarks as researchers prepared to tell a conference starting today that children’s reading habits slump dramatically after they start at secondary school. The typical eight-year-old reads nearly 16 books a year but, by the time they reach 15 or 16, this has dwindled to just over three books per year. The big drop-off starts after the first year of secondary school, when the number of books read falls from nearly 12 a year to just six.

The study, based on interviews with nearly 30,000 pupils aged seven to 16, also shows a growing trend towards reading comics, magazines, newspapers and online articles, and playing computer games, after the first year at secondary school.

The Guardian series How to Write has been focusing on books for children, with eight contributions yesterday from:

• Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen on staying in touch with the young
  
• Author Linda Newbery on why write at all?, genre, idea to story, openings, characters and viewpoint and final checklists
• David Fickling on publishing

The same section has a celebration of The Knife of Never Letting Go, announced this week as the winner of the newspaper’s chldren’s fiction prize for 2008.

Bookmark The Guardian’s Children’s and Teenagers books pages here.

The UK issue of putting recommended ages on books for children just will not go away. Now the Minister for Children, Ed Balls, has weighed into the debate :

“While we are broadly supportive of any measures which help parents to choose the right books for their children, we advise caution in this area”, Balls wrote, backing author concerns that age guidance can demoralise children who read below their supposed age group, and that it can encourage complacency if children are reading above their age group.

The children’s minister recommended that “parents seeking guidance about this contact librarians or teachers who know about the full range of children’s literature”.

In the past week, an entertaining debate has been raging between Philip Pullman and J. L. Bell on the Child Lit Listserv.

The No To Age Banding website is worth a visit for those new to the issue.

More news from The Guardian on this hot UK issue.

And here is Philip Pullman’s address on age-banding at a conference in Cambridge at the weekend. (Thanks to Achokablog for the pointer).

Further to her NY Times essay about YA literature, Margo Rabb interviews Markus Zusak on her blog Books, Chocolates, Sundries.

She asks Markus a number of questions in the email interview including: There is often a stigma that adult readers have against literature for children and young adults. Have you encountered this stigma yourself?

In an editor’s note she rues that this is only an email interview, for reasons that anyone who has met Markus can readily understand.

Her interview with Mark Haddon, also about the YA/adult crossover publishing scene, is also on the blog.

In early June, we wrote about an issue that was just beginning to make waves in the UK. The Publishers’ Association has slightly modified their stance on the age banding of books since then, but the issue just won’t go away.

The No to Age Banding website now has a very impressive list of signatories and is inviting anyone with an interest – TL, teacher, librarian, author, illustrator, parent – who disagrees with the age banding concept to add their name. British books arriving here will, of course, have these age bands on the cover.

Stephenie Meyer’s incredibly successful vampire series that began with Twilight and moved onto Eclipse and New Moon, has become a much anticipated film and the cover story of Entertainment Weekly.

This is a publishing phenomenon being likened to the J. K. Rowling empire.

For a few days in May, the YALSA listserv was having a spirited discussion about Mormon readings of these works, so it’s interesting that The Guardian has picked up on the influence of Meyer’s beliefs on the series.

For those wanting to pursue the discussion, look in the the YALSA archives under the thread ‘Issues with Twilight’.  If you subscribe to this active but informative ALA list, be prepared for quite a few additional emails.

On her Chasing Ray blog, Colleen Mondor has a thoughtful post about Margo Rabb’s New York Times article, I’m YA and I’m OK.

Read Margo Rabb, YA, and Why This Issue is More Complicated Than You Might Think here.