Roadblock Around The Corner

School Library Journal recently posted an article about a lack of diversity in Newbery winning books. Since there's so much evidence supporting this idea, I won't really touch on it. However, this article did point me to an older article that SLJ published about the declining popularity of Newbery winning books. It seems that many experts in the field of children’s books simply don’t like a lot of the books. Someone credited as “one reviewer” said the following about the books and the committee: “Recent Newbery committees seem dismissive of popularity, a quality which should be an asset.” A few years ago, Stephen King wrote an op-ed in Entertainment Weekly called “How To Bury A Book” in which he describes how labeling a book as too literary will essentially kill it.

Essentially, it seems as though “critical acclaim” and “popularity” are becoming at odds. This isn’t just the case with books either: Music for “smart people” generally has no mass appeal, and art house movies that critics love pass over the heads of the general public (although Time ran an article in its most recent issue about how that’s changed this year), but this is the first I’m hearing it applied to kids books.

With the Newbery award being announced in about three weeks, its even more interesting now to see what the winner is.

Having said all this negative stuff about the Newbery, I think we can all agree that they nailed the Caldecott recently…can’t we?

Posted by : Seth | 01/06/2009 02:01 PM

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