And they’re out! The winners of the Cybils Awards for 2008 have been chosen, and congratulations to all!
It was really interesting to be a judge for the Cybils instead of serving on a nominating committee — it takes a different kind of reading and booktalking to judge a book by its merits, instead of just your own personal opinion. This type of judgment is what I always assumed librarians used in choosing books to stock their library shelves.
Unfortunately, a recent School Library Journal “Talkback” article proved that idealistic theory wrong, at least about 70% of school librarians. Many of those polled quietly refuse to purchase books in order to avoid static and friction with parents, community members, school administration and students.
The example they use of that kind of insidious avoidance is Barry Lyga’s Boy Toy, which was a 2007 Cybils winner for YA fiction, and has received tons of other critical acclaim. It’s an empathetic treatment of a sensationalized media event, and tells the story of of a twelve-year-old student’s affair with his teacher. This obviously isn’t a light-hearted story, but it deals in reality. Boy Toy discusses something which makes people feel completely creeped-out uncomfortable. And many, many school librarians, instead of having it on hand — or even in the reference section — for their kids to read and know about … preferred to pretend it didn’t exist.
Apparently this is the same for many books — those that have gay, lesbian and transgendered characters, those which have sex or violence, or just what some term “darkness” and/or the death of pets (!?). Because school librarians have patrons who are mostly kids, because they have school administrations and constituents to please, because they don’t want to hear from screeching parents, they choose to be conservative and prudent. 70% of the librarians polled take on the position of being gatekeepers, and refuse to purchase what they fear will be controversial books.
Often, we frown at the idea of librarians censoring children’s reading choices — telling them, “No, that’s not a book you’re ready for,” is upsetting to a lot of people. But not even buying the book so it’s on their library shelves…?
Writers have to jump through a lot of hoops — a lot of hoops — in order to get published. Personally, my work has to meet my agent’s approval so I don’t embarrass him in front of the editors and publishers he approaches. My work has to meet my editor’s approval, so that she can take it to editorial meetings, and get the support of the house for the money and time which is going to be spent on me and my work. Then there’s all the splendid ranks of copy editors, fact-checkers, and the like. Before all of that, there’s my writing group, and my own internal editor.
It takes a lot to turn an idea into a manuscript and into a published book. It seems a shame to think after all of the struggle and angst that goes into producing an excellent work, to have someone else decide that they can just …shun it, and pretend that it doesn’t exist, and to have that shunning be like the ripples that go throughout a still pond when a stone is dropped — wow. What if this happens to someone I know?
What if this happens to me?
What can an author do?
As a writer, I’d hate to try and do my job from a position of fear of what others think — despite the fact that fear is what writers struggle with every time they write.
It would be even worse not to be able to get past that fear, and to let it run things.