Let Readers Judge
Two YA books have been cancelled recently because of an online storm that accused them and their authors of bias. Amelie Wen Zhao’s Blood Heir was pulled from shelves because some readers of the pre-release materials felt she depicted slavery insensitively–and because she is an Asian American immigrant writing about slavery. Kosoko Jackson asked that his novel, A Place for Wolves, be pulled from publication after some online accusations of insensitivity to Muslims–and because he is a gay American black man writing a novel set during the Kosovan civil war.
I know of at least one other book which was cancelled before publication because the race of the writer did not coincide with the race of the main character. There are probably others.
I have not read any of these books. I cannot say with conviction whether the writers are guilty of bias, insensitivity, or just plain bad writing.
Here’s the thing–most of the people attacking these writers online have not read the books either. Because they have not been released. And now they never will be.
Not every book that makes it past an editorial acquisition committee and reviewers’ eagle eyes is a good book. Some are poorly written, some traffic in stereotypes, some reveal biased judgment or a lack of empathy. You know what should happen to those book? They should fail.
They should go unsold and go out of print because they have not connected with readers. But they should not be yanked off the shelves because a pre-publication online mob has judged them impure or has decided that X writer cannot write about Y characters or Z setting.
Books are not finished until they connect with their readers. A reader takes in a book, characters and plot and setting and tone and vision and emotional impact. The book as a whole collides with and absorbs the reader’s mindset and feelings and memories and preferences and then, only once that has happened, do you have a book. A complete book. A book that can actually be judged as good, bad, interesting but flawed, or a waste of paper or pixels.
Pulling books off the shelves before they get released short-circuits this process. It means books will forever be judged on an anonymous tweet or a scrap of quotation. It means books are being condemned while they are still half finished.
This is not the way to go about publishing, reviewing, or writing books. We can’t publish by tweet. (We can’t govern that way either.)
Read MoreHow to Make a Good Villain
In a certain way it was easier in Victorian times when all a villain needed was a monocle and a riding crop.
Villains have been on my mind. (Maybe it’s the news lately….) Not every book needs a villain, but when you do, they’re often the most fun part of the creative process. For me, anyway. Perhaps this is something I should discuss with my therapist.
You can have a straight-up villain who’s just nasty all through, and sometimes that’s all your story needs–somebody threatening, with very little complexity but enough mojo to keep your protagonist on his/her toes. (See Gideon Arnold of The Secrets of the Seven series or Alain of Dragon’s Egg.)
Sometimes, though, a story needs a subtler villain. A sneaky one. One of the creepiest things about these villains is that they get you to trust them. They’re nice. They’re plausible. They are, in fact, just what you wanted–a friend, a protector, an ally. Until they’re not. This is one of the best writer tricks to play with a villain–when the person the hero (and by extension, the reader) trusts most is the bad guy. (For example, Abby Arnold in The Secret of the Seven series or Robert Pooley in The Secret of the Rose. Yep, those titles are kind of giveaways, huh?)
Hint to readers: if somebody in the book is too perfect, too caring, too helpful, so much concerned with meeting the hero’s needs that they seem to have none of their own–watch out.
But the most fun, absolutely the most fun thing you can do with a villain is to turn him or her into the hero.
Like the king’s unacknowledged son who pulls his father’s kingdom down around his head (Medraud in The Dragon’s Son) or the trained and pitiless assassin whose mission goes awry (Kata in Deadly Flowers and Deadly Wish), it’s so much fun to get into the head of a villain. The trick here is to know that very few people are the villains of their own stories. You, as the writer, have to find the way that works. You have to make your villain/hero sympathetic by giving him or her a goal everybody can relate to. So Medraud wants his father to pay attention to him (who doesn’t?) and Kata wants to take something she’s very good at and become the best at it. Admirable, even.
If you can make that feeling vivid enough in your character’s head, the reader will follow him or her through the book, no matter what havoc he or she trails in his wake. Sympathy turns a villain into a hero. And it’s a lot of fun.
Read MoreWhat I’ve Been Reading
Mary’s Monster–poetry and appropriately haunting black and white art combine to create a biography of Mary Shelley that’s unforgettable. At first the text reads a little stiffly, not quite as moving as the evocative artwork–but as the book progresses the poems grow in strength.
Love, death, exile, longing, despair, creativity, beauty, horror–all gathered together in Lita Judge’s sensitive and powerful work.
Read MoreWho Decides Morality?
Classic? Controversial? Scandalous? All three?
I posted a while back about the emergence of morality clauses in publisher’s contracts. It continues to be an issue. Judith Shulevitz has an interesting take on it in the New York Times, pointing out that:
This past year, regular contributors to Condé Nast magazines started spotting a new paragraph in their yearly contracts. It’s a doozy. If, in the company’s “sole judgment,” the clause states, the writer “becomes the subject of public disrepute, contempt, complaints or scandals,” Condé Nast can terminate the agreement. In other words, a writer need not have done anything wrong; she need only become scandalous.
I take issue with Ms Shulevitz contention that it’s okay for children’s book authors to sign morality clauses while adult writers should resist them. We encounter scandal in the children’s book world too, and we occasionally stir it up. The Chocolate War, Where the Wild Things Are, and Harriet the Spy are all classics of children’s literature that were controversial and by some considered outrageous when they were published.
I think her other points are valid and important, though. Consider:
Read MoreAfter our conversation, Ms. Gersen sent me an email pointing out a possible unintended consequence of the Condé Nast [morality] clause. Who are the groups subjected to the most public vitriol for their published work, she asked? Who is most viciously trolled? Women and members of minorities. “That is one of the realities of publishing while a woman or minority in this age,” she wrote. “The clause is perversely posing more career risk to women and minorities than to white males.”
If all it takes to lose a magazine gig or book deal is to fall into “public disrepute,” it won’t be only villains whose voices are lost.
Sunshine State Young Readers List
The Eureka Key
Whoo-hoo! The Eureka Key is on Floria’s Sunshine State Young Reader’s List! I note that fellow Mainer Megan Frazer Blakemore has made it on this list as well. Hey, Megan, we’re snowbirds!
https://www.floridamediaed.org/ssyra.html
Read MoreAll These Orphans
A dog is so much better than a parent.
My daughter’s elementary school is putting on a production of Annie this year. Several of her classmates are going to be in it. They’re excited.
I like the catchy tunes as much as the next person, but I don’t care for all the stereotypes about adoption. In general, adoptive parents (and I am one) don’t want their kids to get the idea that “nobody cares for you a smidge / when you’re in an orphanage.” My daughter and I watched the film a few weeks ago so she’d be prepared. She didn’t mind Mrs. Hannigan as much as I do, although she wasn’t a fan of Punjab the Indian manservant.
It made me think a bit more about all the orphans of children’s literature.
Annie, of course. Anne of Green Gables. (Don’t name your daughter Ann or Anne, folks–there’s some kind of bad cosmic influence there.) James (of Giant Peach fame). Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella (okay, their fathers aren’t dead but they might as well be.) Harry Potter, of course. Of course. Gilly Hopkins. Dicey Tillerman.
Part of it is simple–if you don’t kill the parents or otherwise remove them from the picture, the action of the book takes a severe hit. Generally, parents are supposed to keep their kids safe, and safe is the opposite of dramatic. If you don’t want to kill the parents off, another good trick is to send the kids away from them–to boarding school (see anything by Enid Blyton) or summer camp (hello, Percy Jackson) or away from London during the Blitz (Peter, Susan Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie). Or just make the parents useless, of course–that worked for Jane and Michael Banks. Or have the mother dead and the father lost at sea or ruling a cannibal island (hi, Pippi Longstocking). But whatever you do, just don’t let the parents be around.
(In my own books, I’ve got two orphans–Kata of Deadly Flowers and Deadly Wish and Rosalind of The Secret of the Rose. Plus, Mella of Dragon’s Egg ditches her parents early on.)
But even allowing for the fact that it’s a very useful plot device, there are an awful lot of orphans.
I think parents don’t really belong in kids’ books at all. Books are the places kids go to be free. To be independent. To become themselves. To shake off their parents and all our rules and plans for our lives and become who they really are. Maybe every book is a rehearsal for the day they’re off to college or a road trip or the army or their first jobs and their very own apartments, when they can finally stay up as late as they want and eat ice cream for dinner. And we can’t stop them.
They want us to go away–not to die, not really, but to vanish for a while. To rule a cannibal island or stay home while bombs rain down upon us while they explore magical wardrobes or float away on balloons under the eye of magnificently indifferent nannies. We want to take care of them forever. They want to stop being taken care of at all.
What a good thing we’ve got literature, to let them be free of us while still safe and cozy on the couch. Frankly, it makes me feel a little better about Annie.
Read MoreMay Sarton
I appreciate May Sarton’s journals about living and writing on the coast of Maine. The personality that comes through in her entries is prickly, volatile, demanding of herself and others–not an easy friend or colleague, I suspect–but I love being allowed into another writer’s life through her words.
I have learned in these last years to forget the desk and everything on it as soon as I leave this room. The key to being centered seems to be for me to do each thing with absolute concentration, to garden as though that were the essential, then to write in the same way, to meet my friends, perfectly open to what they bring. And most of the time that is how it is.
-May Sarton, The House By the Sea
I like this statement as a goal–for writing, friendship, and life–in 2019. (Not for gardening, though, My father calls what I do “Darwin gardening”–toss something in a hole and see if it grows. Only the fittest survive.)
Read MoreSarah L. Thomson
A children’s book author publishing award-winning nonfiction, poetry, picture books and novels including…
“Readers will treasure the blossoming friendship between opposites in this whimsically illustrated tale. Short chapters and plenty of action make for an accessible and appealing reading experience. . . . Touching and inspiring.”
—Kirkus Reviews