Letters

Getting kids hyped up with espresso and sweets? What were you guys thinking?

One really does become weary of librarians who jump onto every bandwagon that travels past the library doors. I can think of two reasons, not mentioned in the article (“Café Society,” January 2008, pp. 36–40), why students don’t need a double shot of espresso. First, do kids really need to be hyped up on caffeine and sugar during the course of their school day? Do they not already have access to enough junk food in the cafeteria and vending machines? Is not the national epidemic of childhood obesity reason enough to say no to this scheme? Secondly, as a taxpayer and as a community college professor and public library administrator who teaches the generally woefully unprepared products of American high schools, I say, do we not pay enough? We pay for Astroturf football fields, rubberized tracks, field lighting for evening games... now we should pay for a café in the library? A café might provide a “warm fuzzy” for students, but will it improve their math, science, and history knowledge? I think not.

I loved the January issue. I wrote the first SLJ article on coffee in a school library (“Thanks-A-Latte,” December 1999). Our latte experience was (and still is) a special celebration where we display all of our new books, Barnes & Noble style, on every available surface. We invite the superintendent, mayor, school board—anyone with the power to give us more money. Forty parents help with the event. Everyone is included… but you’re right, it’s not about the coffee. It’s about the sense of place. It’s about the fact that our circulation is three times that of other schools in our district. I always say that one of the things I love about this event is that you can’t do Latte Day online. We are marketing our most powerful asset: a warm fuzzy feeling. While we question daily lattes for junior high students, we do keep a yearlong bottled water and healthy snack business going. I appreciate the blurred lines between bookstore, bistro, and library. I understand the importance of a sense of place but had not thought of it as “the third place.” Thank you for both your vision and your balanced thinking.

I have always believed that my mission as a high school librarian is to first and foremost demystify libraries for students. I want students to develop a level of comfort around books and computers as well as librarians, to at least not be afraid to ask for help. It is also my mission to maintain a level of respect for the institution—that this is a place of learning and study, and the environment should reflect that. Bottom line: I believe that my mission is to prepare students for using the libraries—not the bookstores—of their future. Last I looked, both academic and public libraries were still holding fast that patrons should leave their beverages at the door. Creating a library that serves coffee and sandwiches will only create disillusionment that these kids should be able to “eat, drink, and be merry” when they get to their college libraries, something that will not only get them in trouble but also offend their fellow students who are using the library to further their educations, not their social agendas. If students want to eat, drink, and chat with their friends, well, that’s what the cafeteria is for. I’ll let anyone in who wants to check out books or just sit and study—I prefer to draw them in with displays, a solid fiction collection, and advertisements of what the library can do for them. I don’t believe that “feed them and they will come” is necessarily leading to better or even more library patrons. It’s just leading library patrons of the future directly to the bookstores.

We were very happy to read about the successful attempts to include drinks and snacks in the school library. We were, however, disappointed that our paper wasn’t mentioned.

We like to think that “Eating and Reading in the School Library,” published over 10 years ago in Emergency Librarian (now called Teacher Librarian), played some role in encouraging school libraries to move in this direction. We are still in the early stages of our careers and would appreciate receiving some recognition for our efforts.

Your readers might be interested in our newest research. Since there’s a possibility that the number of library cafés has peaked, we’re presently exploring the idea that the next big thing will be library sushi bars. The advantages are considerable: (1) The bar area is small enough not to take space away from shelving; (2) Sushi pieces can be handled with one hand and thus free the other hand for turning pages; and (3) Sushi is served cold and wouldn’t require heat (always a threat near printed materials).

So if Orson Scott Card had written, “The argument by the hypocrite Negroes that Negro tendencies are genetically ingrained in some individuals is almost laughably irrelevant. We are all genetically predisposed toward some sin or another; we are all expected to control those genetic predispositions when it is possible”—and until 1978, Mormons “were” required to believe that black people were more sinful than white people—this would have been considered irrelevant in his fitness to receive a lifetime achievement award for writing for teenagers?

I had been a Card fan since I was 17, and at first, when I read his poisonous bigotry, I thought, “This is just his personal politics. I can ignore what he thinks of me, and enjoy his writing for what it is.”

Unfortunately, as time went on, and Card became more open and detailed about what he thinks of people like me, I began to realize that his bigotry in fact informs his writing, and I stopped being able to enjoy it. Card thinks teenagers who know that they are not heterosexual should be made to feel that they are disgusting, evil, and wrong. A man like that ought not to receive an honor for writing for teenagers; he ought to be condemned.

If he were writing, in similar style, about black people, about Jews, about disabled people—arguing, for example, that legal marriage ought to be denied “people like that,” that this is intrinsically sinful—would the ALA argue that his published politics and religion ought not to be considered relevant, that all that matters is his fiction? I don’t think so.

Why is it acceptable to vilify LGBT people? What message does this send to LGBT teens? And why is there apparently so little concern among members of SLJ for LGBT teens who are being told, via this award, that a writer who publicly argues for homophobic bigotry is someone deserving of a lifetime achievement award?

Thank you for your support and interest in the 2008 Margaret A. Edwards Award, won by Orson Scott Card for his books Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow. I would, however, like to clear up a few misconceptions about the award from your editorial (February 2008, p. 11).

First, YALSA does not, as you write, bill the award as a lifetime achievement award. Nowhere in the award’s description or in its policies and procedures is it called a “lifetime achievement award.” Rather, the criteria state that the award “honors an author, as well as a specific body of his or her work, that have been popular over a period of time.” It also “recognizes an author’s work in helping adolescents become aware of themselves and addressing questions about their role and importance in relationships, society, and in the world.”

Further, you suggest that the books cited in the award are merely a technicality. But the Edwards committee is given specific terms under which they must evaluate potential honorees, and they are given five criteria to use in their evaluation: (1) Does the book(s) help adolescents to become aware of themselves and to answer their questions about their role and importance in relationships, society and in the world? (2) Is the book(s) of acceptable literary quality? (3) Does the book(s) satisfy the curiosity of young adults and yet help them thoughtfully to build a philosophy of life? (4) Is the book(s) currently popular with a wide range of young adults in many different parts of the country? (5) Do the book or book(s) serve as a “window to the world” for young adults?

All of these criteria specifically engage the author’s books—it begins with the books rather than the author. The works for which Orson Scott Card was honored—Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow—more than meet those criteria. It should also be noted that an author’s personal beliefs are not something the award committee considers.

Individuals and media interested in learning more about the Edwards Award, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, are encouraged to visit www.ala.org/yalsa/edwards.

When I heard that Orson Scott Card was being honored with the Margaret A. Edwards Award, I was very happy. I recently gave a copy of Ender’s Game to my son and, as I suspected, he loved it. It is a book that I have been recommending to young people for years.

I was very sad and disappointed to learn that Orson Scott Card is a vocal homophobe. Some people have criticized the Margaret A. Edwards Award Committee for giving a lifetime achievement award to an anti-gay hatemonger. I am a gay human being, and I am not disappointed in the committee; they chose to honor the author of a series of books that have long deserved recognition.

I am very disappointed in Card, as a fellow human being, who has chosen to use his powerful voice to promote hate and intolerance toward gay people. I will continue to recommend Card’s genre-defining books. I will continue to replace them when they get worn out or disappear. Card’s books should be judged on their own (substantial) merit. Dismissing his books or his contribution to literature for young adults because I find his personal values despicable would be censorship and I love the First Amendment more than I hate homophobia.

I will not, however, attend the Margaret A. Edwards Award luncheon at the ALA annual conference in Anaheim. As a gay person, I choose not to spend my time and energy being around homophobic people.

At the ALA midwinter meeting in Philadelphia, I heard Anthony Lewis, former New York Times columnist, speak about his new book, Freedom for the Speech We Hate (quoting former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes) and that—freedom for the speech we hate—is really the crux of it. Noam Chomsky also said it: “If we don’t believe in free expression for the people we despise, then we don’t believe in it at all.”

If only I had time to read every book that I look to purchase for my media center, an elementary school library in suburban Maryland just outside Washington, DC. Of course, I can’t. Thank goodness, then, for SLJ and the reviewers who evaluate many of the books that I just can’t seem to fit into the boxes of books I bring home. I only wish that some of SLJ’s reviewers were a bit more helpful on issues of language when reviewing books recommended for upper elementary students. The review of Gennifer Choldenko’s novel If a Tree Falls at Lunch Period (Harcourt, 2007; August 2007, p. 112), recommended for grades 5–8, was wonderful in describing some of the very contemporary and “edgy” issues with which the novel’s characters must contend. This is exactly the kind of realistic fiction that I like to introduce to my fifth graders. What I didn’t like about the novel once I had purchased it—what has led me to offer the novel to an area middle school instead of placing it in my own collection—is its language. “This is lame but I’m actually looking forward to school this year, because every day this summer was like crap: dog crap, cat crap—I even had a few elephant crap days,” exclaims Kirsten, one of the novel’s protagonists, in the book’s opening sentence.

Neither prudish nor shy about offering my students books that are “real,” I’m just not comfortable encouraging students to adopt this kind of language at too young an age. I’d really appreciate it if reviewers could drop a hint on books recommended for any elementary grade that some students, parents, and media specialists may have concerns about the book’s language if it contains such language we might not want to hear spoken aloud by our students.

Based upon a review that was published in SLJ (December 2006, p. 146), I purchased several copies of Katrina King’s Ride Wit’ Me (Young Diamond, 2006). As a librarian dedicated to teen services in a multicultural city, I am ever on the lookout for teen-friendly urban novels.

Well, a young patron told me she’d read the book and suggested that I might like to take a closer look at it. I read it and was shocked to discover that this book, which was marketed to teens as having been cleansed of bad language and graphic sex, vividly described the main characters engaging in oral sex and intercourse.

Also, the writing is substandard, showing very poor or nonexistent proofreading and editing. The words “accept” and “except” are confused, as are “quiet” and “quite.” One character “lounges” at another instead of lunging. A male character chokes a young girl—a rival for the main character’s affections of the young man.

At no time do the characters think about birth control or STDs. Never addressed is the fact that they live in the lap of luxury from money earned through the illegal drug trade—a trade that has decimated so many lives and left so many young people bleeding in the gutters from the related gang violence. Any comparison to Romeo and Juliet has to be a joke as there is no beauty of language or depth of characterization.

I have discarded this book as it does not meet the needs of my collection. I won’t be purchasing any more titles from Young Diamond as they don’t live up to their advertised promise of teen-friendly books with no graphic sex.

The reviewer of Robyn Friend and Judith Love Cohen’s A Clean Sky: The Global Warming Story (Cascade Pass, 2007; January 2008, p. 138) mischaracterizes its content. She says the authors question the manmade causes of global warming and instead emphasize the natural cycle of climate change. While in our introductory page we explain “climate change” in terms of the natural cycle (e.g., ice ages), from page six on we talk about “how people cause global warming,” define greenhouse gases, and on page eight say “what we can do such as using energy sources that produce little or no carbon dioxide such as solar power, wind power, natural gas and nuclear fission.”

Your reviewer complained that “short shrift is given to the need for reducing carbon fuel consumption while the possibility of technological breakthroughs as the solution is emphasized.” The authors concentrated on developing hydrogen fuel and carbon sequestration techniques so that the coal-burning plants in China and India won’t undo everything the rest of the world is trying to do.

On page 32, the authors list energy technologies such as reducing miles traveled by cars, using power efficiently in buildings, eliminating tropical deforestation, improved farming methods, etc., but since the largest part of the greenhouse gases are produced during electric power generation, this is an extremely important target for reduction.

On Amazon.com, one of the reviewers accused us of falling for the mythology of greenhouse gases causing global warming, so obviously the words must be in there.