The age-banding debate continues across the Pond. A report in The Guardian yesterday says that the Publishers' Association issued a statement indicating that there is "no question of age guidance being added to a book without full consultation with the author." Banding critic Philip Pullman says that's insufficient: "Our point of view remains that consultation is not enough. We could consult and consult to the point of nausea and publishers could still turn around and insist that a book be banded."
Opponents point to one book (Keith Gray's Ostrich Boys) which was already released with a "13+/teen" logo on it against Gray's wishes. Publishers' Association secretary Kate Bostock called that "a dreadful in-house mistake," and said that Gray has been the only author thus affected. She told the paper that consultations are continuing.
I agree with Pullman; scrap the whole business.
Showing posts with label Age-banding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Age-banding. Show all posts
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Monday, July 07, 2008
Belated Links & Reviews
Apologies for the delay; I went home this weekend for a couple days of family, food and rest, and used today to play a little bit of catch-up. Without further ado:
- From the Penguin blog, a guest post by author Nick Hornby on the ebook "phenomenon." I'm not quite as sanguine as he is about reading in general, I guess, but then again I'm way off the average of buying seven books a year (that's closer to a fortnight for me, maybe a month if I'm trying to behave ...).
- The July issue of Common-place is out: it includes a history of Monticello as "historic place," among other noteworthy essays. One of the most browsable and consistently interesting collections of historical scholarship on the web continues to improve.
- Over at LISNews, Christopher Kiess asks whether future librarians might not need an MLS.
- An update on the vandalism at Robert Frost's home, Homer Noble Farm. NPR reports "Some of the 28 people charged with trespassing and vandalism accepted an unusual plea agreement - they had to take a class on Robert Frost." Poetic, perhaps, but not nearly harsh enough.
- Here's an FBI press release on the recent developments in the Brubaker case.
- In The Guardian, David Crystal suggests that text-messaging may not be killing the English language after all. He finds that the majority of text messages use standard orthography ("In one American study, less than 20% of the text messages looked at showed abbreviated forms of any kind - about three per message"), and offers a short history of English-language abbreviations (criticized by Joseph Addison and Jonathan Swift, among others, so those of us who complain about 'c u l8tr' aren't in bad company). Crystal also notes the pretty silly way text messaging has been programmed into phones ("No one took letter-frequency considerations into account when designing it. For example, key 7 on my mobile contains four symbols, pqrs. It takes four key-presses to access the letter s, and yet s is one of the most frequently occurring letters in English. It is twice as easy to input q, which is one of the least frequently occurring letters. It should be the other way round"), which I quite agree with, and concludes his essay by examining the recent trend of text-message-based poetry and novels. Read the whole thing (rtwt?). I don't necessarily agree with Crystal's conclusions, but he makes a fair case.
- Ben reports that the Oklahoma Bibliophiles' event with Kevin Hayes went very well. My copy of Hayes' Road to Monticello arrived today, and I've barely been able to keep myself out of it so far.
- Rachel notes Lawrence Downes' NYTimes essay "In a Changing World of News, an Elegy for Copy Editors."
- From Britannica and Old Time Radio, a 29 May 1945 broadcast of "Information Please!" featuring guest Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. and other panelists James Kieran, Franklin Adams, and Oscar Levant. Quite impressive indeed. More episodes here, including several with author and bookman Christopher Morley which I'm looking forward to listening to.
- Tim has a portion up of his talk at ALA about the future of cataloging.
- J.K. Rowling has joined the chorus of British authors opposed to the publishers' age-banding scheme.
- Laura points out the fascinating timeline of printing and book history created by Paul Dijstelberge using the Dipity software. I haven't played with that yet, but it looks pretty nifty.
- Another installment in the Who Was Shakespeare? debate, as reported by NPR. Also on NPR, Renee Montagne speaks to author Nigel Cliff about his book The Shakespeare Riots.
- Also from NPR, a discussion with Tony Perrottet, the author of the new book, Napoleon's Privates: 2,500 Years of History Unzipped.
- Rick Ring seems to have found Jefferson's own copy of an 1802 edition of his manual for parliamentary procedure.
Reviews
- Larry McMurtry's new memoir, Books, is reviewed in the Christian Science Monitor and The Statesman.
- In The Telegraph, Jonathan Keates reviews James Cuno's Who Owns Antiquity?: Museums and the Battle Over Our Ancient Heritage.
- For the Boston Globe, Michael Kenney reviews If by Sea: The Forging of the American Navy by George Daughan.
- From the Penguin blog, a guest post by author Nick Hornby on the ebook "phenomenon." I'm not quite as sanguine as he is about reading in general, I guess, but then again I'm way off the average of buying seven books a year (that's closer to a fortnight for me, maybe a month if I'm trying to behave ...).
- The July issue of Common-place is out: it includes a history of Monticello as "historic place," among other noteworthy essays. One of the most browsable and consistently interesting collections of historical scholarship on the web continues to improve.
- Over at LISNews, Christopher Kiess asks whether future librarians might not need an MLS.
- An update on the vandalism at Robert Frost's home, Homer Noble Farm. NPR reports "Some of the 28 people charged with trespassing and vandalism accepted an unusual plea agreement - they had to take a class on Robert Frost." Poetic, perhaps, but not nearly harsh enough.
- Here's an FBI press release on the recent developments in the Brubaker case.
- In The Guardian, David Crystal suggests that text-messaging may not be killing the English language after all. He finds that the majority of text messages use standard orthography ("In one American study, less than 20% of the text messages looked at showed abbreviated forms of any kind - about three per message"), and offers a short history of English-language abbreviations (criticized by Joseph Addison and Jonathan Swift, among others, so those of us who complain about 'c u l8tr' aren't in bad company). Crystal also notes the pretty silly way text messaging has been programmed into phones ("No one took letter-frequency considerations into account when designing it. For example, key 7 on my mobile contains four symbols, pqrs. It takes four key-presses to access the letter s, and yet s is one of the most frequently occurring letters in English. It is twice as easy to input q, which is one of the least frequently occurring letters. It should be the other way round"), which I quite agree with, and concludes his essay by examining the recent trend of text-message-based poetry and novels. Read the whole thing (rtwt?). I don't necessarily agree with Crystal's conclusions, but he makes a fair case.
- Ben reports that the Oklahoma Bibliophiles' event with Kevin Hayes went very well. My copy of Hayes' Road to Monticello arrived today, and I've barely been able to keep myself out of it so far.
- Rachel notes Lawrence Downes' NYTimes essay "In a Changing World of News, an Elegy for Copy Editors."
- From Britannica and Old Time Radio, a 29 May 1945 broadcast of "Information Please!" featuring guest Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. and other panelists James Kieran, Franklin Adams, and Oscar Levant. Quite impressive indeed. More episodes here, including several with author and bookman Christopher Morley which I'm looking forward to listening to.
- Tim has a portion up of his talk at ALA about the future of cataloging.
- J.K. Rowling has joined the chorus of British authors opposed to the publishers' age-banding scheme.
- Laura points out the fascinating timeline of printing and book history created by Paul Dijstelberge using the Dipity software. I haven't played with that yet, but it looks pretty nifty.
- Another installment in the Who Was Shakespeare? debate, as reported by NPR. Also on NPR, Renee Montagne speaks to author Nigel Cliff about his book The Shakespeare Riots.
- Also from NPR, a discussion with Tony Perrottet, the author of the new book, Napoleon's Privates: 2,500 Years of History Unzipped.
- Rick Ring seems to have found Jefferson's own copy of an 1802 edition of his manual for parliamentary procedure.
Reviews
- Larry McMurtry's new memoir, Books, is reviewed in the Christian Science Monitor and The Statesman.
- In The Telegraph, Jonathan Keates reviews James Cuno's Who Owns Antiquity?: Museums and the Battle Over Our Ancient Heritage.
- For the Boston Globe, Michael Kenney reviews If by Sea: The Forging of the American Navy by George Daughan.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Links & Reviews
- The horrifying floods in the Midwest are having a tremendous impact on libraries. The University of Iowa's rare books and manuscripts collection has been moved to higher ground (hear an NPR report on the evacuation here - thanks Joyce - or a YouTube video here), and the library building is in continued danger this morning (though a concerted sandbagging effort by students, staff and others has been ongoing for days). LISNews has a roundup on U of I, along with news that the Cedar Rapids Public Library is believed to be completely inundated by floodwaters. Several other libraries in the flood zone are believed damaged.
- Via Book Patrol, I must point out Jason Kottke's post on the Hypnerotomachia poliphili. Kottke's discussion centers on the book's remarkably modern feel, and its equally remarkable unreadability.
- Geraldine Brooks' The People of the Book (my review here) has won the Book of the Year Award for 2008 from the Australian Publishers Assocation.
- The Boston Globe today has yet another report on troubles at the BPL, this time focusing on use of the library by people some would prefer not be allowed to darken the doorstep. Based on my own anecdotal experience, it seems to me that the library's appropriate use policies (as quoted in the article) could be enforced more rigorously, but fundamentally I agree with those who believe that the middle word in the library's name is just as important as the other two.
- Laura has a follow-up to our discussion on Internet reading, pointing to a very good Slate article by Jakob Neilsen about this very subject. Also, Caleb offers up a selection of quotes "about the Internet. Well, not exactly about the Internet, because it didn't exist when most of the writers below wrote. They were in fact concerned with such topics as readerly hygiene in the face of textual surfeit and the threat that mass culture poses to the hierarchies that traditionally defended intellectual and artistic labor." So what did Johnson, Thoreau and Dietrich Bonhoeffer have to say about this seemingly 21st century dilemma? Go find out.
- Since the new "Sex and the City" movie has apparently led to a major windfall for Kessinger Publishing, a word of caution: the organization has been widely criticized by booksellers for purchasing rare books, scanning them, and then trying to return them to the sellers in damaged condition. Not cool.
- From BibliOdyssey, images from a sixteenth-century manuscript on Habsburg cannons.
- More on "age-banding" from Stuart Kelly at The Scotsman here. Kelly writes "it's a dumb idea, which only serves lazy booksellers, librarians, and publishers who can't be bothered to make proper recommendations. Children develop at different rates, and the stigma that would be created for a child who wasn't 'in-step' with an arbitrary marketing ploy is unthinkable. ... If they're serious, it should extend beyond children's books, and copies of Henry James and Barbara Pym can be labelled 'For Over 60s Only'." More than 1,300 authors, librarians, teachers, parents and others have signed the online No to Age Banding petition so far.
- On NPR, Benjamin Wallace discusses his new book, The Billionaire's Vinegar (about a bottle of wine which purportedly belonged to Thomas Jefferson). I'm about halfway through the book at the moment, and have had an awful time putting it down. It's wonderful.
- The LATimes offers a summer reading list of some 50 titles, both fiction and non-fiction.
Reviews
- In the Washington Post, John Berendt reviews Marilyn Yalom's The American Resting Place: Four Hundred Years of History Through our Cemeteries and Burial Grounds (Houghton Mifflin). Interestingly, this coincides with a couple of J.L. Bell's posts at Boston1775 this week, here and here.
- For the TLS, Jim Endersby reviews a whole slew of new books on natural history, including a biography of John Kirk Townsend and a history of the famed Macleay collection.
- Lisa Margonelli reviews Elizabeth Royte's Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It (Bloomsbury), in the NYTimes.
- Via Book Patrol, I must point out Jason Kottke's post on the Hypnerotomachia poliphili. Kottke's discussion centers on the book's remarkably modern feel, and its equally remarkable unreadability.
- Geraldine Brooks' The People of the Book (my review here) has won the Book of the Year Award for 2008 from the Australian Publishers Assocation.
- The Boston Globe today has yet another report on troubles at the BPL, this time focusing on use of the library by people some would prefer not be allowed to darken the doorstep. Based on my own anecdotal experience, it seems to me that the library's appropriate use policies (as quoted in the article) could be enforced more rigorously, but fundamentally I agree with those who believe that the middle word in the library's name is just as important as the other two.
- Laura has a follow-up to our discussion on Internet reading, pointing to a very good Slate article by Jakob Neilsen about this very subject. Also, Caleb offers up a selection of quotes "about the Internet. Well, not exactly about the Internet, because it didn't exist when most of the writers below wrote. They were in fact concerned with such topics as readerly hygiene in the face of textual surfeit and the threat that mass culture poses to the hierarchies that traditionally defended intellectual and artistic labor." So what did Johnson, Thoreau and Dietrich Bonhoeffer have to say about this seemingly 21st century dilemma? Go find out.
- Since the new "Sex and the City" movie has apparently led to a major windfall for Kessinger Publishing, a word of caution: the organization has been widely criticized by booksellers for purchasing rare books, scanning them, and then trying to return them to the sellers in damaged condition. Not cool.
- From BibliOdyssey, images from a sixteenth-century manuscript on Habsburg cannons.
- More on "age-banding" from Stuart Kelly at The Scotsman here. Kelly writes "it's a dumb idea, which only serves lazy booksellers, librarians, and publishers who can't be bothered to make proper recommendations. Children develop at different rates, and the stigma that would be created for a child who wasn't 'in-step' with an arbitrary marketing ploy is unthinkable. ... If they're serious, it should extend beyond children's books, and copies of Henry James and Barbara Pym can be labelled 'For Over 60s Only'." More than 1,300 authors, librarians, teachers, parents and others have signed the online No to Age Banding petition so far.
- On NPR, Benjamin Wallace discusses his new book, The Billionaire's Vinegar (about a bottle of wine which purportedly belonged to Thomas Jefferson). I'm about halfway through the book at the moment, and have had an awful time putting it down. It's wonderful.
- The LATimes offers a summer reading list of some 50 titles, both fiction and non-fiction.
Reviews
- In the Washington Post, John Berendt reviews Marilyn Yalom's The American Resting Place: Four Hundred Years of History Through our Cemeteries and Burial Grounds (Houghton Mifflin). Interestingly, this coincides with a couple of J.L. Bell's posts at Boston1775 this week, here and here.
- For the TLS, Jim Endersby reviews a whole slew of new books on natural history, including a biography of John Kirk Townsend and a history of the famed Macleay collection.
- Lisa Margonelli reviews Elizabeth Royte's Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It (Bloomsbury), in the NYTimes.
Thursday, June 05, 2008
British Publishers' "Age-Banding" Plans Draw Author Ire
The Guardian has been following a growing controversy in the UK over a controversial plan by several major publishers to add "age-bands" to the covers of books (that is, suggested ages for the readers of said books). In a 30 May report, Richard Lea and Nell Boase quote several authors, whose reactions to the idea range from "silly" to "ridiculous" to "a disaster." Author Mal Peet told the paper "If you've got reluctant young readers, they're going to be reluctant to read any book which they consider to be beneath their age range. And there's no point in encouraging able young readers to read above their age range because they're going to do that anyway."
Rebecca McNally, publishing director of Macmillan's children's division, said "the whole point is to help adults who often feel completely lost in the children's section of a bookshop," but others see more troubling aspects of the plan. Author Francesca Simon: "The only thing that matters is can they read it, not should they read it, or would they enjoy it." McNally says that their market research indicates that children "didn't seem to pick up on the age-ranging and certainly didn't seem to feel negatively about it." That may be true in a research-based setting, but just wait until the first playground taunt-fest when someone is seen reading a book "labeled" as being for younger people.
A follow-up piece yesterday by Guy Dammann notes that more than eighty prominent authors and illustrators - including Philip Pullman and Michael Rosen - have signed a letter opposing the implementation of age-banding; that will be printed in the Friday issue of Bookseller. The letter refers to the scheme as "ill-conceived, damaging to the interests of young readers." An essay by Pullman is set to appear in Saturday's Guardian as well.
I share the opposition to the idea of age-banding; one of the most wonderful things about books (perhaps especially about books written for children or young adults) is the fact that they can be widely enjoyed by people of different ages. Sure, adults - even smart adults well-skilled in marketing - might think that it won't matter to a 9-year old that he or she is enjoying a book "age-banded" for 6-8 year-olds. But it will matter, and it shouldn't have to.
Drop the scheme, and tell those adults who are having so much trouble finding suitable books for their children to pull up a chair and read a few. They might just learn something.
Rebecca McNally, publishing director of Macmillan's children's division, said "the whole point is to help adults who often feel completely lost in the children's section of a bookshop," but others see more troubling aspects of the plan. Author Francesca Simon: "The only thing that matters is can they read it, not should they read it, or would they enjoy it." McNally says that their market research indicates that children "didn't seem to pick up on the age-ranging and certainly didn't seem to feel negatively about it." That may be true in a research-based setting, but just wait until the first playground taunt-fest when someone is seen reading a book "labeled" as being for younger people.
A follow-up piece yesterday by Guy Dammann notes that more than eighty prominent authors and illustrators - including Philip Pullman and Michael Rosen - have signed a letter opposing the implementation of age-banding; that will be printed in the Friday issue of Bookseller. The letter refers to the scheme as "ill-conceived, damaging to the interests of young readers." An essay by Pullman is set to appear in Saturday's Guardian as well.
I share the opposition to the idea of age-banding; one of the most wonderful things about books (perhaps especially about books written for children or young adults) is the fact that they can be widely enjoyed by people of different ages. Sure, adults - even smart adults well-skilled in marketing - might think that it won't matter to a 9-year old that he or she is enjoying a book "age-banded" for 6-8 year-olds. But it will matter, and it shouldn't have to.
Drop the scheme, and tell those adults who are having so much trouble finding suitable books for their children to pull up a chair and read a few. They might just learn something.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)