Book Candy

"Insider" vs. "Outsider" Status -- A Debate

Currently, on Arthur A. Levine's blog, a number of prominent children's literature authors and literary critics are debating a question that has been at the center of children's and YA literature for decades:  What are the pros and cons of individuals who are not part of a particular culture or group writing a narrative about members of that culture or group?

The impetus for this discussion was YA literature author Ellen Wittlinger's op ed piece in The Horn Book entitled "Too Gay or Not Gay Enough?"  I would urge you to read this article first and then check out the insightful debate at Levine's blog.

Newbery Fury!

Should the books selected for the highest honor in children's literature, the Newbery Medal, be chosen for their artistic value OR for their perceived appeal to the greatest number of child readers?  This question was posed by Anita Silvey, a freelance author of guides to children's literature, in October's issue of The School Library Journal.

Each year, the Association for Library Service to Children, a unit of the American Library Association, appoints a committee of children's literature professors, librarians, and book reviewers to determine "the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children."  For nearly half a year, the members of the committee read hundreds of submissions as they prepare for their meeting at the ALA Conference in January.  According to most accounts, the discussions include spirited debate, as true experts in the field, with years of experience reading their subject matter, consider the aesthetic merit and intellectual significance of the texts.  Winners of the Newbery Medal are guaranteed a boost in recognition and a place on a list that includes such notable authors as Beverly Cleary and Lois Lowry.

In 2008, the Newbery Medal was awarded to Laura Amy Schlitz's Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village, a collection of monologues woven together to create a sense of what it would have been like to be a teenager in an English town during the 13th century.  The chair of the 2008 Newbery Committee, Nina Lindsay, wrote of the selection, "varied poetic forms and styles offer humor, pathos and true insight into the human condition. Each entry is superb in itself, and together the pieces create a pageant that transports readers to a different time and place."

Silvey's essay appeared in the wake of the selection of Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! as the 2008 Newbery Medal winner, and her critique of the current Newbery Medal selection process may be linked to the fact that in recent years, the winners have included texts that were not necessarily written to appeal to the "Harry Potter" crowd -- that group of young readers who were drawn to children's literature based upon their love of the J.K. Rowling popular series and are now looking for "more of the same." 

As part of her research, Silvey interviewed over 100 children's librarians and publishers, asking them for their opinion regarding the relevance of the Newbery Medal.  Not one of Silvey's respondents would allow her to attribute their comments -- and this is not surprising, because the comments sound a bit self-serving.  One unnamed small-town librarian tells Silvey:  "Possibly the committee has too many 'experts’ on it, and not enough working, small-town public librarians." 

Silvey's argument centers around the idea that potential popularity with the largest reading audience should be the primary criteria of the Newbery Committee, but her view has been countered most recently by Erica S. Perl, a children's book author and guest columnist for Slate.  In her essay "Captain Underpants Doesn't Need a Newbery Medal," Perl argues that "we already have plenty of ways track the most popular children's books. Shouldn't the field's most prestigious honor aim higher?" 

Most importantly, Perl argues that the Newbery Medal inspires authors of children's literature:  "literary awards should do more than simply affirm books that are easy to love and would likely find fans regardless of a medal. They also serve as inspiration for authors to take creative risks, push boundaries, and even reinvent the form."  One of the reasons that the field of children's literature has begun to gain legitimacy is because contemporary authors have been willing to take those creative risks, both in terms of aesthetics and in terms of subject matter.  Laura Amy Schlitz's text was not intended to be a "blockbuster," but her innovative project, which required years of research and attention to historic detail, certainly deserves recognition, even if it will never spawn a huge fan base and a film franchise. 

As I thought through the various arguments in this current debate, I was struck by the fact that I had never heard my colleagues in English Studies debate whether they felt the Nobel Prize in Literature Committee should identify popularity as its central focus.  There is, of course, an ongoing debate regarding the Nobel Committee's perceived geopolitical biases (during the Bush era, no American has won the prize, for instance), but there is not a debate regarding the role that literary merit should play in the selection process.

Perhaps not every reader can understand or relate to the works of such Nobel Prize winners as Toni Morrison or Doris Lessing, but very few readers would argue that Danielle Steel or John Grisham should have been considered in their place for the Nobel Prize in Literature, simply because their books gained a general popularity.  Shouldn't that same ethos hold true for children's literature? 

Gossip Girl and Commodity Culture

This summer, I taught one of the Gossip Girl novels, pairing it up with an article by Amy Pattee entitled “Commodities in Literature, Literature as Commodity: A Close Look at the Gossip Girl Series.” Some of my students were avid readers of the series; other students “admitted” to watching the television show, but most of them were surprised to find it on the syllabus alongside such serious and respected texts as J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye and E.R. Frank’s Life is Funny. I pointed out that the Gossip Girl series was extremely popular and profitable, so it deserved our attention. In fact, our conversation on this point led us into many of the important ideas that have been discussed in the field of adolescent literature scholarship over the last decade – everything from John Cawelti’s argument that formula fiction serves an important social purpose to Perry Nodelman’s claim that such fiction enables young readers to experience the comfort of repetition (in terms of plot, character, and action) at a time when their lives may seem otherwise out of control.

Early in the semester, I asked students to remember that the texts they were reading were not only created by an author (or authors), but were also shaped – and sold – by publishers. Amy Pattee underscores this point through her careful research into the writing and distribution of the Gossip Girl series. As part of her detective work, Pattee learned that the entire series was created in order to feed into a television or movie franchise; she also found out that Cecily von Ziegesar, the named author, may only have a collaborator’s role in the process and that she does not own the rights to the texts that come out under her name (163).

At the center of the Gossip Girl universe is Alloy, Inc., a marketing firm that advises companies on how best to reach young consumers. 17th Street Productions, which distributes the Gossip Girl series, is a subsidiary of Alloy. If a marketing firm is behind the production of the Gossip Girl series and television show, it shouldn’t be surprising that product placement is such a central aspect of the enterprise. As Pattee notes, every page of the series features the continual presence of consumerism:

The use of brand names as cultural referents is the most obvious characteristic of von Ziegesar's prose. In Reading Today Matt Freeman comments: "The books are riddled with references to what the coolest kids are wearing, the 'green Columbia ski parka', 'pink Eres bikini top', or 'black Miss Sixty stretch cords.' They wear shoes by Jimmy Choo and Manolo Blahnik. And with all the other stuff—the Cristal champagne, the hot tubs in Sun Valley—the series becomes a glamorous fantasy, for most of us, about life among the mega-rich and mega-indulgent" (22)…. While we as readers may never actually party with celebrities and don designer duds as casually as we throw on old jeans and a t-shirt, Gossip Girl instills us with a certain awareness of the power of self-display, which, with certain appropriate purchases and attitude, can place us on a track running parallel to that of the series characters. (166-167)

It’s this aspect of the Gossip Girl series that SHOULD be drawing the attention of more cultural commentators. Alloy, Inc. has chosen to use its prowess as a marketing firm to arrange product placement in production-line novels for teens, thus becoming part of the unspoken, but pernicious trend in YA culture that encourages young people to believe that they can purchase an identity (remember "girl power"?). Alloy, Inc. interviews teens, determines their insecurities and desires, and then creates cultural artifacts that present consumption as a solution.  Product placement happens literally hundreds of times per book or episode of any Alloy product.  While conservative parents' groups may be making headlines because they are concerned about the prevalence of sex on the show, it's the product placement that is the seduction engine in the Gossip Girl franchise. The sex is completely incidental, trust me.

Here’s an excerpt from Ruth La Ferla’s July 8th article for the NY Times, “Forget the Gossip, Girl; the Buzz is About the Clothes”:

“The show has had a profound influence on retail,” said Stephanie Solomon, the fashion director for Bloomingdale’s…. Thanks to the point-and-click shopping on its Web site and the fees it charges some brands to be featured in the series, “Gossip Girl” has been able to profit from its power to generate trends. It is not the first show to collect revenues from product tie-ins, but it probably is the first to have been conceived, in part, as a fashion marketing vehicle. “We tried to launch trends from the get-go,” said Eric Daman, the show’s costume designer, whose résumé includes a stretch working with Patricia Field on costumes for “Sex and the City.” 

Well, thank goodness for that, eh? But does wearing a Nanette Lepore dress really make one a self-actualized human being?

La Ferla, Ruth. “Forget the Gossip, Girl; the Buzz is About the Clothes.” The New York Times. 8 July 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/08/fashion/08gossip.html

Pattee, Amy. “Commodities in Literature, Literature as Commodity: A Close Look at the Gossip Girl Series.” Children's Literature Association Quarterly 31.2 (2006) 154-175.

Is it YA or Adult?

Thanks to tip from my friend Dr. Whitney Womack-Smith, I just read a fascinating article in the July 20th edition of The New York Times, written by Margo Rabb, an author who found out that the book she thought she was writing for adults was really more marketable to a YA audience.  Rabb quotes YA Lit scholar Michael Cart, who told her "These days, what makes a book Y.A. is not so much what makes it as who makes it — and the ‘who’ is the marketing department."

If you've ever been a student in one of my classes, you'll know that I harp on the (invisible, but) important role of the publisher in the field of children's and adolescent literature.  You can read the article here.