Sunday, February 21, 2010

Celebrity Authors & The Quality of Children's Lit

I must admit, I'm a bit stumped as to how to relate Linda Sue Park's article "Star Quality" can be discussed in terms of our previous readings. This is because none of our books were written by celebrities; thus, I will turn my attention to the care and detail with which these adolescent lit books were written.

Park claims in her article that the children's publishing industry edits their manuscript with care, and it should be so. To present children with sub par writing just because they wouldn't notice is an insult to their intelligence. Authors and publishers should provide high quality books to children so that they learn what good writing is.

On a general level, I'd say that the books we have read as a class fulfill this requirement. The quality of writing is good and acceptable; while not all of them could perhaps be considered great pieces of art, they do follow good grammar, syntax, and structure. They do not shy away from tough topics, as we see in Amari's rape in Copper Sun or the death of Gillian's mother due to AIDS in Something Terrible Happened.

There are certain things that could be fixed to improve the quality. One thing is something that I griped about in earlier blogs--Amari's mother's obvious show of theme: "We would never judge someone by the color of their skin." Lines should not be dumbed down force the child to understand what they're reading. If they are presented with a challenge, their analytical minds will grow deeper. Additionally, I think that these books could have offered more challenging vocabulary. Given the multi-cultural focus on much of these books, readers are given several words to consider from other languages--Spanish in Esperanza's Rising and Creole in Fresh Girl--but I do think more challenging vocabulary in the English language would be appropriate.

Overall though, I do think that quality of these books is proven through the fact that we, as a college class, can read and appreciate them (with the exception of Twilight and Harry Potter, which I do believe we read just to critique popular reading).

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