attackfish (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
attackfish) wrote2011-07-19 02:07 pm
attackfish) wrote2011-07-19 02:07 pm
Bittercon: No Childhood Left Behind
As YA publishing expands and the internet connects readers from tremendously different backgrounds, it's no longer possible to talk about a "classic" set of formative first reading. How does our collaborative discourse on texts change when we have little in common among our formative reading experiences? And how do we engage with the often problematic heritage of our childhood favorites when no one we want to discuss them with has read them?
The above is the blurb for this panel at the 2011 Readercon, and after I read it, I was mystified. Harry Potter is the Beatles of my generation. When I was in middle school, you weren't anybody if you hadn't read The Golden Compass. Both school districts I went to middle school in assigned Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. Everybody I knew read To Kill a Mockingbird and Lovely Bones. My best friend and I bonded over having both read Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books. I only stopped being in the target audience for YA books four years ago, and even in the information age, that isn't that long ago.
More and more, YA books are becoming best sellers. Twilight and The Hunger Games have readers in the millions. Talking about the fracturing of reader interest seems a little counter to the evidence.
At the same time that YA and MG publishing is growing, the internet is expanding exponentially.
The world wide web is vast enough that no matter what almost unknown book you fell in love with as a child, there is always someone online who fell in love with it too and would just love to discuss it with you. The blurb touches on this but only in the sense that it brings in new perspectives, people who might have read an entirely different set of books. To me, it was the place where I finally found people who shared my favorite book series (which just won the 2011 Mythopoeic Award for Children's Literature, go Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief!).
What boggles my mind most about the above blurb is the blithe assumption that there ever has been a classic set of books that all children, or at least all bookish children read. We have always been divided by race, nationality, language, region, gender, genre, and taste. My avid readers of a mother and grandmother never read any of the books from their era that I consider classics (Except To Kill a Mockingbird), because they're just not into fantasy, and my grandmother was so turned off by the only Enid Blyton book she picked up that she decided that all children's books were worthless and I'm still convincing her otherwise.
I think the invocation of the internet as part of this new dilemma is telling. Suddenly voices that never had been heard, with their alternate childhood canons are being heard. They've always been there, it's just the people who did the public talking usually came from the same kind of background and were therefore exposed to the same books until now.
People who read the same books will always find each other, and we have always had to deal with people who have different canons of past reading. The community of readers will survive.
What are your experiences with the internet, individual canons, and the fracturing of reader interest? Fandom certainly complicates the matter at least for me, and a lot of you, but not all of you, dear readers are fannish. Is there a set of children's and teen books you would consider to be essential, and why?
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bittercon the online convention for those of us who can't make it to any other kind, on a topic stolen from a panel at the 2011 Readercon.
The above is the blurb for this panel at the 2011 Readercon, and after I read it, I was mystified. Harry Potter is the Beatles of my generation. When I was in middle school, you weren't anybody if you hadn't read The Golden Compass. Both school districts I went to middle school in assigned Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. Everybody I knew read To Kill a Mockingbird and Lovely Bones. My best friend and I bonded over having both read Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books. I only stopped being in the target audience for YA books four years ago, and even in the information age, that isn't that long ago.
More and more, YA books are becoming best sellers. Twilight and The Hunger Games have readers in the millions. Talking about the fracturing of reader interest seems a little counter to the evidence.
At the same time that YA and MG publishing is growing, the internet is expanding exponentially.
The world wide web is vast enough that no matter what almost unknown book you fell in love with as a child, there is always someone online who fell in love with it too and would just love to discuss it with you. The blurb touches on this but only in the sense that it brings in new perspectives, people who might have read an entirely different set of books. To me, it was the place where I finally found people who shared my favorite book series (which just won the 2011 Mythopoeic Award for Children's Literature, go Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief!).
What boggles my mind most about the above blurb is the blithe assumption that there ever has been a classic set of books that all children, or at least all bookish children read. We have always been divided by race, nationality, language, region, gender, genre, and taste. My avid readers of a mother and grandmother never read any of the books from their era that I consider classics (Except To Kill a Mockingbird), because they're just not into fantasy, and my grandmother was so turned off by the only Enid Blyton book she picked up that she decided that all children's books were worthless and I'm still convincing her otherwise.
I think the invocation of the internet as part of this new dilemma is telling. Suddenly voices that never had been heard, with their alternate childhood canons are being heard. They've always been there, it's just the people who did the public talking usually came from the same kind of background and were therefore exposed to the same books until now.
People who read the same books will always find each other, and we have always had to deal with people who have different canons of past reading. The community of readers will survive.
What are your experiences with the internet, individual canons, and the fracturing of reader interest? Fandom certainly complicates the matter at least for me, and a lot of you, but not all of you, dear readers are fannish. Is there a set of children's and teen books you would consider to be essential, and why?
Written for
bittercon the online convention for those of us who can't make it to any other kind, on a topic stolen from a panel at the 2011 Readercon.
no subject
Also, canons (pop cultural and otherwise) are a way of identifying groups. I always knew how to pick out the Jewish kids in my class because they referenced the same stories (Tanakh, Talmud, and folk) that I did. I knew the fantasy geeks, because when I said "Oh no, Sauron has the ring!" they got it. As it was so it is.
On a side note, my dad gets very few non sci-fi based cultural references, and actually asked my mother and I last month what the heck we were talking about, and what was this "Les Mis" thing we wanted to see, and why do you two keep talking about African and European swallows and killer rabbits?
Oh Joss Whedon... I enjoyed the second and third season of Buffy, but can't stand Angel or Firefly, and decided to avoid Dollhouse. Somehow this means I'm not truly fannish, and if I just "got it" (which is to say Whedon's intent) I would be a fan. On the other hand, I keep trying to get everybody to read the Queen's thief books, so hypocrisy, thy name is Fish.
Oh Peter Pan... I can't stand it, actually, and not just because of the Disney 50s adaption. On the other hand, I adore the movie Hook. Go figure. I already mentioned my essential, To Kill a Mockingbird... It's hard thinking of things I think every child should read. I think it would do a lot of kids good to read The Devil's Arithmetic though.
On another side note, I have a feeling the pony hate has to do with the fact that a) it's for kids (hey adults, that doesn't mean it's low quality!) and b) for girls. *sigh*.