We are all doing at-home school or college and not reading a lot for pleasure. Some of us are experiencing major stress and flare ups of existing conditions. Our parents are out of work or in essential jobs. We have a half dozen unfinished kidlit & YA Lit reviews and essays, which we promise we'll get to. In the meantime, we are excited to present interviews by a handful of our mentors and influencers.
The first person we talked to is Betsy Bird. You know Bets. She of the literary children's blog, A Fuse #8 Production. Author and editor of fabulous fiction and nonfiction titles, including FUNNY GIRL, THE GREAT SANTA STAKEOUT, WILD THINGS! ACTS OF MISCHIEF IN CHILDREN'S LITERATURE, and her upcoming MG debut, LONG ROAD TO THE CIRCUS. I've got to take an online anatomy quiz now! She can tell you the rest.
A: Were you
a big reader as a child? What were some of the books you enjoyed?
B: Yep, pretty
much. Now, I’ll tell you truly that I cannot recall a single librarian’s name
from that time. Yet in spite of that terrible failing, I liked my books. In
elementary school I pretty much scoured every Scholastic Book Fair flyer for
books about ghosts. Getting older I devoured mysteries and fantasies and
anything that looked slightly magical. If Harry Potter had been around, it
would have changed my life, I know it. Specifically, I loved books like the
Willow Davis Roberts THE GIRL WITH THE SILVER EYES about a girl with ESP. I
liked the Trixie Belden mysteries, which were old even when I was a kid. She
was like a much cooler version of Nancy Drew. I liked The Three Investigators,
which were a MUCH better version of The Hardy Boys, and really drilled down on
the creepy supernatural mystery genre. Of course, when I got older I read the
only YA we had, which mostly consisted of a lot of Christopher Pike. It was not
a good era for teen literature, I’m afraid.
B: Well, I
didn’t want to be a librarian. Nope. Sorry. Booooring! All this in spite of the
fact that as a kid I organized my family’s bookshelves, cataloged the VHS
tapes, and created subject heading lists of my National Geographics… for fun.
Yeah. When I finally caved and went to library school I still thought I wanted
to be an archivist. It took my husband pointing out that I’d set my coffee cup
down on my book on how to preserve books that told me that maybe that wasn’t the
life for me. Then I took this children’s literature course to fulfill a credit
and it was like lightning struck. Boom! This is what I was meant to be! I’d
been reading children’s literature for fun for years. Now I finally had a way
of using that knowledge practically!
These are not books!
A: When did
you become interested in youth collection development, and, did that lead to an
awareness of a need for diversifying public library collections? (That’s
probably a “leading question.”)
B: The great
thing about New York Public Library (my first employer as an official
librarian) was that it had this longstanding history of looking at its
collections (and employees for that matter) with an eye to diversity. This
isn’t to say that they didn’t make a lot of mistakes. Of course they did! But
from the moment I joined on it was made very clear to me that no collection was
adequate unless it showed a wide range of voices.
When I
started at NYPL it was as a humble children’s librarian. But with each job I
would look to the next thing in line. From children’s librarian in a branch to
children’s librarian in the biggest children’s room in New York City. Then I
saw the ultimate job: Youth Materials Specialist. If I got that position then I
would be able to buy the children’s books for Manhattan, Staten Island, and the
Bronx. Just me! Me! And after a few years I got it. My dream job, it was. My
boss, Jeanne Lamb, was very good at always telling me that no matter what list
we were putting together, no matter what cart in Baker & Taylor I was purchasing,
no matter what summer reading collection we were discussing, they HAD to show a
range of voices, ethnicities, religions, sexualities, and more. She was a huge influence on my work.
A: What do
you think are some of the most accomplished and unique books to come out of the
Own Voices movement so far?
B: Lord, how do
I choose? The past few years have been a cornucopia of fantastic new creators!
Okay, lemme just jot down a couple I’ve particularly enjoyed really recently:
Zanib Mian, ill. Nasaya Mafaridik – Planet
Omar: Trouble Magnet
And most of those are just from this year alone!!
A: I see an
Indigenous New Wave finally happening. Christine
Day, Kevin Maillard, Traci Sorrel—wow! But there’s still an abundance of
inaccurate and offensive Native content on library shelves. See: almost
anything tha@nksgiving- related and some popular “classics.” How can we turn that
around?
B: God, I wish
you could tell me. Two years running I’ve had the unpleasant experience of
having to vet what my kids get taught in school.
My daughter, for example, was given a Thanksgiving worksheet from, I kid you not, 1979 and it was so offensive I almost had to keep from screaming at it in front of her.
I think one
solution, or at least an aid, is to keep this Indigenous New Wave (perfect
term) happening. More more more! It’s not just children’s books either. I’m
seeing a marked increase in books for adults by Indigenous voices as well. The
next step is to educate the educators, and a lot of that starts in grad school
for librarians and educators. We’ve got to get them to realize from the get-go
what is and is not appropriate on our shelves. Finally, calling out offensive
content whenever we see it. We need to be unafraid to have discussions and
conversations because if we don’t talk then we don’t learn. And if we don’t
learn then we can’t change anything!
A: You’ve
promoted anti-racist teaching materials like NOT MY IDEA: A BOOK ABOT RACISM,
by Anastasia Higgenbotham. How do you approach texts including anti-Native
bias, racism or other prejudices with your own kids? If you liked a book then
realized it was problematic, do you share that with them?
B: Happens all
the time. I once wrote a blog post called Surprise! It’s Racist! about that universal occurrence in
every parent’s life when you’re reading a book with your kids and you hit on
something that just shocks you. The clearest example of this is the Dr. Seuss
book If I Ran the Zoo which was
reprinted in 2014 and sports a shiny Caldecott Honor on its cover. A more
racist children’s book currently in print you will have a hard time finding!
When this happens we always take time to explain to the kids why that image or
term (“slant-eyes” for example) is awful, outdated, and just plain wrong. Then
there are the books we love from our youth. My husband loves reading the kids
old comics, but realized fast that he just couldn’t read the kids one of his
favorites, Terry and the Pirates, because there’s a Chinese character in there
that is simply pure, walking stereotype. Meanwhile I read my daughter Cheaper
by the Dozen and skipped an entire chapter because of a racist chef character.
You pick your battles. Some books just aren’t worth it. Others are teachable
moments. You have to figure out which is which and go from there and do your best.
A: You seem
to be a big fan of humor in children’s literature. Hence: the hilarious,
diverse anthology you edited, Funny Girl: Funniest. Stories. Ever. Do you feel
funny books don’t get enough respect? (You also seem to have a love-hate
relationship with poetry, but we don’t have to discuss that.)
B: Poor funny
books. It was Jon Scieszka who once explained to me why they don’t really win
that many awards. I mean, if we read a dead dog book then I know the dead dog
is sad, you know the dead dog is sad, and we can be sad together. But if
there’s something funny in the book, our senses of humor might be so different
that I find it hilarious and you feel like it’s a failed joke. Humor isn’t
always universal. But kids absolutely adore them! And, being kids, they love
the scatological stuff that adults would eschew. So when you’re making a funny
book for them, it’s cool if you can put in a little something for everyone.
A: What’s a
great, little – read children’s book you wish everyone knew about?
B: Well, it’s
kind of ridiculous but I absolutely adore it and it’s recently come back in
print. There’s this book called The Winged Girl of Knossos that won a Newbery
honor back in the 1930s. This book was bonkers. Ostensibly it was the Icarus
myth if Icarus was this crazy cool lead girl character and not some dippy boy
that got too close to the sun. The main character dances off of bulls, deep
dives for sponges in shark-infested waters, hang-glides, and basically kicks
ass and takes names. The book had kind of an outdated cover which,
unfortunately, wasn’t updated for the new edition. I discovered it a long time
ago and was impressed by how the language really stood up to scrutiny.
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