The story of a Twitter hashtag: #YAsaves (in defence of young adult literature)

So yesterday I'm pootling through my Twitter stream, as you do, and read this:

Just now reading this @wsj piece on YA books. Awful. http://t.co/w485J0I Glad @neilhimself has joined the rebuttal.

(note: for the sake of brevity I've edited the tweets quoted here so they're just the tweet without the tweeter or time/date stamp; you can find the original tweets on Twitter, all but one at #YAsaves).  Tweets are in red. (there are a LOT of links in this post, and I was having trouble with the html on one (couldn't work out which one among so many). I 've reformatted this blog post so for now you'll have to cut and paste the links within the tweets rather than clicking through. Figured I'd rather have this published and readable and useful than have it saved as a draft while I finetoothcomb the html, which I ain't got time to do right now! You have got the article and hashtag link hyperlinked.)


What? I wonder. WSJ is the Wall St Journal (in which I've read a bunch of interesting articles before). @neilhimself is the Twitter username of author Neil Gaiman, who you might remember weighed in on the side of the angels in the recent interrogations of teacher librarians in Los Angeles. If he's rebutting this article... and there's a link to follow, so I follow it.

The article is "Darkness Too Visible : Contemporary fiction for teens is rife with explicit abuse, violence and depravity. Why is this considered a good idea?" by Meghan Cox Gurdon. Here is an extract:

How dark is contemporary fiction for teens? Darker than when you were a child, my dear: So dark that kidnapping and pederasty and incest and brutal beatings are now just part of the run of things in novels directed, broadly speaking, at children from the ages of 12 to 18.


Pathologies that went undescribed in print 40 years ago, that were still only sparingly outlined a generation ago, are now spelled out in stomach-clenching detail. Profanity that would get a song or movie branded with a parental warning is, in young-adult novels, so commonplace that most reviewers do not even remark upon it.

If books show us the world, teen fiction can be like a hall of fun-house mirrors, constantly reflecting back hideously distorted portrayals of what life is. There are of course exceptions, but a careless young reader—or one who seeks out depravity—will find himself surrounded by images not of joy or beauty but of damage, brutality and losses of the most horrendous kinds.

Now, whether you care if adolescents spend their time immersed in ugliness probably depends on your philosophical outlook. Reading about homicide doesn't turn a man into a murderer; reading about cheating on exams won't make a kid break the honor code. But the calculus that many parents make is less crude than that: It has to do with a child's happiness, moral development and tenderness of heart. Entertainment does not merely gratify taste, after all, but creates it.



If you think it matters what is inside a young person's mind, surely it is of consequence what he reads. This is an old dialectic—purity vs. despoliation, virtue vs. smut—but for families with teenagers, it is also everlastingly new. Adolescence is brief; it comes to each of us only once, so whether the debate has raged for eons doesn't, on a personal level, really signify.

It didn't take long for this discussion to take off on Twitter, and the hashtag which emerged to tag tweets about this was #YAsaves. If you're a teacher librarian reading this (or a librarian), then you'll know what a subject heading is. If you're a library user, you've used them. On Twitter, hashtags help you follow conversations and discussions and topics. Some examples: #austl for tweets of interest to Australian teacher librarians; #YAlit for young adult literature; #tlchat for teacher librarian topics generally, and also scheduled teacher librarian chat sessions on Twitter. And so on. Anyone can invent a hashtag, and sometimes people use them for fun (#sorightnowihavehadenuf).


OK, back to our controversial article. Within minutes, this was in my Twitter stream:

follow #YAsaves for some amazing stories about how books change kids' lives, in response to a negative @wsj article about teen fiction.

There's the hashtag, to facilitate the discussion. @YAsaves.

The tweets started coming thick and fast (and while every tweet tagged with #YAsaves would be findable with that tag, remember that all I get in my Twitter stream are tweets from people I follow and tweets they have retweeted, which are signified by RT or via).

As the discussion matured, it travelled from initial reaction to analysis:

RT @NovelNovice: Staffer Steph responds to @WSJ attack on YA: RT @Steph_Lawton: A dissection of the latest att… (cont) http://deck.ly/~YS59J

And the Wall St Journal was paying attention, as any business using social media should; interactive, dynamic communication is what it's about. I was dipping in and out of Twitter during the day, so while I do follow @WSJ, I find out about their response from a RT (their tweet was retweeted by someone else I follow):

RT @WSJ: We hear your tweets about this YA review: http://on.wsj.com/mD7f7Y Comments welcome on Facebook, too: http://fb.me/wsj cc

A lot of tweets were individuals commenting on how important particular YA books were to them, how important it was/is to them to have books of all sorts and topics and themes to read. The discussion was a blend of personal stories, perspectives on censorship and more. Authors were weighing in to the discussion:

If you haven't seen them all together, here are @libbabray's (awesome) tweets defending YA fiction: http://bit.ly/krRKfG

How big was this discussion getting? From another tweet:

Guess what? #YAsaves is now the third highest trending topic in the US. That took all of about 20 minutes. Get it, @wsj? Book banners?

That tweet was twelve minutes after the very first tweet I quoted at the start of this blog entry. Shows how fast the impact of a topic can be on Twitter, and also how many people are passionate about young adult literature.

Author Holly Black wrote this:

Honestly, @wsj, do you think we just make this stuff up? The darkest parts of many of my books came directly from my teenage life. #yasaves

From author Scott Westerfeld:

You guys on #YAsaves are all so awesome. Seriously, I can't imagine a better bunch of people to work for.

and from author Justine Larbalestier:

#yasaves is trending world wide. @libbabray; @maureenjohnson started something incredible @wsj claims 2 be listening. Wow.

The Wall St Journal was indeed still paying attention - this is a mere 64 minutes after that first tweet I quoted:

What young-adult fiction means to you: a selection of touching #YAsaves tweets http://bit.ly/myZFgt (Scroll with arrow keys.)

This opinion made me chuckle. I know kids who'd agree!

And sometimes teens just need a freakin' awesome vampire/demon/werewolf/fallen angel/ghost/love story/dystopian. OKAY??? #YAsaves @wsj

And here's a quote I'll have to save for future use in other situations...(as well as another link to follow related to this #YAsaves discussion):

"Books are, at their heart, dangerous." by @wsj (featuring @libbabray) http://t.co/AVoxOtZ

The discussion goes on: I had lots of other things to do yesterday, so was only dipping into Twitter from time to time.

If you go to look at the #YAsaves discussion on Twitter, be aware that the downside of a trending (popular) topic is that the bots and spammers and rubbishfolk get onto it. If some of the tweets listed under this hashtag look like gobbledegook, ignore them - they are rubbish - and scroll down through the list to the relevant ones.

I'm sure this discussion isn't over. It will flow on into blog entries (for example, like the one you're reading now, and I'm sure many many more) and other commentary. The tweets I've used here were written over less than two hours, and demonstrate the dynamic and exciting possibilities of microblogging (140 characters max per tweet? Plenty!) and its immediacy. I didn't contribute to the discussion (then: guess I am now!), just watched and read and followed links and considered the issues, all relevant and important to teacher librarians.

Cheers

Ruth

Have I persuaded you yet of the educational value of Twitter for teachers' professional development? Yes? No? Stay tuned....

Later this tweet came through:

Excellent slideshow compilation of #YAsaves tweets. Powerful. http://t.co/RLZvVBG

and these:

I should be reading. Instead, I just blogged my response to the @wsj article http://goo.gl/J5Gpf #YAsaves


Persnickety Snark: YA Saves: WSJ thoughts... http://t.co/FaAqrG8 - - - so I dusted off the blog...


RT @maureenjohnson: The @wsj has about 20 comments. Here are our 15,000+. http://dft.ba/ /-yasavestweets #YAsaves


RT @melissa_marr: RT @lbschool: "And here is an awesome response to the @WSJ article. Preach it! http://fb.me/CnxI0XGW " oh, YES #YASaves!


The beauty of YA is that it’s filled with books & authors who are not afraid to tell the truth to teens #YAsaves - http://wp.me/pIc5A-5lr

http://on.wsj.com/kctOKS Here is a link wherein you can see the comments to the @wsj article. Thanks, @ColleenLindsay! #YASaves

Death. Loss. Pain. Anguish. Joy. Love. Sex. Freedom. Growth. Wonder. Sorrow. Bliss... disguised as "kids' stuff." #YAsaves

(To find the originals, go to the #YAsaves hashtag on Twitter).

GIFSL* 57: Display banned books

Another infographic from Good.is, this time on the most controversial books in the US.

Interactive mage link.  Article/info link.

If you want a longer list, try the ALA site section about banned/challenged books.

One creative Australian teacher librarian of my acquaintance set up a display of banned books in her school library - To Kill a Mockingbird etc - items readily available in her library but which had been subject to censorship/challenge historically/currently.  They were borrowed with great alacrity, and all sorts of interesting discussions ensued, in her student reading circle and beyond.  I haven't tried this one yet, but it's on my list... Maybe a co-operative venture with the English staff?

Cheers

Ruth

Where the Wild Things Are: Spike and Maurice

Trailerspy labels this as the 'international trailer', but it's more like a mini-featurette, mostly with author Maurice Sendak and director Spike Jonze talking about the making of the film.





Link: http://www.trailerspy.com/trailer/5223/Where-the-Wild-Things-Are-International-Trailer
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If you want more on the film, there's also a long, detailed article by Saki Knafo in the NY Times about bringing this book to the screen - read it here.

Cheers

Ruth
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New Poet Laureate

The new Poet Laureate in the UK is Carol Ann Duffy - the first woman to hold the post in 341 years.  There's a New York Times article here.  (And read all the way to the end to chuckle about the sherry).  Interview from The Guardian here.   Blog entry from The Guardian here, arguing that her work is more important than her gender.
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From an education point of view, if the name rings a bell, it might be because of the recent controversy over one of her poems.  Education for Leisure.  Read all about that, and read the poem, in an article from The Guardian, here.
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Cheers, Ruth

YouTube as search engine

Is YouTube the next Google? Is YouTube your search engine of choice?  Maybe not yet, but for some, including kids, it is.  A thought-provoking article, At first, funny videos.  Now, a reference tool in the New York Times, written by Miguel Helft, discusses this phenomenon.

The explosion of all types of video content on YouTube and other sites is quickly transforming online video from a medium strictly for entertainment and news into one that is also a reference tool. As a result, video search, on YouTube and across other sites, is rapidly morphing into a new entry point into the Web, one that could rival mainstream search for many types of queries.

And further on:

At YouTube, Hunter Walk, a director of product management, said the move toward video might not necessarily lead to a decline in the consumption of text or other media. Video, text and other formats, he said, will complement one another in interesting ways.


Mr. Walk said a good example is provided by an ad for Hillary Rodham Clinton during the Democratic presidential primaries — the one in which a voice asks “Who do you want answering the phone?” at the White House at 3 a.m. during a crisis. A search for “Hillary Clinton 3 a.m.” on Google would bring up news stories about the ad and the controversy surrounding it. On YouTube, the same search brought up the original commercial, as well a response by the Barack Obama campaign, pundits’ commentaries and an assortment of spoofs, giving users a much different understanding of how the story unfolded, Mr. Walk said.

At present, the school system in which I work has blocked all access to YouTube, for students and staff, due to concerns including those related to child protection.

I wonder about what decisions will be made in the future.  Dictionaries, for instance, always had words like f**k and s**t in them; kids could find them, but had to hunt.  Few school libraries would not have pictures of naked people, whether in a National Geographic or a health book.  Now, with the internet making searching many sources faster and simpler, stuff kids had to work to find is more immediately located.  The openness of the internet makes it a challenge for educational systems, deciding what to allow, what to block, and why; and even if they can. 

And then there are always the sites like YouTube.  Like the dictionary, a collection, a cornucopia, of material judged worthy and less worthy.  And at what point (assuming that it's not possible to allow some access only, as I've been told is the case - to allow some is almost inevitably to allow all) does the educational value outweigh the educational and social (eg. child protection) negatives? 

Web 2.0 is about interaction, user-driven, user-uploaded content.  But in a free, democratic society, the freedom is there to upload the good, the bad, the indifferent.  There are great YouTube videos and vilely stupid ones.  Great blogs and vilely stupid ones.  Fabulous Flickr images and ridiculous/troubling/antisocial ones.  The collection that is our human society, our mess and melange of thoughts and ideas, available in unimaginable volume, as never before.

I don't know the answers.  As a teacher, as a teacher librarian, I think about these questions, though.  What access should we offer at school?  It's probably always going to be less than home internet access (and that's assuming all kids do have home internet access), but where the line is drawn?  That's a problem for Solomon.

And creeping up on the horizon are cheaper and cheaper netbook computers, wireless broadband, mobile phones (cell phones/cellphones) with internet access), so it's getting easier and easier for kids to step past the protective systems their school may put in place, and jump onto the internet.  To use YouTube as a search engine, for example.

Solomon?

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YA for Obama

A lot of notable YA writers are supporting Barack Obama at the YA for Obama site eg. these entries from Scott Westerfeld (do the math Democrat vs Republican) and the Cecily von Ziegesar, creator of Gossip Girl. 

As Scott Westerfeld points out in an entry on his own blog, Mess o' Politics, it's the young who get to pick up the tab into the future for mistakes made now:

I’ll let in on a little secret: YA authors are political.

After all, our books are all about what the future holds, who’s got power and who hasn’t, and how bullies can and should be taken down. They’re about figuring out your place in the world, and making a stand when things are just plain wrong.

What could be more political than all that?

and

here’s secret number two: teenagers are political too.

Teens understand that power matters. Their lives are controlled in some pretty astonishing ways, both by adults and by each other. (I’ve always said that the success of Uglies is partly thanks to high school being a dystopia: a bell rings and you march to your next station; what you say and wear is monitored; the newspapers are censored—for your own good!)

In response to the YA for Obama site, a book reviewer, Jessica, has set up YA for McCain.

Having perused the carefully sourced info here, I'm glad I wasn't the Wasilla librarian, back in the day.

"Destroy anthology": poem censored

When a major UK schools exam board responded to several complaints and withdrew Carol Ann Duffy's poem, "Education for Leisure", their instructions apparently required that the anthology be 'destroyed'.

The complainants were apparently concerned that the poem might encourage knife crime.  One of them, Mrs Schofield, is an exam invigilator (supervisor of exam room).

Read more about the controversy in this article from the Guardian (UK), which also includes the poem in full.

Carol Ann Duffy's response: another poem, "Mrs Schofield's GCSE", which includes the following lines:

Explain how poetry

pursues the human like the smitten moon

above the weeping, laughing earth; how we

make prayers of it.

Read it in full here, and more about it here.

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"Age-banding" books

By the very nature of our work as teacher librarians, we evaluate books on their age-suitability. It may be simply to decide if it's worth buying, or will answer a need or fill a gap. One does need to be aware of age-suitability - although certainly in high school I gleefully buy picture books that our students enjoy, there are many that work well for more than young children. Occasionally I may put a note in the back of a more challenging book to say that the teacher librarian needs to be consulted if it's being borrowed by a student in the junior years, so we can talk about it first.

It's understandable that adult bookbuyers would appreciate an age-indication on a book, particularly if they aren't especially familiar with children's literature. It's a fraught question, however. To take one example from here, Skulduggery Pleasant has been enjoyed by students in Year 7 and Year 12 - not sure how you'd 'age-band' it, and whether age banding it would make it more successful, or less, as it could deter readers (when a book that's intended as a 'reader' for students with reading difficulties telegraphs this too clearly, that's a cold hand of death on its usefulness or appeal in any other way - questions after each chapter, for instance, signal WORK, NOT FUN).

Phillip Pullman (author of The Golden Compass /Northern Lights and so forth) has decided opinions on the matter. He wrote an article for The Guardian :

And I know that the readers of my most "difficult" books include people of seven as well as people of 90. The same books. To write as well as I can, and then find someone at the door turning readers away, is something I find simply repugnant. It's based on a one-dimensional view of growth, which regards growing older as moving along a line like a monkey climbing a stick: now you're seven, so you read those books; and now you're nine, so you read these.
But growth isn't like that. We grow by getting bigger and including more things, and a child of 11 still includes the nine-year-old and the seven-year-old he was. And if he wants to read a book he might love, it's a bitter shame if some distant adult, out of what she perceives as her commercial necessity, puts him off by labelling it with an age that makes him feel babyish, or exposes him to ridicule.

...and has started an organisation to oppose it , No To Age Banding - there's a long long list of supporters on the site, including authors and librarians, parents and readers. There's another analysis/discussion of the matter here (on the SmartBitchesTrashyBooks blog, which often enough has some very thoughtful discussions on book matters, and can be utterly hilarious, whether or not the books it focuses on most are your recreational cuppa. And it does mention YA books from time to time. And read the comments section, which is an active source of engaged discussion on the SBTB blog).

The Bookseller.com has some entries on age-guidance too.

Scary stories and little children

The Spectrum section in Saturday's Sydney Morning Herald (Spectrum 15-16 March, 2008, p. 33) has an excellent article by Meg Sorensen: Stories show teeth and claws: scary issues should not be glossed over just because readers are young.


Among the books it discusses are:

• Where the wild things are (Maurice Sendak)


• Hide and seek (Irini Savvides)


• John Brown, Rose and the midnight cat (Jenny Wagner, ill. Ron Brooks)


• Old Pig (Margaret Wild, ill. Ron Brooks)


• Clinton Gregory's secret (Bruce Whatley)


• One dragon's dream (Peter Pavey)


• Puffling (Margaret Wild, ill. Julie Vivas)

I would of course point you in the direction of this article online, but I can't find it on the SMH website (by all means leave the link as a comment if you can find it). Figured that by mentioning it here, if you still have a paper copy of the Saturday paper you can track it down, if you wish.

A quote:

Sendak's book is universally loved for its expression and subsequent taming of the beast in us all that can be unleashed by primal fears. Taming the beast of big business - which neutralises anything that cannot be controlled such as imagination or death, because the product is more palatably consumed - may be more challenging.

To anyone of imagination (children, for instance), being alive and the inevitability of death has its terrifying side. However, it is nowhere near as frightening as the Orwellian drive to brainwash us into believing consuming pap will somehow make us invincible.