Getting Snarky with Gawker

This weekend, I stumbled upon an interesting piece at everyone's favorite place for snark, GAWKER. In the post, a writer pokes fun at some of the reviews featured in this week's Children's Book insert within the New York Times Book Review.

Here's how the article gets started...

The annual feature is one way to find a choice picture book to give to a young person, and it also gives us the gift of the insane seriousness with which the Times reviewers treat the subject.

Ouchy.

And then the author goes on to pull some wincing quotes to illustrate his point, like this one...

"The story is told in a fluid, seemingly effort less manner. Neither showy nor dull, the text has that feeling of giving you the right words in the right order with the right pacing," says Amy Krouse Rosenthal about Jon Agee's The Retired Kid. Chills, Amy.

Ugh. And even worse, were all the comments posted, making fun of our genre, of any serious conversation about children's books in general. I mean, they even snark on Leonard S. Marcus!

Part of me gets it. The top five quotes that Gawker pulls are a bit ridiculous, overwritten, and just laughable. But I hate how children's lit is the easy target.

I can remember when we were all in grad school together at The New School, and how we'd have to fight with our program advisor to try and get more than ONE children's lit critisicm class on the schedule. His response was that one was enough...and that we should go outside our discipline to become more well-read and to strengthen our abilities to critically discuss texts. Meanwhile, you don't think for a second that anyone in the Poetry classes, or the Fiction majors had to hear that kind of dribble.

No other genre (expect for maybe adult sci-fi/fantasy) has to continuously prove itself as valuable, as literary as books for adults. It brings me back around to the Margo Rabb essay froma few months back, I'm YA and I'm OK! It wasn't that I had such a problem with the essay itself...it's just that I HATE THAT WE HAVE TO CONSTANTLY DEFEND OURSELVES AS WORTHY! AS ACTUAL LITERATURE! GRRRRRR.

In a way, it makes me resent the fact that The Times ever distinguished and sub-catagorized all the best-sellers lists, because you know we'd get way more respecct if the public at large knew how Diary of a Wimpy Kid outsells whatever literary novels are on the adult list.

Or maybe not. Maybe everyone would just snark on us more.

sigh

-=siobhan=-