Prompted by the release of the Children’s Book Council of Australia 2024 Book of the Year Awards Shortlist on the 19th March, I decided a book review (see previous blog post) of an award winning book would be a great way to start thinking about book awards and book choices for young people. I was pleased to find that in the last few years, CBCA started the Sun Project (Children's Book Council of Australia, 2024b, p. 160) – their shadow judging initiative. I decided to review Completely Normal (and Other Lies) by Biffy James, as this book had been deemed an Honour Book, but had also won the Sun Project award for the Older Readers category (Children's Book Council of Australia, 2023). Not only had this book been chosen by the expert judges, but it had also been chosen by young people themselves.
Writing this book review forced me to critically analyse the
book’s themes and core messages, as well as help me to determine why I actually
liked the book. Understanding what makes a book enjoyable is part of helping
advise others on their own reading choices. This is an important thing to be
able to do when engaging in readers advisory with young adults. A study by Sande et al. (2022, p. 397) posits that giving teenagers
personalised reading recommendations based on their interests helps to create
positive attitudes towards reading. Therefore, being able to understand the
deeper themes of a book may be helpful in readers advisory for teens.
This activity also made me think about how useful
traditional book awards are for young people in selecting their reading
materials. I often read the shortlisted CBCA titles since I assume that if they
have been nominated for an award, that they will likely be enjoyable reads. But
do young people think the same way? Are they even aware of the awards? That’s
something I would like to investigate further. The CBCA judges books based on
literary merit, cohesiveness, appeal to the intended demographic, quality and
originality (Children's Book Council of Australia, 2024a). In a survey of teenagers and
their reading choices, not one participant mentioned any of these as being
factors in choosing books, instead citing reasons such as relaxation, learning,
understanding others’ experiences and developing social capital (Wilkinson et al., 2020, p. 160). One might assume that these
are things that are important to teenagers, as opposed to “book design, editing,
production, printing and binding” (Children's Book Council of Australia, 2024a), which are also taken into
consideration for determining the winning books and presumably have little
bearing on young people choosing to read them.
While I’m not saying that book awards have no merit, I’m
just not sure if they have much influence over what teenagers choose to read,
other than the assumption that award winning books will likely be better
stocked at both book stores and libraries, meaning the chance of stumbling
across them is probably greater than with a non award winning title. In saying
that, the chance of stumbling across a TikTok trending book are probably higher
still…
References
Children's Book
Council of Australia. (2023). Presenting
the 2023 CBCA Book of the Year Award, Winner and Honour Books. Children's
Book Council of Australia. https://cbca.org.au/winners-2023
Children's Book
Council of Australia. (2024a). Book of
the Year Awards policy entry information. Children's Book Council of
Australia. https://www.cbca.org.au/entry-information
Children's Book
Council of Australia. (2024b). Shadow
judging Book of the Year awards. Children's Book Council of Australia. https://shadowjudging.cbca.org.au/
James, B. (2022). Completely normal (and other lies).
Hardie Grant Children's Publishing.
Sande, L. v. d., Wildeman, I., Bus, A. G., & van Steensel, R. (2022). Personalized expert guidance of students' book choices in primary and secondary education. Reading psychology, 43(5-6), 380-404. https://doi.org/10.1080/02702711.2022.2113944
Wilkinson, K., Andries, V., Howarth, D., Bonsall, J., Sabeti, S., & McGeown, S. (2020). Reading during adolescence: why adolescents choose (or do not choose) books. Journal of adolescent & adult literacy, 64(2), 157-166. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.1065
Hi Megan,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the review: Completely Normal (and Other Lies) sounds fabulous and I have added it to my must-read list of books.
Like you, I’m interested in how much influence literary awards have on young people’s choice of reading materials (if any). There are some who argue that such awards do not accurately reflect the reading preferences of young people, perhaps partly because the judging panels are comprised not of children but of highly-educated adults from a narrow range of literary fields (eg Bittner, 2015) – a criticism that has obviously been acknowledged and addressed in the establishment of the CBCA shadow judging initiative you mention in your blog post - and/or because the judging criteria may elevate “complicated and inaccessible” subject matter over other books that prioritise entertainment value (cited by Strauss, 2008).
Last year, novelist Rebecca Makkai tweeted a quote from a sixth grader she knows who said ““If there’s a dog on the cover and the book has won an award, I won’t read it because the dog definitely dies” (Makkai, 2023).
Virginia
References
Bittner, R. (2015). The Mainstreaming of Controversy in Children’s and YA Book Award Winners: How on Earth Did That Book Win? Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures 7(2), 162-182. https://doi.org/10.1353/jeu.2015.0011.
Makkai, R. (March 19, 2023). Rebecca Makkai. X. https://twitter.com/rebeccamakkai?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor [accessed on April 20, 2024].
Strauss, V. (2008, December 16). Critics Say Newbery-winning Books are Too Challenging for Young Readers. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/15/AR2008121503293.html
I love that quote! Totally agree!
DeleteGo to Student Search and put in the students name.
ReplyDeleteHi Megan. I enjoyed reading your post on the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) awards. I thought your point about children not using the criteria that CBCA uses to judge the books to choose books was interesting and well made. I also agree with you that the books will likely be more heavily promoted and available if they are CBCA winners. The school library where I work always makes some selections from the CBCA list regardless of whether they have been requested and purely, I believe, because they are on the list. I think the CBCA awards are important because it is an avenue of support for authors and they help promote Australian authors. I read an article in the March, 2024 issue of Magpies where Wendy Rapee said that “children cant be, what they don't see” and it is true that many Australian authors might not get published it if wasn't for awards like CBCA that promote stories written by Australian authors and the stories that reflect Australian childhoods.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHi Megan, I enjoyed reading this post.
ReplyDeleteWhen you reflect on your prior engagement with CBCA you note that you “assume” that award-nominated books are enjoyable. I really relate because I believe it is easy for assumptions, especially ones that are widespread in our industry, to inform practice. In this case I think the awards do not necessarily have to be evaluated by whether teenagers themselves look to the awards to select their reading. Working at a bookstore, I found that books I independently read and added to my list for readers’ advisory were later CBCA nominated. I therefore have built some trust in it as a shortcut that helps me identify books to read and analyse, and to potentially have ‘up my sleeve’ for recommendations.
Simultaneously, I strongly agree with your point that we need to investigate further how teenagers select their reading material. Recently the bookstore I used to work for was visited by a teacher librarian and students that were each able to select a book that “resonated with them” (Hughes, 2024, para. 6). Their librarian believes this method will create natural diversity in their collection that offers more than the formal curriculum (para. 13). These books were then directly promoted in their school library as having been chosen by peers (para. 21) – I think this functions like a localised, meaningful awards system.
References
Hughes, M. (2024, April 15). A trip to the bookstore – An exercise in student agency. Teacher. https://www.teachermagazine.com/au_en/articles/a-trip-to-the-bookstore-an-exercise-in-student-agency
Hi Meagan, thank you for the post.
ReplyDeleteI like the way you reflect on book awards from young readers’ perspective. It is important for YA librarians to understand what young adults like and what they need, which could be recreational, informational and developmental (Braun et al., 2014). I believe this is the fundamental reason why librarians are here. I learned from your post that knowing the attributes of a book from personal reading experience may contribute to book recommendations for young users.
I was inspired by your summary of factors that make a book stand out in an award and questioning if the awarded book is the winner on young readers’ book list. I think your questioning is partly addressed by Rusa Book Awards, which draws on librarians’ opinions based on their first-hand experience working with readers, with readers’ opinions influencing the judgment of a book (Fishman et al., 2021). To decide which book can be enlisted for the awards, the committee members read books with different reader types and preferences in mind. The subsequent book list is therefore more likely to help librarians provide practical advice or guidance for readers (Fishman et al., 2021). While Rusa Books Awards targets adult readers, I wonder whether its adoption of readers’ perspective could be used for children’s book awards.
Braun, L, W., Hartman, M, L., Hughes-Hassell, S., & Kumas, K. (2014, January 8), The future of library services for and with teens: a call to action. Young Adult Library Services Association
https://www.ala.org/yaforum/sites/ala.org.yaforum/files/content/YALSA_nationalforum_final.pdf
Fishman, E., Galloway, M., Hashimoto, S., Kownslar, E., Lobash, L., Seaman, D., Tansley, S., Tarulli, L., Trott, B., & Wyatt, N. (2021). Readers’ Advisory: RUSA Books Awards: Listening to the Experts Who Create the Lists for America’s Readers. Reference and User Services Quarterly, 59(3/4), 177–181. https://doi.org/10.5860/rusq.59.3/4.7717