I haven’t gotten much writing done this week, but I’ve been a drawin’ machine–besides Toon Thursday, I managed to find time to work on my new painting as well as participate in Art By Committee. Fun, fun!! Speaking of art, Americans for the Arts has released a new series of public service announcements encouraging parents to “feed their kids the arts.” Ad campaigns like this are more important than ever, methinks.
In other arts news, the discussion over age-ranged books in the UK has been sparking a lot of controversy on both sides of the Atlantic. There’s been an interesting discussion about it on one of the bloggers’ listservs, and it seems that many of us agree that it’s all too easy to cross the fine line between age recommendations and prescriptiveness or even censorship.
Planning to be in the San Francisco Bay Area tomorrow? Melissa Marr, author of Wicked Lovely, is doing a reading at one of my favorite bookstores, Cody’s Books in Berkeley. (Brought to you by 3 Evil Cousins, which is a blog name I absolutely LOVE.) I’m not likely to make it, since I just drove into Berkeley yesterday with my husband for our anniversary, but…we’ll see.
About the author
Sarah Jamila Stevenson is a writer, artist, editor, graphic designer, proofreader, and localization QA tester, so she wears a teetering pile of hats. On any given day, she is very tired. She is the author of the middle grade graphic novel Alexis vs. Summer Vacation, and three YA novels, including the award-winning The Latte Rebellion.Comments
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I read about the age range thing the other day and agree with this:
“If you’ve got reluctant young readers,they’re going to be reluctant to read any book which they consider to be beneath their age range. And there’s no point in encouraging able young readers to read above their age range because they’re going to do that anyway.”
Also, since kid’s books are already shelved according to age I don’t fail to see how putting an age range on the cover would be offering any extra information. Am I missing something??
When I was seven, my brother had a copy of “Ramona Quimby, Age 8”, and it made me so mad. I thought you had to be eight years old to read it.
I can’t believe they’d actually consider doing this. As c.k. says, there’s already division between early readers, middle grade and YA… sheesh.