Age and Page 1

Blogger: Etta Wilson

Location: Books & Such Office, Nashville

Weather: 61 and rainy

This business of standards of decency for children’s books is one that keeps me thinking. I understand the difficulty of making rules for what words and scenes can be included for a given age and grade level. Do you remember the furor caused by the word “scrotum” on the opening page of the 2007 Newbery winner, The Higher Power of Lucky?  I wonder how many kids reading that very well-written and moving book had to stop and look up “scrotum” to see exactly what the word meant.

The publisher indicates that the book was written for ages 9-11. But beyond the target age is the question of what life experience a child needed to identify quickly with the girl of the title, Lucky Trimble. In author Susan Patron’s opening scene, Lucky is eavesdropping on a twelve-step anonymous meeting and hears a man confessing to drinking “half a gallon of rum listening to Johnny Cash all morning.”

Kids at ages 9 to 11 are in the fourth through sixth grade, and I think at least sixty percent of them would know who Johnny Cash was, but how many of that age can be pulled into a story by reading about an AA program? The author interfaces a good bit of description about Lucky, and the scene is certainly good reading for older kids and adults–with scrotum sort of defined on page 3. I just can’t help wondering if kids that age really identified with Lucky in the first chapter and how much of the book’s selection as a Newbery winner was due to its appeal to adults on the selection committee.

That’s always the rub in writing for children. Authors are writing for the child reader as well as for the adult parent with the purse or the adult librarian or bookseller. It’s so easy to mix the two audiences, and while one publisher will favor one side, another will go for the other. Yesterday I was writing about knowing children first-hand. That’s essential, but we also have to know as much as we can about editors and what books they are publishing. Time to go to the bookstore!