BTW, for something interesting to add to this discussion of which books are "worthy" of study, check out the top ten books college kids are reading:
1. The Lost Symbol
by Dan Brown
________________________________________
2. Where the Wild Things Are
by Maurice Sendak
________________________________________
3. The Time Traveler's Wife
by Audrey Niffenegger
________________________________________
4. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
________________________________________
5. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
________________________________________
6. The Wild Things
by Dave Eggers
________________________________________
7. Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters
by Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters
________________________________________
8. The Last Song
by Nicholas Sparks
________________________________________
9. Push
by Sapphire
________________________________________
10. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
by Max Brooks
Now, there is a brouhaha over the SLJ cover from last month featuring some of the prominent bloggers in the YA world. They were photographed in a NYC bar holding (fake) drinks. Apparently, they did not wear sensible shoes and hair twisted into a bun. Letters to the editor at SLJ are decrying the poor role models on the cover. I would have killed to have been among them. Censorship? Not quite. Narrow thinking? You bet.
It's rather depressing, this narrowness. I think that is what connects these two stories for me. If we could just broaden our view (and I am including me here not using the royal we), maybe we could expend more energy creating readers and welcoming new technologies and ways of talking about boos and reading. Instead. some seem hell-bent on wearing blinders.