>While Cathy Adores the Minuet

by Roger Sutton
Mar 11, 2006 | Filed in Articles & Opinion
>Richard has gone to the movies tonight with our friend Pam. They're seeing "Tristram Shandy." I stayed home and watched a rerun of "Will and Grace," the one about the hydro-bra. I'm interested in how children's book people negotiate differences in taste--not just with their loved ones, but with their colleagues and with the young people they serve, either as individuals or in the aggregate, in a day to day situation or in the abstract or at a remove.

Although I'm only sporadically (or subliminally!) aware of this negotiation, it's going on all the time. Magazine exec. editor Martha or Kitty, her opposite number at the Guide, and I regularly disagree about books: how do we decide what the "Horn Book opinion" will be? Similarly, all our reviewers have their own considered opinions. And the result? It seems to go a different way with each book, which is good.

While this kind of book debate goes on in many contexts, I think what's most interesting about the children's books community is that we are having our debates on behalf of someone else: the child reader, either on the other side of the desk at our teacher and librarian jobs, across the dinner table at home, or as an imagined or projected audience. We're always negotiating the difference between what we like and what they like (or in the happy instance where professional and child audience are in agreement, between how we like a book and how it is enjoyed by the young.)

Maybe, though, we are only ostensibly mediating the distinction between children and ourselves. Maybe we are always reading (or writing) for ourselves. The child-as-other idea, God knows, is fraught with problems literary, educational, and political. I believe that children read for the same reasons adults do (and both groups, of course, are made up of distinct individuals). But woe betide us (meaning those who take part in bringing children and books together) if we forget the stewardly nature of our work.
Roger Sutton
Roger Sutton

Editor Emeritus Roger Sutton was editor in chief of The Horn Book, Inc., from 1996-2021. He was previously editor of The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books and a children's and young adult librarian. He received his MA in library science from the University of Chicago in 1982 and a BA from Pitzer College in 1978.

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Anonymous

>I don't think we do part company, Roger. I think if I were burning on a stake defending free speech, you'd be on the next stake (maybe not totally willingly, who wants to be burned?) but you'd be there. I think when we wrangle, we wrangle essentially small points. And food. Or playfulness on what is, admittedly, your blog.

Posted : Mar 16, 2006 04:21

Anonymous

>Much better.

Posted : Mar 16, 2006 12:52

Andy Laties

>All right: Stewardkeitanshaung.

Posted : Mar 15, 2006 11:11

Anonymous

>Andy, I know you're just trying to lighten the moment but if we all don't stop using the word stewardship like it's a real thing, I'm going to fall over like lalaliloo.

Posted : Mar 15, 2006 10:58

Andy Laties

>"Seven years later took place the dramatic conference of Byron's relatives and executors, at which, after Moore and Hobhouse had nearly come to blows, the manuscript of the unpublished MEMOIRS of the poet was irrevocably burnt. The very fireplace remains today in which the book was destroyed. Tom Moore had to borrow L2000 from Longmans to refund the sum which Murray had given him for the manuscript--Byron having made him a present of the copyright--but four years later Murray not only paid off Moore's debt, amounting, with interest, to over L3000, but gave him, in addition, L1600 for his life of the poet."--Frank Mumby, PUBLISHING AND BOOKSELLING, 1954.

So -- in this case, the Stewards had pre-emptive power, and they used it to substitute their own version of the author's work for his own! I think the key to Roger's argument is importantly that between critics/librarians/booksellers/teachers/parents and, on the other hand, publishers. Critics' activity presumes the pre-existence of a published book. Hurrah! Their stewardship is by nature suggestive. But -- when publishers stand in the way of authors' work -- admittedly, the burning of Byron's memoirs, after his death, is about the most extreme example around -- now, that's were you get irresponsible stewardship. Prior restraint is the evil.

Andy

Posted : Mar 15, 2006 10:45

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