John Newbery: the first of a kind

Today's quote, some history on children literature:

John Newbery expanded upon that meager foundation and established it solidly in the publishing world with the 1744 printing of A Little Pretty Pocket Book generally recognized as the first children's book written primarily for youngsters' enjoyment. In 1759 and 1761 he again stressed the importance of entertainment, this time through two nonfiction works, A Pretty Book of Pictures for Little Masters and Misses; or, Tommy Trip's History of Birds and Beasts; with a familiar Description of each in Verse and Prose, and The Newtonian System of Philosophy, adapted to the Capacities of Young Gentlemen and Ladies, and familiarized and made entertaining by Objects with which they are intimately acquainted. Newbery, however important historically, remained a lone figure in children's literature in the eighteenth century.-

 Abrahamson, Richard F, and Betty Carter. “What We Know About Nonfiction and Young Adult Readers and What We Need to Do About It.” Publishing Research Quarterly Spring (1992) : 41-54. Print.

So, that's where the Newbery medal, awarded annually by the American Library Association for the most distinguished American children's book published the previous year, got its name from.

Yet again, it's important to note that Newbery worked according his own philosophy of the bussiness very early on: one where the material was conceived as entertainment and enjoyement (as the quote says) and not as education as exclusive goal.
I like this guy.

Liminality and other things to fear

Today's quote to close Banned Books Week says:

The "inbetweenness," the liminal state adolescents are in while they are changing from children to adults, may also frighten us. Turner and van Gennep believed that "when individuals or groups are in a liminal state of suspension, separated from their previous condition, and not yet incorporated into their new one, they present a threat to themselves and to the entire group... Liminality does occasion danger and fear" (Daly 71). Certainly that is how teenagers are often viewed. And their literature, interestingly enough, must also frequently occasion feelings of danger and fear, since so many YA titles appear on the ALA list of 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books"-
Gauthier, Gail. “Whose Community? Where Is the ‘YA’ in YA Literature?” The English Journal 91.6 (2002) : 70-76

Liminality -margin or limen- is a concept van Gennep, an ethnographer, develops in Rites of Passage. It goes about how that state of otherness and need of identification with a community is challanged when going from child to adult.

From Google Books:

Van Gennep was the first observer of human behaviour to note that the ritual ceremonies that accompany the landmarks of human life differ only in detail from one culture to another, and that they are in essence universal. Originally published in English in 1960.

It can be linked to fandom and crowd phenomena when search for identity and similarity between individuals lacks spontaneos association or comminitas, as Turner develops when analizing rituals.

More papers to read!

Banned Books Week thanks to ALA

As part of the celebrations of BBW, here there are:

Top ten most frequently challenged books of 2010

Out of 348 challenges as reported by the Office for Intellectual Freedom

1. And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson 
   Reasons: homosexuality, religious viewpoint, and unsuited to age group
2. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie 
   Reasons: offensive language, racism, sex education, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, and violence
3. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley 
   Reasons: insensitivity, offensive language, racism, and sexually explicit
4. Crank, by Ellen Hopkins 
   Reasons: drugs, offensive language, and sexually explicit
5. The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins 
   Reasons: sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, and violence
6. Lush, by Natasha Friend 
   Reasons: drugs, offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group
7. What My Mother Doesn't Know, by Sonya Sones 
   Reasons: sexism, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group
8. Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich 
   Reasons: drugs, inaccurate, offensive language, political viewpoint, and religious viewpoint
9. Revolutionary Voices, edited by Amy Sonnie 
   Reasons:  homosexuality and sexually explicit
10. Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer 
    Reasons: religious viewpoint and violence

I'm totally getting used to the idea of doing serious analysis research on controversial books (that somehow are still not ANYTHING near classical canon reads that can turn anybody into sand) but I refuse to give this any more importance than a "BTW". 
I won't get into why they are banned and why I believe, as we all do, that's stupid and totally last century.

So, dear ALA, great to know.
Whatevers.
Thanks.