Last week I had the pleasure of speaking to a group of school librarians in the state of Wyoming. These folks are on the front lines in every way as they try to maintain balance in the face of all the things.
(I was thrilled that the reason for my invitation to speak is that Mystery of Mystic Mountain is on the Wyoming state list for their 26-27 Indian Paintbrush award for grades 4-6, an award selected, as are most state awards, by the kids who read the books and vote.)
As I did in Texas and Montana at earlier librarian meetings this year, I learned a thing or two from these wonderful people and thought I’d share.
Where are the boy books? One librarian at the meeting made an impassioned plea for books for boys. She would love more short, snappy adventure series for boys in middle grade and up. This means: middle-grade age boy protagonists doing middle-grade age boy things that are not necessarily centered on hard topics. Think, Percy Jackson, The Last Kids on Earth. If you’re working on one, keep going.
Books are categorized by multiple genre keywords. I had thought that having one or maybe two genre keywords were enough to label my books for the right shelves. I learned from a librarian that I should generate as many as applied. So rather than just mystery/western, I could add adventure, history, friendship, contemporary. And that these designations help librarians, especially with recommendations to readers looking for that next thing.
Self-published books are no longer outliers, but... Librarians are not only interested in finding good self-published books, they are eager. But there’s no mechanism to help them decide which of these books to put on their shelves. They primarily select books by reviews, and starred reviews at that (more in sec). There’s no reliable database for self-published children’s books to be considered based on ratings/reviews. Something I don’t know how we fix. Thoughts??
That last point created a bit of a discussion and prompted my own thinking on the topic of reviews and starred reviews.
Since the pandemic, reviews regardless of quality have fallen off the cliff quantitatively speaking. Carry Me Home, published in 2021, despite being on multiple state lists, finalist for multiple awards, received only 3 professional reviews, none starred; up to seven before the pandemic was typical for a book like this. It’s not that books aren’t being reviewed; it’s that fewer books are being reviewed by fewer outlets (like Booklist, Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, etc.)
Further, getting any kind of review for a self-published book is…pretty nigh impossible.
This presents a problem for authors who count on those reviews, starred or not, to get the attention of librarians and booksellers. As I said above, I don’t think the system of reliance on ratings and reviews is working any longer, for multiple reasons, but I’m not sure what the fix is.
One other note on access to librarians/schools: many rely on Follett for book acquisition. That’s a difficult hurdle for an author to cross.
I hope you are all supporting your local libraries, public and school. Librarians want to help our children (and grownups) to read, and to find those books they need. No, they are not pressing books into the hands of children that are inappropriate for those children. They read and vet everything. They stay ahead of the knowledge curve. They work harder than we all can imagine.
One librarian told me that people think all he does is “check out books at a desk”. These folks do vastly more than that – hosting public forums, setting up play and story times, monitoring yoga and cooking classes – all to create a safe public space that also houses books. They are the keepers of the flame of knowledge.
And, actually, in my library, readers can check out their own books.
Writers – please keep writing!! Children need your books and I can promise you that there’s always room in the library for more.
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