School Library Services – and why we need them – by Emma Barnes

Something rather nice happened a few weeks ago. I hacking away at the coal face, trying to complete the edits for the third book in my Wild Thing series, when the publisher of my previous book, Wolfie, called to tell me that it had just won a prize – a Fantastic Book Award.

Writing is a funny kind of profession. It’s lonely, insecure, there’s no pension, and you never know if the next book will be taken on – but, being so unpredictable, it does produce its golden moments.

It was a real treat, winning the award. I got a certificate, a fountain pen, letters from the child judges. Best of all, I was invited to the presentation ceremony to meet some of the participating children. I heard what they thought about Wolfie, read their reviews, was stunned by their wonderful Wolfie board games and illustrations, signed their books and led a workshop brainstorming magic animal stories. (I’m tempted to steal some of their brilliant ideas!)

Celebrating the award!

I also got to meet the lovely folks at Lancashire School Library Services (Lancs SLS) who  actually run the award.

So, at this point, you’re probably wondering what this all has to do with the title – Emma supports School Library Services because they gave her a nice day out?

No, no, and no. Encouraging authors, nice though it is, is only a side effect of what School Library Services (SLSs) do. First of all, the point of regional book awards, like the Fantastic Book Award (FBA), is not really about the prize. It’s about the process. And that means the children reading, discussing – enjoying – the books. It’s all about bringing books and children together.  And that is what every School Libraries Service aims to do.

My winning book!

To which some might say – why can’t schools do this without a School Library Service? Just consider the following facts:

 - most primary schools don’t have a librarian
 - most primary schools have limited space for a library, and limited stock
- most primary school teachers are not experts in children’s literature, and so primary schools rarely have someone who can choose stock and advise children on which book to read.

 I know these things because I regularly visit primary schools, and have encountered many “libraries” that consist of little more than a handful of Roald Dahls and Dick King Smiths. I do meet teachers and teaching assistant who are passionate about children’s books and reading – but it is through their own personal interest. Wide knowledge of children’s books does not seem to be considered a key part of the job or its training. (I don’t blame hard-pressed teachers – I do blame an education system which has given so little priority to encouraging children’s reading.)

It’s the children that suffer. Here are some of the things that I have witnessed first hand, the result of primary schools without librarians:
  
 - a Year 3 child struggling and failing to read an ancient copy of Thackeray’s The Rose and The Ring from the school library. Nobody was aware that this was not in fact a young child’s read.
-  a boy giving up on a non-fiction book in disgust because its classifications of dinosaurs was decades out of date. 
- a school library that was revamped by parent volunteers, but where there was no library time, and no chance for children to borrow books, because there was no staff member to oversee this. 
- a school which was over 60% non-white, but where none of the books on the shelves had characters of the same ethnicity/religion as these pupils. 

Here, by contrast, are some of the things I’ve seen with a designated school librarian:

 - children’s reading being guided in a good way – e.g. if you like this, then perhaps you’ll like that: if you like The Rainbow Fairies, maybe you’ll like these books by Emily Rodda (also about fairies but more challenging).
- children able to say “I’m interested in Monet/dinosaurs/space/Greek Myths” and immediately being given something age appropriate that reflects their interest.
- regular library times, for quiet reading, but also finding out what library does and how to use it. 
- a wide range of stock which does not rely completely on just a few well established authors, and which reflects all ages, abilities and interests.

 It’s hard for individual schools to tackle these issues alone. The Society of Authors has been campaigning for every school to have a librarian, a campaign I HUGELY support, but the truth is it’s not going to happen any time soon.

Meanwhile School Library Services (SLSs) provide back up. They are the infrastructure on which individual schools can rely.

What does that mean in practice? Well, the first thing I saw when I visited my local SLS in Leeds was a huge warehouse full of books. There were shelves and shelves in all kinds of categories – and all of these books are available to, and regularly sent out by the box load, to the schools that subscribe to the service.

(A bad back must be an occupational hazard in a SLS!)

A school could phone up and say, “we’re doing a project on transport for Year 4” or “we’re struggling to find books for reluctant readers” or “we need books with Muslim characters” and the SLS would help. SLS staff know the stock. They can advise schools on how to access it, how to create a better school library, and how to create a reading culture in schools. They also organize author visits – so that children can meet authors face to face, and teachers can hear about new books too.

They also organize regional book prizes – like the Fantastic Book Award (FBA). For the schools and children involved, the FBA meant a chance to:

- meet in a weekly group to read and chat about the shortlisted books (chosen to reflect a range of abilities and interests)
- read purely for pleasure and to do other fun things, like post reviews online
- spread the word about the books in school
- let teachers know which new books are out there, and which their pupils enjoy
-  engage in activities like drawing the characters in the books, designing board games and eating chocolate muffins at lunch time! All these things help make reading “cool”.
- correspond with authors and meet them in person.

After the event, I was sent feedback from the children. Here’s a couple of quotes:

This morning was brilliant. Especially when we made the story with Emma Barnes, it was fantastic!

I think today was probably the best day in my life because I saw a real life author!

Unfortunately, School Library Services are closing.  Schools have to subscribe to their services – if they don’t subscribe, the service closes. Many parents don’t know what an SLS is or does, so won't protest – which must make them a soft target for cuts. In my own area, Bradford SLS closed in 2012, and  North Yorkshire SLS is to close next year. Who will step into the gap? Public libraries? They may try (I recently did a wonderful schools’ event organized by Oldham Libraries) but public libraries are also subject to deep cuts.

At a time when the value of reading for pleasure is being recognized and acknowledged – the research evidence for its benefits keeps mounting – it's bitterly ironic that the services needed to support it are being reduced.  I just hope that the politicians and public see what's happening before it's too late.

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Emma's new series for 8+ Wild Thing about the naughtiest little sister ever (and her bottom-biting ways) is out now from Scholastic. The second in the series, Wild Thing Gets A Dog is out in July.
"Hilarious and heart-warming" The Scotsman

 Wolfie is published by Strident.   Sometimes a Girl’s Best Friend is…a Wolf. 
"A real cracker of a book" Armadillo 
"Funny, clever and satisfying...thoroughly recommended" Books for Keeps


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Emma on Twitter - @EmmaBarnesWrite

Must All Have Prizes? Cathy Butler

A couple of weeks ago, a post by Clementine Beauvais set the cat among the pigeons here on ABBA by questioning whether reading a bad book is always better than reading no book at all. The debate that followed veered at times into a related but slightly different topic, one always likely to be sensitive with authors. What, if anything, makes a book a “bad book” in the first place? The arguments divided commenters into two broad and messily intersecting camps. The first group wished to apply their preferred canons of taste and quality: was the book formulaic, clichéd, incoherent? The second prioritised utility: even a book that was “bad” by other criteria it might still be good for a particular reader at a particular time. By that rule, there was no such thing as an intrinsically “bad” book.

I don't think we can do without either of these approaches entirely – but rather than reopen the argument about poor quality books I’d like to think about how these ideas apply at the other end of spectrum, when we’re singling books out not for opprobrium but for praise. How do we decide whether a book deserves a literary prize?

Children’s books are in strange position here. Adults, aware that they are not children’s literature’s primary audience, can feel quite uncomfortable about choosing books “over children’s heads.” When adults honour a book with a prize, is it because they deem it the “best” by the measures of literary quality they would apply to books written for people like themselves, or are they trying to ventriloquize the judgements of children – whose criteria for a good book may be quite different?

Different prizes deal with this problem in different ways. At one extreme we have the Costa Children’s Book Award, which is chosen by a panel of three adult judges, with – as far as I know – no child input at all. At the other, the Red House Children’s Book Award sells itself in part on the claim that it is “the only national book award voted for entirely by children.” Somewhere in the middle sits the Roald Dahl Funny Prize, in which the votes of hundreds of children are put into the mix, but the final decision is made by an adult panel. Of course, these prizes (and others) are doing slightly different things, but the variety of methods for choosing the “best” book suggests some confusion, even discomfort.

The sense that there are systematic differences between adults’ and children’s tastes is one factor in play here, but there are others. For example, there is the opposition between the technocratic idea that there exist expert readers who by virtue of their expertise (as writers, teachers, librarians, booksellers, etc.) are more qualified than other people to arbitrate quality, and the democratic idea that the way to choose the “best” of anything is by means of a popular vote. The authority of the Red House prize derives not just from the fact that the judges are children but also from the numbers involved.

All of this informs our original dilemma. Are there certain qualities, such as vivid writing, original plot and characterization, etc., that make a book “good”? Or is the quality of a book always to be judged in relation to the circumstances of its reading, so that a book that’s bad for one reader may be good for another, and the best book is the one that does the most good for the most people? In philosophy that would be called a utilitarian position; others may call it rule by lowest common denominator, although for them the question remains – who nominates the denominators? (And who are you calling common?)

Of course, there are other criteria in the selection of literary prize winners besides the ones I’ve mentioned. One is sales. In the United States, the children’s book world was surprised in recent weeks to discover that the right-wing “shock jock” Rush Limbaugh had been nominated as “Author of the Year” by the respected Children’s Book Council. It turns out that the CBC’s criteria for nomination are entirely determined by an author’s sales rather than by anyone’s literary judgement, child or adult. If you are a millionaire celebrity author who can afford to buy thousands of copies of your own book you can thus guarantee not only “bestseller” status but also a nomination for a major literary award. Nor is this a new phenomenon. For years, it was an open secret that the “recommendations” of a major UK book chain could be purchased by publishers wishing to promote their books.

This approach goes beyond populism – rather, it is money masquerading as popular taste (in the case of the millionaire) or as elite taste (in the case of the UK chain) and trying to create a market in the process. Wordsworth once remarked that that “every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great and original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished.” Had Wordsworth read Fredric Jameson he might have added that what is true of great and original writers is even more so of trite and derivative ones. But the methods, arguably, vary.