Illustrator’s Critique Group meets at the Barnes and Noble at the Waterfront in Homestead from 7pm to 9pm every first Tuesday of the month.
November 6, 2007 by pghpicturebook
Illustrator’s Critique Group meets at the Barnes and Noble at the Waterfront in Homestead from 7pm to 9pm every first Tuesday of the month.
Oooh! Beautiful– nice job!! I’m hoping to get there– I’ll be in Pittsburgh all morning picking up prints and taking them and toys and etc to the PCA shop, then running home to pick up kids from the bus… then running back in… But I am planning to be there if humanly possible!
Sorry I’ve been AWOL– our computer situation is a mess. But today it seems to be working well enough!
Here, to start a conversation, is an item from England, where things are looking a bit bleak for fire-breathing dragons and children’s book illustrators—
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=494755&in_page_id=1770
AMAZING!!!
They seem to pick and choose what you can and cannot say (or draw)! …and I’m not even sure I know who THEY are!
That’s very scary!
I read the news item link from John’s post (the one about the fire-breathing dragon) and laughed out loud. Library staff just decorated one of the enormous trees in Architecture Hall in the Museum of Natural History. The theme this year is “year of glass” and Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh’s tree is decorated in faux stained glass. Guess what I painted on my “window”: St. George about to slay a fire-breathing dragon. Hope I don’t get sued. Of course, if he’s killing the dragon maybe it’s OK. Then again, I suppose slaying is out, too.
Patte
Children’s Dept. CLP
Wow. That is *so* odd– I guess they figure if they don’t write it, kids won’t imagine it. After all, they’re only little empty vessels to be filled with pablum… (sarcasm. Sorry.)
I think there’s a huge social trend away from kids having direct experience with life and its risks(though we’re remarkably lax about virtual experience quality).
I foresee a day when all potlucks will be catered, because cooks in individual home kitchens might not be using proper hygiene, and someone could get sick, and sue the organization having the get together.
Laugh if you want, but I have been floored by some of the things that are required for Little League charters now.(special baseball dirt for the infield and $500-a-pop detachable bases, anyone? Really– no joke.)
I’m about ready to pull my kids out and organize some neighborhood games on the hay field.
(/rant)
Here’s one of my favorite tidbits, yanked from this site, though I’ve seen it cited in a variety of places:
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/banned-books.html
(just in case anyone’s eager to feel even more irate…)
“An illustrated edition of “Little Red Riding Hood” was banned in two California school districts in 1989. Following the Little Red-Cap story from Grimm’s Fairy Tales, the book shows the heroine taking food and wine to her grandmother. The school districts cited concerns about the use of alcohol in the story.”
Umm… you know, back in the day, water was a pretty dirty, risky thing to drink. You wouldn’t really go giving it to a sick person unless you were aiming to make them sicker. And anyway, isn’t Granny over 21?
On second thought, I suppose you could have Little Red boil some water, but then you’d have a child building a fire, and I’m sure some publisher would have an absurd objection to that, as well.
I really don’t get the logic of this approach. What harm is it going to do to *see* a bottle of wine? Especially when the context is that it’s being drunk casually, by a mature, responsible adult? I’m sure that poor Granny isn’t planning to down it all at one go.
You know, suppose some little child reads the story and decides to playact it. Say they go and stick an empty bottle in a basket, and pretend it’s wine. Say they even pretend that, instead of bringing it to Granny, they go ahead and drink it themselves. They might even pretend to get drunk! They may go on to play that they get lost in the woods, or that they act very silly and can’t stop laughing, or that they get very sick, or that they totter around and fall over. Oh, the horror!
Seriously. When I was little, my sister and I played out a vast array of soap-opera worthy scenarios, ranging from struggles with drug abuse to paralyzing car crashes to kidnapping and slavery (as both perpetrators and victims) to robbing houses to armed assault. That’s what children *do.* It’s what imagination is *for.*
Imagination isn’t just about baking pretend cookies on your pretend stove, or dressing up in a blanket and becoming a superhero. It’s also a way for children to intuitively think about and puzzle out the complex world around them. It’s healthy, I would even say straight-up *good,* for children to playact various situations and imagine how they might act or react in them.
I mean, honestly, people. Even that pretend stove is pretend hot.
Hey, John –
I find this reaction EXTEMELY bizzare, given the success of Harry Potter (dragons and safety hazards abound). Hope it doesn’t result in an industry trend, stifling imagination and creativity for books, and as a result, the imagination and creativity of the kids who read!
I’m drawn back to when I was ten years old–my best friend and I loved to climb a 30-foot bay-laurel tree by the creek bed, then slide down a branch to the creek, pretending we were firemen sliding down a pole! Childhood has changed so much nowdays…it’s sad.
Annie Trimble
Hmm, I think soldiers with guns are worse than fire breathing dragons…How can a mythical creature be harmful ? Kids know it’s not real. If our imaginations are going to be sensored, I’d rather live in my imaginary world.. it’s safer than the news!
I hated farenheight 451!
One wonders what the editoral discussion around a manuscript like Cat in the Hat would sound like at this publishing house…
“What do you mean the mother is ‘out for the day?’ and she leaves a Fish in charge of the children? Sounds like a case for social services. And the children let a stranger come into the house? What sort of message is that to send?”
Would any editor today take Cat in the Hat as is?
“Sales and marketing departments are worried something might offend somebody, or that a child might copy something in a book and their parents will sue the publisher.”
It appears these judgments are being made based on the fears noted. Everything today is affected by fear of litigation. Thanks for the interesting article, John. Shows it’s not just the U.S. with this mindset.
This doesn’t come as any surprise when one of the books on the Best Sellers List is “A Dangerous Book for Boys” which shows kids how to do such crazy stuff as build treehouses and go-carts. Gee, I wonder why our kids are suffering from rampant obesity? As someone who was raised on a farm playing at “danerous” stuff all the time, I fiind the whole situation maddening and sad.