No To Age Banding

Some of my favorite authors (and yours, I'm sure) including Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Phillip Pullman and Eoin Colfer have gathered in protest of publishers' intent to Age Range children's books in UK bookstores. And the gatherers keep a comin' as they have setup a website, No To Age Banding whereby one may add their name to the ever increasing list.

Canada, obviously has been doing this already for quite some time but I have to tell you, it really gets my goat. And for many of the same reasons that the above distinguished writers mention at No To Age Banding. Amongst them are:

• Each child is unique, and so is each book. Accurate judgments about age suitability are impossible, and approximate ones are worse than useless.
• Children easily feel stigmatized, and many will put aside books they might love because of the fear of being called babyish. Other children will feel dismayed that books of their ‘correct’ age-group are too challenging, and will be put off reading even more firmly than before.
• Age-banding seeks to help adults choose books for children, and we're all in favour of that; but it does so by giving them the wrong information. It’s also likely to encourage over-prescriptive or anxious adults to limit a child's reading in ways that are unnecessary and even damaging.
• Everything about a book is already rich with clues about the sort of reader it hopes to find – jacket design, typography, cover copy, prose style, illustrations. These are genuine connections with potential readers, because they appeal to individual preference. An age-guidance figure is a false one, because it implies that all children of that age are the same.
• Children are now taught to look closely at book covers for all the information they convey. The hope that they will not notice the age-guidance figure, or think it unimportant, is unfounded.
• Writers take great care not to limit their readership unnecessarily. To tell a story as well and inclusively as possible, and then find someone at the door turning readers away, is contrary to everything we value about books, and reading, and literature itself.

It is also confounding for an author such as myself whose central character is 14. Does this make my book a Middle Reader? Tween? Young Adult? Or, worse, in most bookstores here there are only two categories: 9-12 year olds and young adult. As most of the time my book is placed in the 9-12, many readers the same age as Root don't even get to meet her 'cause they won't read something they have "apparently" outgrown. Uggghhh! It drives me crazy!

Perhaps I should begin a Canadian Anti-Banding Quest. Hmmm. But in the meantime, I will most certainly add my name to the UK list and I urge you to do the same. Better yet, call the stores and ask them to renovate their limited labelling system.

I'd love to hear "tales of the age-range shelves " from you readers.

K