After 100 years, has the Newbury Children's Literature Prize been weak?

In March this year, the Beijing News Children's Book (WeChat ID: xjbkids) tracked the 2022 Kate Greenaway Award and Carnegie Award, the International Hans Christian Andersen Prize, the Lindgren Memorial Award and the German Youth Literature Award. Some of these awards are for picture books, some are for children's book creators, and some only select children's and adolescent literature.

No matter which country the picture books that are newly awarded or shortlisted, there are always some that have already been introduced in China, such as the 6 illustrators shortlisted for the Hans Christian Andersen Award have introduced their picture books in China before, which even caused a round of speculation from children's book publishing institutions before the final winner was announced, and they predicted who would spend this year's award. Relatively speaking, the awards or finalists of children's and adolescent literature are less interesting, and there are almost no Chinese editions that have been introduced in advance.

On the cover of the English edition of "Watercress", the right side is centered on the "Newbury Children's Literature Award" medal.

But on the other hand, there are many imported versions of children's literature in China, and often use "awards" as marketing gimmicks. This seems to indicate that children's literature is not "eligible" to be introduced until it has won an award. Not only that, but even if they are all award-winning works, there are very few children's literature works that can eventually be introduced and published compared to picture books. Some publishers said in the video promotion that as long as you buy books according to the grand prize, it is not so simple.

Among the many "awards", the Newbury Children's Literature Award in the United States often appears in the promotional slogan of books. The award has been around for 100 years since the medal was first awarded in 1922. In January this year, the list of the 2022 Newberry Children's Literature Award was announced, and this article will start from the 5 works that have won the award, comb through the list of winning books in the past 5 years, and talk about the purpose of the award and the cultural considerations behind it. After 100 years of development, the Newbury Children's Literature Award seems to have formed a certain "routine".

Award-winning works with similar plots

2022 marks the 101st year of the Newbury Prize for Children's Literature, and after the winners are announced, a cursory look at the synopsis reveals what several of them have in common — the "death" narrative and the focus on minorities.

Winning entries for 2022.

Red, White and Whole has a plot of a mother suffering from leukemia and death; Too Bright to see revolves around the impact of her deceased uncle on the girl; in The Last Cuentista, the end of the comet crashing into The Earth is coming, and petra, the girl in the world who holds the last memory of mankind, Faced with a single choice between her parents and the cultural heritage of humanity, she chose the latter.

Not only this year's work, but also looking back at the 2021 Newberry Gold Medal winner Who you trap a tiger (tentatively translated as "When You Trap a Tiger", later abbreviated as "Tiger"), it is also a minority story of "death" narrative. The book's protagonist, Lily, lives with her adolescent sister with her mother (her father died in a car accident) and then moves to take care of her grandmother, who has cancer. Derived from Korean folklore, the tiger is a story that my grandmother told to my sisters since I was a child, and my grandmother once told them not to believe in tigers. However, the tiger suddenly appears and tells Lily that he can cure her grandmother's illness, provided that she needs her help to retrieve the bad story that was stolen by her grandmother. Growing up, from the original obscurity, Lily began to want to be seen, and wanted to take care of her grandmother with her own strength. After the end of the three stories, Lily still fails to stop the Death, but she gains more other powers.

Why are there similar story settings in the same award? But that's not all! Not just the same awards!

In March, two of Britain's awards for children and young people, the Carnegie Prize and the Kate Greenaway Prize, announced a short list for 2022, and the award's 2011 winning work A Monster Calls (Chinese edition introduced by Sunray Press, hereinafter referred to as "Monster") is also a "death" narrative. The book is about a boy, Connor' mother, who is seriously ill (her parents are divorced) and is forced to live with her grandmother, whom he does not like. The boy closed himself off because of his mother's illness and did not want outsiders to pity him because of his mother. Meanwhile, at 12:07 p.m., the monster arrives, claiming to have been summoned by Connor to exchange three of his own stories for one. Each story told by the monster is not a good ending in the traditional sense, but highlights the diversity of many things and blurs the boundaries between good and evil. In the fourth story, Connor's own story, he finally confronts his contradictions and chooses to face reality...

The two texts of "Tiger" and "Monster" are based on the main line of family members suffering from serious illness and death + the growth of the protagonist, and writing in the mode of monsters or tigers leading out of the story, so as to achieve the purpose of the protagonist's growth. For a more obvious comparison, let's look at the following table:

Although there are slight differences in the content of the two, such as "Monster" describes the deterioration of the mother's condition in detail, "Tiger" hastily introduces the mother's condition; "Monster" introduces the death of the mother relatively little, and "Tiger" writes the scene of the grandmother's death in detail, which is very touching; the theme of "Monster" is relatively single as a whole, and the story advances through Connor's psychological problems and conflicts with grandma, but more elements appear in "Tiger", in addition to advancing the main line of the article - the deterioration of grandma's condition, There are other branches such as grandma is still Korean (multi/Asian), sister has dyslexia, family relocation (facing a new environment and new ways of cultural shock), etc.

Through comparison, it is not difficult to find that the core and connotation of the story are strikingly similar to those of the two texts, whether from family members and their experiences, or the way they are written, and for a continuous reader, "Tiger" is difficult to surprise and satisfy, especially with the aura of the 2021 "Newberry Gold Award".

Diverse and diverse cultures

Looking further at the winning works of the 2022 Newbury Children's Literature Award, 4 of the 5 protagonists belong to ethnic minorities, and the authors strive to use multiculturalism as a carrier to show the inheritance and collision of cultures. If you expand the scope further, and list the 23 books that have won the Newbury Children's Literature Prize in the past five years, you will also find that many works are multicultural, including the aforementioned Tiger.

Winning entries for 2018-2021.

Among the 2022 winning entries, The Last Narrator and A Snake That Landed on Earth, oral stories of traditional Mexican stories told by grandmothers and aboriginal languages that need to be deciphered by great-great-grandmothers become the keys to the text, and they find the authenticity and source of life from ancient stories, which plays an important role in the events that drive the plot forward. By returning to tradition, the authors have also deeply excavated and passed on the history and culture of their own people.

Red, White and All (the Chinese edition has been introduced by XinXiyue) are based on the collision of Indian culture and Chinese culture and American culture, respectively, showing the inner struggle and wandering of a new generation of immigrants in two very different cultural atmospheres. Both authors use their own experiences as a model for their own experiences, describing their acceptance and abandonment of different cultures as second-generation immigrants.

The cover of the Chinese edition of "Watercress".

Growing up is also an eternal theme of children's literature. These works contain the protagonist's self-pursuit and identity in the process of growing up. No matter where the protagonists come from, what skin color they are, and what ideology they have in formative education, the 2022 Newberry Award-Winning Works invariably reflect their ignorance and exploration of themselves in the process of growing up.

For example, in "Glare", the author borrows the mouth of the protagonist Bug to express the confusion of many children in the process of growing up:

Many books say that it doesn't matter if you are different or not, you don't have to be like everyone else everywhere. Most importantly, be yourself. But these books never tell us who "we" are and how do we find ourselves? They take it for granted that the reader already knows who "themselves" are, and then find a random way to put "themselves" in.

Unfortunately, I don't know who "I" am. Maybe everyone is like this, maybe no one can explain who they are very firmly, probably before I find the "self" that really suits me, I have to try a bunch of different "selves".

Everyone's growth process is different, but it is like groping alone in the dark, like Bug mentioned, even if many books gently tell you to be yourself, but the question is, who is "yourself"? Only by knowing who "self" is and finding the right self can we finally become "myself" and be "myself".

Who is "I"? This is not only a problem that plagues the growth of children, but also the ultimate philosophical problem that has been difficult for countless philosophers to crack for thousands of years. Reading each children's literature is like going through a short journey in which the protagonist of the book finds his own position, which will more or less provide some thinking and help for readers.

Therefore, at first glance, the 2022 Newbery Children's Literature Awards, which are full of similar elements, still contain the comprehensive consideration of the judges. From dystopian science fiction, indigenous traditional culture, to the plight of Asian immigrants and attention to marginalized groups, from the reflection on the future of mankind, the ecological concern of man and nature, to the inheritance and promotion of traditional culture, and the struggle and integration of different cultures, each story has its own unique atmosphere, showing readers a new world with different forms.

Illustration of the inner page of Watercress.

Newbury Children's Literature Award and American Society

In the United States, the Newbury Medal has been a bellwether for the children's literature industry, and nearly every library and bookstore can easily find the winning bibliography. When the list is announced, the public rushes to buy them, and teachers will promptly include relevant books in the curriculum.

The Newberry Children's Literature Award, fully known as The John Newberry Medal, is designed in honor of the British bookseller John Newberry, established by the American Library Association's Children's Chapter, a branch of the American Library Institute, and is awarded primarily to children's literature that made outstanding contributions that year, subject to the fact that the book is published in commercial English by American publishers.

"It's not surprising that an eighteenth-century Englishman deserves such an Award in the United States, because Newberry is arguably the father of children's literature in both the United States and the United Kingdom."

Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach wrote in the preface to his famous early American children's book bibliography:

"The first person in the history of American children's literature deservedly belonged to the famous British publisher John Newbury... Because it was the children's books he published that caused imitation and piracy across the country, he injected fresh and real power and vitality into the development of children's books. These books are written specifically for children and are suitable for children, which are significantly different from books for adults. ”

Let's take a closer look at some of the Newbury Prize's awarding rules:

1． The award is given to the author who made the most outstanding contributions to American children's literature published in the United States in the previous year. As long as it is an original work, there are no special requirements for the nature of the book.

U.S. publishing, i.e. books published in countries other than the United States are not eligible;

The Commission considers all forms of writing – fictional, non-fiction, poetry, etc.; reprints and compilations are not eligible;

The book should be aimed at children to meet their ability to understand and appreciate;

Children are specifically 14 years of age and younger.

2． The award is limited to U.S. citizens or residents of the United States

Residents are specifically people who have settled in the United States (established status), distinguishing them from temporary visitors.

It can be seen that the Newbury Children's Literature Award is actually only a children's literature award in the United States, because of the long time of establishment of the award, the high quality of the award-winning works, it has gradually entered our vision. Since the first medal was awarded in 1922, publicity around the award has greatly stimulated the production mechanism of American children's literature. As the prestige of the award expanded, it was no longer left alone, but instead exchanged for economic value and inextricably linked to politics. The award has also helped some booksellers and small publishing houses survive, and they have also been shaped into "classics" and guaranteed the length of their lives.

But the Newbury Children's Literature Prize along the way has not been a smooth one, and there are endless doubts about it. The United States, a melting pot of multiculturalism, had few books that exhibited racial diversity until the 1970s, and its award-winning authors were almost all white. It wasn't until after the civil rights movement sparked social and political unrest that African-American writers Virginia Hamilton and Mildred D. Taylor, respectively, made their debut with the remarkable M.C Higgins. C. Higgins, the Great, won in 1975, Chinese) and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (1977, Chinese edition). Since then, the award has finally given more recognition to people of color, and has improved slightly in terms of displaying multiculturalism.

Meghan Valerio of Kent State University's analysis of the Newbery Award-winning works of the 1950-1959 and 2000-2010 decades found that through 50 years of development, although the Newbery Children's Literature Prize seems to have made great progress, some stories involving racial issues are dominated by the ideology of white people, and children of color cannot find resonance in the relevant texts.

So, similarly, can white authors write about their plight like black or Asian authors? Can a person who can hear write about the demands of a hearing impaired person? Can the middle class perfectly interpret life at the bottom? Even with sincere and kind intentions, how much support will the so-called "oppressors" get to speak out for the "oppressed, minorities"?

Some scholars have also pointed out that the so-called American tradition in the Newbury Award Rules is tacitly recognized as white, Protestant, and middle-class, omitting the multicultural and racial background of the United States, and having limited representation of feminist and postcolonial culture.

Progress and limitations of the winning works

In the face of criticism, the Newbury Children's Literature Prize is clearly improving. Of the 23 award-winning works in the past five years, 14 have protagonists whose protagonists are girls, while 17 works involving ethnic minorities and 3 that deal with the protagonist's health problems.

List of award-winning works for the past five years.

Although the protagonist of "Tiger" is a minority (Korean), the world depicted between the lines is full of Korean culture and characteristics, but if you put it under the overall American social environment, you will find that it does not involve the survival of Asians, such as racial discrimination, integration difficulties, etc. In other words, in this book, the "multicultural elements" brought by the "Asian" label do not have much impact on the main story line, and these elements are relatively independent of the text. It's like a decorative sticker that on the surface makes the story seem more polished, but when the decoration is easily unveiled, the essence is clear. And a good story should be like an entangled tree root, each seemingly unrelated branch line, but in fact provides the trunk with the nourishment of life.

Other confusing points include:

Why do most of the award-winning works show the beautiful vision and hope of immigrants for the American Dream in a poor, dilapidated, and struggling living environment? Is this stereotyping and discrimination against ethnic minorities?

Why is it that the history of black slave emancipation in the 2021 award-winning work "Box: Henry Brown Sends Himself to Freedom" is emphasized over and over again in today's long-term emancipation of black slaves?

If class barriers are no longer strong and class solidification is loosened, why would parents spend so much money sending their children to private schools with relatively few multicultural schools in the 2020 award-winning work "My First Year in a Private School" (the Chinese edition has been introduced by CITIC Publishing Group) ?

"My First Year in Private School" Chinese edition.

In "Glare", why do single mothers with children have to face a financial crisis, compared to partners with husbands who can easily get through the difficulties, is this discrimination against women?

Is the accumulation of these elements the author's intention to cater to the public, to reduce the criticism of public opinion, for the so-called "political correctness", or because of "defamiliarization", which makes us more sensitive to relatively unfamiliar ideologies? We don't know.

But it is undeniable that the Newbury Children's Literature Prize in the process of development is indeed continuing to absorb the criticism of public opinion, pay attention to the opinions of the public and make changes, and when selecting works, it is also trying to innovate and be as diverse as possible, for example, "My First Year in Private School" is an image novel, which is the first time that the award has been awarded to an image novel.

As the world's earliest children's literature award, in most cases, the winning works are still worthy of the name, and there are comprehensive considerations in terms of audience angle, genre, topic and so on. However, the award is only a prize in the United States, and its main purpose is to introduce excellent literary works suitable for American children to read in combination with the national conditions of the United States, and it is one of the many international children's literature awards. It can indeed provide a good reference for many parents when purchasing literary works for their children, but because the background of the times, ideologies, customs and habits are different, not every book is suitable for Chinese children to read, as a reader, it should not be regarded as a golden rule because of the authoritative certification it has obtained.

Liu Xuyuan once mentioned the benefits of "awards" in his article "Looking at Awards with a Sober Eye". He believes that the award is not only an encouraging opportunity for authors and a goal to learn from, but also a positive recommendation and reference for readers and researchers, but it cannot be used as the only criterion for book selection. He warned the public: "Whether it is an award or a judge, it is broad and broad, and literary criticism is the same reason, which is related to the trade-offs of different angles." Therefore, we have to keep a clear eye on all this, which is the biggest gain. ”

Resources

1.LaRocca，Rajani.Red, White and Whole. Quill Tree Books, 2021.

2.Lukoff, Kyle. Too Bright to See. DialBooks, 2021.

3.Strauss, Valerie. Critics SayNewbery-Winning Books Are Too Challenging for Young Readers, Washington Post,December 16, 2008.

4.The Newbery & Caldecott Awards: aguide to the medal and honor books. Association for Library Service toChildren, American Library Association (2018 ed.).

5.Townsend, John Rowe. Written forChildren: an Outline of English-Language Children's Literature. 6th Americaned., Scarecrow Press, 1996.

6.The Newbery & Caldecott Awards: aguide to the medal and honor books. Association for Library Service toChildren, American Library Association (2009 ed.).

7.English, James F. The Economy ofPrestige: Prizes, Awards, and the Circulation of Cultural Value. Cambridge:Harvard UP, 2005. Print

8.Valerio, Meghan. Enough is enough! Timeto rethink the prestige of the Newbery Medal. The dragon Lode, vol.38 No.1,2019

9.Sara L. Schwebel& Jocelyn Van Tuyl.Dust Off the Gold Medal Rediscovering Children’s Literature at the NewberyCentennial. New York, NY: Routledge,2022.

10.Murphy, E. The archive award, or thecase of de grummond’s gold. In Kidd, K. B. & Thomas, J. T. (Eds.), PrizingChildren’s Literature: The Cultural Politics of Children’s Book Awards, 2017.

11.Bittner, R. & Superle, M. The lastbastion of aes-thetics? Formalism and the rhetoric of excellence in children’sliterary awards. In Kidd, K. B. & Thomas, J. T. (Eds.), Prizing Children’sLiterature: The Cultural Politics of Children’s Book Awards . New York, NY:Routledge,2017.

12. Liu Xuyuan. Looking at the awards with a sober eye[J].Editorial Journal,2014,(01):60-62.

The caption is the cover of the 2022 Newbury Children's Literature Award-winning work "Watercress", and the Chinese edition has been introduced by Xinxi Reading

Author 丨 Xu Qianqian

Editor 丨 Shen Chan He An'an

Proofreading 丨 Liu Baoqing