The cause of this war occurred in April, when the kid-lit wing of the Publishers Association announced plans to print a suggested reading age on all children’s books. This followed research apparently showing that many adults are wary of choosing junior volumes as gifts because of the risk of, say, giving a novel about an adolescent being hired as a drug mule to a sensitive eight-year-old.
Although it amounted to a radical change in the way that school-age books have been sold, the initiative attracted little coverage at the time. But now, six weeks later, like heroes and heroines suddenly awaking to their special powers, children’s writers, led by Pullman, have risen up against the plan to stamp a number on their jackets.
Let’s, for the moment, borrow the coolly neutral tone of a history textbook and try to summarize the claims of the competing factions. On the side of the age stickers is the fact that there is greater opportunity for confusion on the under-16 shelves than in adult fiction. Many authors — including Pullman and Jacqueline Wilson, another writer in a rage about age guidance — write different series aimed at infant and senior schoolers.
Another argument in favor is that other art forms have long steered material towards different birth dates: the cinematic system of certification and also the 9pm watershed for grown-up shows that is more or less observed by television broadcasters.
The contrary position, vigorously expressed by Pullman, is that literary development is hugely variable. There are columnists who claim to have been devouring War and Peace at six years old — while, routinely, there will be children in any classroom whose reading age will be a couple of years ahead of or behind the number of birthdays they’ve celebrated.
Pullman and Rowling, in particular, have demonstrated this elasticity of appeal. Her Harry Potter books seem genuinely to have achieved the old advertising dream of appealing to consumers from eight to 80, while he, although the Dark Materials trilogy would seem most suited to people in their early teens, has also found a precocious younger audience.
It’s clear that such catholicism might be nobbled by declaring the age at which stories should properly be absorbed, and it doesn’t take much imagination to predict what might happen to a 10-year-old spotted on the school bus with a book aimed at the seven to eight-year-old.
At the moment both sides seem unyielding. The Publishers Association insists that the number stickers will go on the front of books. And yet writers such as Pullman, Rowling and Wilson would clearly have the economic power to demand a retreat, backed by the threat of establishing a new, ageless publishing house.
In adjudicating between these views, my biggest concern is that the move by the Publishers Association seems to have been motivated more by commerce than morality. All its statements emphasize that, by guiding nervous buyers through the bewildering shelves, this system will result in more books being sold.
Yet, in other areas of the arts, age-badging has always been ethically driven and has accepted that income may fall as a result: more cinema tickets and DVDs would be sold if restrictions were not in place. Also, as beginner literature is one of the current growth areas in publishing, it’s really not clear that a sales drive is required — especially, as Pullman points out, one that may, in fact, suppress the market by discouraging adventurous reading.
The other worry, as with all forms of intervention between the audience and art, is who gets to set the standards. Shoe size can be empirically measured but, even beyond variations in reading age, there’s the problem of competing sensitivities.
Liberal and Christian parents, for instance, might differ greatly in their view of suitable reading for a 10-year-old. To avoid fuss or legal trouble, the age ranges seem likely to be drawn up cautiously, with further risk of infantilizing bright readers.
But, finally, the comparison with cinema is instructive in a particular way. It is now only with category 15 that the state begins to take an absolute stand on what people can see. The two lower categories — PG and 12A — leave it to the parents or guardians to make the decisions. Those rules seem to acknowledge that late teenagers are more homogenous in their reactions than younger children. So, on this basis, the existing system of children’s bookselling — in which a general, invisible PG certificate applies to all titles — might sensibly be left in place.
There is much evidence that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is sending soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — and is learning lessons for a future war against Taiwan. Until now, the CCP has claimed that they have not sent PLA personnel to support Russian aggression. On 18 April, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelinskiy announced that the CCP is supplying war supplies such as gunpowder, artillery, and weapons subcomponents to Russia. When Zelinskiy announced on 9 April that the Ukrainian Army had captured two Chinese nationals fighting with Russians on the front line with details
On a quiet lane in Taipei’s central Daan District (大安), an otherwise unremarkable high-rise is marked by a police guard and a tawdry A4 printout from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicating an “embassy area.” Keen observers would see the emblem of the Holy See, one of Taiwan’s 12 so-called “diplomatic allies.” Unlike Taipei’s other embassies and quasi-consulates, no national flag flies there, nor is there a plaque indicating what country’s embassy this is. Visitors hoping to sign a condolence book for the late Pope Francis would instead have to visit the Italian Trade Office, adjacent to Taipei 101. The death of
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), joined by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), held a protest on Saturday on Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei. They were essentially standing for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which is anxious about the mass recall campaign against KMT legislators. President William Lai (賴清德) said that if the opposition parties truly wanted to fight dictatorship, they should do so in Tiananmen Square — and at the very least, refrain from groveling to Chinese officials during their visits to China, alluding to meetings between KMT members and Chinese authorities. Now that China has been defined as a foreign hostile force,
On April 19, former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) gave a public speech, his first in about 17 years. During the address at the Ketagalan Institute in Taipei, Chen’s words were vague and his tone was sour. He said that democracy should not be used as an echo chamber for a single politician, that people must be tolerant of other views, that the president should not act as a dictator and that the judiciary should not get involved in politics. He then went on to say that others with different opinions should not be criticized as “XX fellow travelers,” in reference to
RSS