It's the usual eclectic developments from Soft Skull Press and our childrens and YA imprint Red Rattle Books. From ARMING AMERICA, which has the dubious honor of moving up one place to #3 on the ALA's List of Most Challenged Books, to great School Library Jounal reviews for HEY KIDZ BUY THIS BOOK and BEND DON'T SHATTER, a great article on Red Rattle Books in the Westchester Journal-News, and our usual We-love-you-would-you-like-some-free-books offers...
Thaks to everyone who came by to say hello and Mid-Winter ALA and look forward to seeing you in Chicago...
1. ARMING AMERICA: The Origins of a National Gun Culture. I'm sure the controversy over this book is not news to you, but what might be news is that Soft Skull issued a revised edition of the book, correcting the genuine errors in the book (but not correcting the non-errors!) The author also wrote a pamphlet explaining what he did and did not change which can be downloaded here.
http://www.softskull.com/files/weighed_even_balance.pdf
2. SLJ on "Hey Kidz, Buy This Book" by Anne Elizabeth Moore
School Library Journal (Wednesday, December 01, 2004):
Gr 8 Up-Moore believes that "kidz" need to "mediate their media" in order to avoid being sucked into the parallel universe of measured falsehoods and mindless trivia that is commercial communications today. In this funny, feisty, and useful handbook, she begins by simply reminding readers that anytime they see a brand name, in any context, it's an advertisement. Once readers' baseline media-awareness levels have been tweaked, she outlines ways in which advertisers attempt to manipulate people, explaining that advertising certainly isn't "cool," but should not be dismissed as merely an inevitable annoyance. Instead, she suggests that it's a demonstrably negative force in the lives of individuals and society as a whole and provides readers with strategies and resources for fighting back against advertisers and Big Media. As is true with her prose style, her suggested methods for corporate confrontation and consumer consciousness-raising sometimes cross the fine line that separates the lively from the loopy. While many of the activist tactics outlined are prankish, Moore is careful to warn readers about forms of demonstration that might be dangerous or illegal. She's less careful about writing for her audience; unfortunately, her language and humor are not always age-appropriate for preteens. Libraries looking for a more balanced treatment of the topic that's actually suitable for all "kidz" should consider Shari Graydon's Made You Look: How Advertising Works and Why You Should Know (Annick, 2003).-Jeffrey Hastings, Highlander Way Middle School, Howell, MI Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
3. SLJ on Bend, Don't Shatter: Poets on the Beginning of Desire, edited by T. Cole Rachel and Rita D. Costello
School Library Journal (Saturday , January 01, 2005):
Gr 8 Up-Created with the intent of addressing "what it means to come of age as gay, lesbian, transgender, or totally confused and freaked out," this rich collection brings together 59 poems replete with GLBT teenage angst, confusion, fear, titillation, and joy. The style of the poetry varies widely from hip-hop rhythm to more classical cadences, and because these selections were penned by adults (some of whom are well-known poets) relating their adolescent experiences, the quality of the writing is above average for the most part. One disappointment, however, is the underrepresentation of the lesbian voice-only about a third of the offerings were written by women. Still, as is seen in these lines from Ron Palmer's "The Logic of Queerness"-"Finally,/I let all the seeds grow, grow, and grow/Until they kept growing and covered me with ivy so strong/And vibrant and unique that it became my reason for living./The seed that began inside me finally taught me to sing"-many of these poems speak to all queer teens and will be a source of inspiration and empowerment for an often misunderstood and estranged population.-Betty S. Evans, Southwest Missouri State University, Springfield Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Perfect for April National Poetry Month!
4. Freebies!
Before we launch into telling you what WE have for you for free, let us remind you that March is Small Press Month! To request a free promotional poster, click here:
http://www.smallpress.org/events/spm/default.asp#free
And for the Small Press Center's Six Things to do for Small Press Month For Bookstores & Libraries, click here:
http://www.smallpress.org/events/spm/suggestions1.asp
OK, so now to Soft Skull Freebies!
A. Our tiny indy press marketing budget limits the number of ARC's we can create for a 500pp book, but that 500pp book, "Oh Pure and Radiant Heart," is truly breath-taking. (And it features a librarian as its chief protagonist.) But in order to try to whet folks whistles, we created a mini-ARC, the first 150 pages. Oh Pure and Radiant Heart plucks the three scientists who were key to the invention of the atom bomb—Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard and Enrico Fermi—as they watch history's first mushroom cloud rise over the desert on July 16th, 1945...and places them down in modern-day Santa Fe. One by one, the scientists are spotted by a shy librarian who becomes convinced of their authenticity. Entranced, bewildered, overwhelmed by their significance as historical markers on the one hand, and their peculiar personalities on the other, she, to the dismay of her husband, devotes herself to them. Soon the scientists acquire a sugar daddy—a young pothead millionaire from Tokyo—as they commence plans (at Szilard's insistence, with Oppenheimer's acquiescence and to the chagrin of Fermi) to launch a new movement for global nuclear disarmament. To request our mini-ARC, e-mail publicity@softskull.com with "OP&RH" in the subject line, and your address in the body of the e-mail.
B. A poster for "The Sleeping Father" by Matthew Sharpe, the independent hit of 2004 after it was selected by Susan Isaacs for the TODAY SHOW Book Club. It has been picked by Norwalk and New Canaan CT for a One Book, One Community and we created posters to celebrate this selection. E-mail publicity@softskull.com with "Sleeping Father poster" in the subject line and your address in the body of the text.
C. Some more poetry for National Poetry Month: We've released a 10th anniversary edition of Lee Ranaldo's ROAD MOVIES (the Sonic Youth musician's collection of poetry written while touring America and Europe in the 1980's) and have copies of the now out-of-print edition which we'd love to give away. E-mail publicity@softskull.com with "Road Movies" in the subject line and your address in the body of the text.
5. And now for that great article...
<http://www.thejournalnews.com/newsroom/021305/e0413redrattle.html>;
RED DIAPER READERS
By M.A. TURNER
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: February 13, 2005)
My 15-month-old son and I do not share the exact same literary tastes. He, for instance, feels that if you've read one Austen novel, you've essentially read them all; I feel the same way about barnyard lift-the-flap books.
But we're both big fans of a sweet little picture book called "Everywhere Babies." He was hooked the second he plucked it off the bookstore shelf; it features his favorite protagonists (babies) engaging in his favorite pastimes (talking to animals, rubbing food in one's own hair, being naked). I was sold after we got home from the bookstore and gave it a proper read. There, on the page about babies eating, among the illustrations of highchair flingers and sippie-cup spillers, was something I hadn't realized was absent from just about every other baby book until I saw it here: a picture of a mother breastfeeding her baby.
Then, on our second read-through (my son is a believer in the immediate encore), I realized that those were two mommies rocking that other little baby. And, a few pages later, in a crowded street scene, those were two men walking arm in arm and, a few feet ahead of them, a white mommy and an Asian daddy cuddling their kid.
There was no heavy-handed text about valuing all families or the superiority of "mommy's milk," no jacket copy from the publisher applauding itself for putting out a book celebrating diversity or natural parenting. Just straightforward little images that spoke volumes. Of course some babies have two mommies, or two daddies, it says matter of factly. Of course families don't all have to be the same color. Of course it's normal for women to breastfeed their babies.
"Everywhere Babies," I realized, was my son's first politically subversive book (and if you don't think breast-feeding vs. bottle-feeding is a political issue ... well, that's another story).
Am I reading too much into this little cardboard-paged book? Maybe.
But don't fool yourself: Kids' books are filled with all kinds of cultural messages, starting with messages about the importance of consumerism. (Also another story. Let's just leave it at one title I recently came across in the kids' section: "The M&M's Brand Chocolate Candies Counting Board Book.")
Less blatant — and, in theory, more palatable — are the books that set out to teach that amorphous notion: values. The political, of course, has weighed in, and I'm not just talking about creationist homeschool textbooks or kiddie Bible stories — more mainstream titles, like William Bennett's "Children's Book of Virtues" and Lynne Cheney's patriotic-themed books have been big sellers.
And for the hybrid-driving, Whole Foods-shopping family, there are the direct descendants of "Free To Be You and Me," touchy-feely books like Katie Couric's "The Brand New Kid" (about "the need for tolerance," in the words of her publisher) and Jamie Lee Curtis' "I'm Gonna Like Me: Letting Off a Little Self-Esteem." (Interestingly, celebrity authors tend to cluster in the self-esteem-boosting genre. Hmm.) The problem is, too often, these books are heavy-handed, cloying, just plain icky.
"There are plenty of childrens' book publishers who are producing material that is designed to encourage children to not be racist, to not be homophobic, to respect and acknowledge difference and that sort of thing," says Richard Nash, publisher of the Brooklyn-based Soft Skull Press. "But an awful lot of them are so well-meaning, we thought, as to not be effective."
Last year, Soft Skull decided to try to rectify that, with a new children's book imprint called Red Rattle. It was a logical fit: Soft Skull already publishes thought-provoking, politically progressive and socially aware books for adults; Red Rattle aims to do the same for kids and teens.
In truth, Soft Skull was reaching young readers before it ever started trying. "We kind of noticed that a number of our books, without any kind of real effort on our part, were actually starting to reach what's called 'young adults,'" says Nash. They included "The Haiku Year," a collection of poetry written by a group of friends (including, it no doubt helped, R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe) and William Upski Wimsatt's "Bomb the Suburbs" and "No More Prisons."
The secret of the books' success with young readers, Nash suspects: "We're not trying to publish books to appeal to them. We're just publishing books we like, and out of that particular process, we end up publishing books they like."
Red Rattle (the name is a play on "red diaper baby") is more conscious of its target audience — because, its mission statement points out, the rest of the media certainly are: "Children are being thrust into society at earlier and earlier ages. They are bombarded by words and images that tell them what to buy, eat, wear, and think. Disney, Nike, Sony and Viacom are all vying for a piece of a child's mind and it is time they were offered the tools to fight back. … Red Rattle Books exists to provide today's children with the tools that will enable them to critically examine the society in which they are growing up, a society that threatens to define their identities for them."
Red Rattle promises to avoid the traps that many producers of kids' media fall into — the virtuous and the vacuous alike — like talking down to its audience, drawing with too broad strokes and connecting all the dots for them. Red Rattle vows to entertain, not preach; to "be instructive but … not instruct"; to inspire young readers to ask questions rather than feed them answers.
"You'll never create an enlightened person by telling them what to think," Nash says.
Red Rattle's first release was Brian Gage's "The Saddest Little Robot," whose deceptively simple plot — a homely, outcast robot finds adventures in the big world — is informed by "1984" and "Brave New World," market theories and the civil rights movement. Finding appropriate works for fiction for Red Rattle is a particular challenge, Nash says. "In a sense, all great children's' fiction is subversive. Roald Dahl is subversive. William Steig is subversive. I think every publisher wants that kind of stuff."
It's been somewhat easier to find non-fiction works. Soft Skull tries to distinguish itself from other, older progressive publishers — Seven Stories, South End Press — by being less orthodox, more practical. The strategy makes even more sense with kids' literature, Nash says. Red Rattle, he notes, could have easily fallen into a predictable trap. "You're not preaching to the choir, because they're not the choir yet. But you're preaching to them like they are the choir. Or you're trying to make them into the choir that you can then preach to. We wanted to be more tool-oriented.
A prime example: One of Red Rattle's first nonfiction titles, Anne Elizabeth Moore's "Hey Kidz, Buy This Book!," introduces young readers to the ways big corporations have taken over their lives and suggests practical strategies for fighting back — from pirate radio and 'zines to pickets and street theater. Coming up is a how-to book for skateboarders — how to deal with anti-skating laws, how to get a skate park built in your town.
The idea, Nash says, is to teach kids how to be activists using an issue that's important to them — not an issue that well-meaning adults think should be important to them. "Some of them will just use it to create a skate park," he says. "Others might, five years down the road, use it to create a community garden. Others might use it to start a union. Who knows?"
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