And yet, for all the messiness of their decision-making processes, Notables and BBYA have extremely good track records. The primary reason that was so confused by the ugliness of the panel discussions is that, in general, well-meaning but ultimately failed books like The Hollow Kingdom notwithstanding, they usually pick books which have popular appeal in the target age group and also have high literary quality.
I find Quick Picks to be suffering from a certain amount of split personality disorder. I've never bought into the "as long as they are reading" argument, and I don't think that it's YALSA's place to give awards to books simply because they're popularly read; if librarians need that information, they can turn to best-seller lists. Given that, I think that a Quick Pick should follow the maxim: First, don't suck. And most of them don't -- in fact, most of them are extremely high-quality books. (That DIY Girl book, for example, is fantastic! Humorous ass kissing aside, one area in which Quick Picks excels is in nonfiction and informational books. The other awards, which do focus on so-called literary quality, often end up bypassing the kind of entertaining anti-quality informational books which can be extremely useful for readers but which are never going to meet the particular set of standards that the other awards, even the Siebert, need to aspire to. On the other hand, given that there was a time not that long ago when people felt analyzing the "literary quality" of any informational books wasn't meaningless procedure, and then along came Russell Freedman and we all taught ourselves new ways to read, it's completely conceivable that the accepted definitions of quality will grow again to give us standards allowing us to recognize the best of those genres which are currently largely excluded: how to books and reference books, for example.)
no subject
I find Quick Picks to be suffering from a certain amount of split personality disorder. I've never bought into the "as long as they are reading" argument, and I don't think that it's YALSA's place to give awards to books simply because they're popularly read; if librarians need that information, they can turn to best-seller lists. Given that, I think that a Quick Pick should follow the maxim: First, don't suck. And most of them don't -- in fact, most of them are extremely high-quality books. (That DIY Girl book, for example, is fantastic! Humorous ass kissing aside, one area in which Quick Picks excels is in nonfiction and informational books. The other awards, which do focus on so-called literary quality, often end up bypassing the kind of entertaining anti-quality informational books which can be extremely useful for readers but which are never going to meet the particular set of standards that the other awards, even the Siebert, need to aspire to. On the other hand, given that there was a time not that long ago when people felt analyzing the "literary quality" of any informational books wasn't meaningless procedure, and then along came Russell Freedman and we all taught ourselves new ways to read, it's completely conceivable that the accepted definitions of quality will grow again to give us standards allowing us to recognize the best of those genres which are currently largely excluded: how to books and reference books, for example.)
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