There are moves afoot in the British publishing industry to introduce Age Bands to be prominently displayed on books. This is not an initiative that gains much support among authors, librarians, educators...or indeed readers.
Author Philip Pullman has issued a statement decrying the notion, which has so far received the support of over three and half thousand people, among them over 700 authors. I would like to add my voice to that rejection of an ill-founded attempt at a control that is not required and could only do more harm than good.
Do you remember when you read your first proper grown-up book? Or what it was? Or how old you were?
I've always claimed that mine was "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (later made into the movie Bladerunner) when I was nine or ten years old. It was borrowed from the SciFi shelves of our local branch library on my mam's ticket. As a junior member, I wasn't allowed to take out anything other than children's books. Dad had other ideas.
His greatest gift to his children has been to teach us to love books. It's a gift he commenced by taking our fingers through the one-sentence-per-page Ladybird books, building up words; a gift he expanded by reading a story to us every night when he wasn't working; a gift he gave us the freedom of by enrolling us the library as soon as we could write our own name (the pre-requisite for membership); a gift he enhanced yet further by allowing us to wander the adult section and by breaking the rules to take out those books we really wanted.
Of course we wouldn't have understood everything we read. Big words, and even bigger ideas. But wasn't that the point? We had dictionaries to look up the words, and encyclopaedia to explore the ideas. And every little thing we read made us want to read more...to learn more...explore more.
Thinking about it now, I wonder if I am right about Androids. Was it really my first adult book? By then I had already read "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", "A Christmas Carol", "Don Quixote" (in English translation obviously). Were any of these written specifically as children's books? Or were they just books?
Shortly after Androids would come Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, occasional wanderings into the Rubiyat. This isn't because I was a particularly precocious child. Alongside these classics I was also still reading Tales of Robin Hood, The Secret Seven, even Enid Blyton's "Circus" and "Amelia Jane" series.
Now in my mid-forties I still read with a passion, and just as eclectically, and although not a parent, I care deeply that every child should have the same rights of access that I had.
The notion that this right of access should be limited, even subliminally, by the addition of an age-banding to books needs to be quashed. What good does it serve?
Of course, as a good parent you will not want your child to be reading unsuitable material but the absolute truth is that you cannot stop them doing so. You have no greater control over what is read behind the bike sheds or in the school-gym changing room than my parents did. Horrible material will continue to be passed from hand to hand. The best defence you can give your child against this is to turn them into a discerning reader.
I grew quickly to learn that I simply did not (do not) enjoy horror. It took a little longer to realise that sex could be written about in a way that actually is scintillating rather than simply crude, but no time at all to discover that crude left me cold.
The simple fact is that a book will not hold the attention of a child that is not ready for it. The nature of a written tale is that we have to actively engage with it. If it is pitched too far above the reader, that engagement is not possible, boredom ensues and the book is laid aside. A child that has learnt the real pleasure of reading by reading within their limits and pushing those limits at their own pace will self-select what they can handle. The responsibility of parents and educators and wider society is to bring them up in such a way that we can trust them to do so: not to put artificial boundaries around their learning.
Putting an age bracket on a book can have unintended consequences. Reluctant readers, or those with specific learning difficulties or challenges, may be further discouraged by having a young "Age" denominator screaming from the cover at anyone who catches them with a book. We all know how cruel children can be towards each other: do we really want to give them one more weapon with which to taunt and bully?
Then there is the question of who, exactly, will decide what age a book is aimed at or suitable for? What qualifications would they need to be able to make such a determination? And how much flexibility would they allow themselves?
Let us take a couple of classic examples: Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" and Pullman's "Dark Materials". Two fantasy trilogies of great depth and academic & political insight. Or a couple of fairy stories. Depending upon your point of view.
Which is entirely the point.
Both Tolkien and Pullman can be read as simple fairy stories, which quite young children will enjoy at that level. Older children will begin to grapple with some of the ideas that are fundamental to each of the tales, but only adults will fully understand all of the implications that lay buried within them. These are books that not only can be read by people of any age, but should be read by most of us at more than one age. Going back to texts of this complexity again and again enables us to discover more about the work, more about the context in which they were written and ultimately more about ourselves and the changes in our personal world-view. We risk denying tomorrow's adults that opportunity if we discourage them from reaching for works they almost certainly will not fully understand at this point.
Had I a tendency to towards "conspiracy-theoretics" I might worry that age-banding is a surreptitious form of censorship: one which seeks to deny access to potentially uncomfortable ideas. To take a further historical example: consider Uncle Tom's Cabin. A more incendiary, political tale could not possibly have hit the shelves when Harriet Beecher Stowe decided to release her treatise on the nature of slavery in America's deep south. A hundred years later it is read as a children's story book. It is no more nor less a tale for children now than it was then. Or what about Orwell's "Animal Farm"? Clearly the powers that be will understand the serious political messages behind any similar books being published today, and will equally obviously not want to pollute the minds of our young folk with such radical (and therefore wrong?) ideas. Mark them as "Adult" and keep them away from impressionable young minds.
How long before an advisory notice, becomes a compulsory one? Will we have to produce evidence of age to buy the latest Stephen King?
Most bizarre of all in this sorry tale is the fact that the initiative to label (libel?) books in this way appears to come from the publishers. At a time when we are led to believe that the printed book is under threat from all manner of more inclusive access technologies it seems counter-productive to install a further barrier to sales.
I may not be a parent but I do occasionally buy books for young people. I do so by thinking about the individual child, and what I know of their interests and abilities, and by picking up books and trying to decide whether I think they would enjoy them. Would I want to risk ruining a relationship with a nine-year-old by presenting them with something which said 5to7 yrs - even if I just KNEW they'd actually be thrilled with it, but for the label?
The labelling will not make buying books for children easier, it will make it incredibly more difficult.
I was brought up never to judge a book by its cover. Why all of a sudden, should I now be expected to do so? Please, publishers, don't do this. Books are doorways into wonderful worlds, awesome worlds, sometimes indeed grotesque and gruesome worlds that we cannot escape form quick enough...but those doors should remain tantalising ajar for every reader of whatever age.
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For further information on the fight against the age banding of books go to: www.notoagebanding.com
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