Whose Stories Matter, Anyway?
Welcome to this week’s edition of Stacks & Spoons, a weekly substack for bookish girls, gays and theys, written by author Jen Wilde. If you enjoy it, make sure to subscribe here.
What was the book that made you a reader?
I love hearing people answer this question. The way their eyes light up at the memory. The smile that grows on their face as they start to talk about The Book, the one that sparked their love of reading. Often, it’s a book from childhood.
For me, it was the Goosebumps series by R. L. Stine. The first Goosebumps book I read was Why I’m Afraid Of Bees, which I read so much the pages curled.
For Otis Chandler, one of the co-founders of Goodreads, it was the Hardy Boys series. According to the note on the Goodreads About page, he discovered the books in second grade and never looked back. The opening line on the About page is powerful:
The right book in the right hands can change the world.
Co-founder Elizabeth Khuri Chandler (who is married to Otis) fondly spoke about her childhood love of reading in an interview on USC Today, “I still remember the first time I went to the library when I was 5. They said I could take anything I wanted, and I remember thinking, Oh my God … this is an amazing place.”
It was their mutual love of reading and desire for an online book community that inspired the married couple to launch Goodreads. Thanks to the libraries and bookstores that gave them access to books as children, they became lifelong readers. They grew up to create the world’s largest community for readers and writers to share their reading recs.
In 2013, Amazon bought Goodreads for a reported $150 million. Since then, Goodreads hasn’t changed much. The site functionality is clumsy and outdated, it doesn’t seem to be moderated at all, and everything is very, very beige. Amazon has only added features that make it easier to spend money while they mine the reviews, trends, and whatever data they want from the millions of users.
So, over time, the site they built with so much thought and care seems to have forgotten that children still read. Publishing seems to be forgetting that, too.
Maybe I’m too much of a Nora Ephron fan, but this whole situation makes me wonder if anyone learned anything from You’ve Got Mail?
So, Amazon swooped in, and over the years, Goodreads has slowly pushed kidlit further and further out. The latest example is the removal of Children’s & Middle Grade books as a category in the Goodreads Choice Awards (along with Graphic Novels and Poetry.) Seems counterintuitive for a website devoted to readers to exclude entire age groups and categories, no?
Goodreads also added a new category, Romantasy. I have no problem with this. I don’t think it’s a case of Romantasy replacing the other categories – surely there is enough room for all of them.
In the statement announcing the changes, Goodreads seemed to attribute the removals to a lack of popularity. The Goodreads Choice Awards is a popularity contest, after all. But last year, Heartstopper won the Best Graphic Novels & Comics category. How can a category go from naming a global bestselling graphic novel-turned-hugely-popular-Netflix-series as winner one year, to being eliminated the next?
Obviously, I am biased on this issue (my debut Middle Grade book, PAIGE NOT FOUND, comes out in 2024). If this was the only roadblock I’ve hit as a queer, disabled, nonbinary author, maybe I wouldn’t be so disheartened. But I’ve already had to fight against my own publisher to stop them from segregating diverse children’s books at the Scholastic Book Fair. I’ve already seen book challenges and bans rise and rise and rise. I’ve already seen libraries, bookstores, and Drag Story hours get bomb threats just for wanting kids to have access to books like mine. I’ve already seen Barnes & Noble limit which Middle Grade and YA books it will sell in stores – their choice not to sell my latest queer YA novel on shelves killed my next book deal.
The decision to remove Children’s & Middle Grade books from the Goodreads Choice Awards speaks to a much larger issue, and feels like another way we are getting pushed aside. And when I say “we,” I mean kidlit authors and young readers. Being nominated or winning a Goodreads Choice Award can do wonders for a book. Not just for the author, who gets the kind of exposure most of us could only dream of, but for parents, teachers, and librarians who might be looking for the perfect book for a child. Why don’t Children’s & Middle Grade (or Poetry or Graphic Novels) authors deserve the same visibility as Young Adult or Romance?
I can’t say I’m surprised by this decision to remove entire categories and age groups from the awards. Just like I’m not surprised that most of the nominated books are by white, cishet, able-bodied authors. Goodreads is committed to being beige.
What’s most disheartening is that these awards are supposed to be representative of the reading habits of millions of users, so what does that say about the book community? What does it tell us about which books are getting the most visibility and marketing push from publishers? Which authors are getting the most lucrative book deals and why? And whose stories matter, anyway?
My local library here in Brooklyn just reopened after years of renovations. I visited on opening day and was thrilled to see so many families and children running around, bursting with excitement over the books. After the crushing Goodreads news, seeing rows and rows of brand-new library books for Children’s & Middle Grade readers gave me hope that capitalism hasn’t ruined it all yet. And it reminded me of the importance of choosing our local libraries and indie bookstores over greedy corporations like Amazon.
As I was writing this, NYC Mayor Eric Adams announced sweeping budget cuts to the New York Public Library system. As a result, public libraries across New York, Brooklyn, and Queens will be forced to close on Sundays. My local, newly reopened library is one of them. I’m fuming. Once again, it’s children who will be most hurt by this decision.
Children who read grow up to become adults who read.
Some even grow up to become writers, hoping that their little book might be The Book for someone one day, too.
Goodreads has lost their way, but they got this part right:
The right book in the right hands can change the world.
Have you contacted your reps today?
Flood their inboxes using this pre-written template by Jewish Voice for Peace.
Use the 5 Calls App to call your reps in Congress and the Senate. If you have phone anxiety (like me!) call after hours or on weekends to leave a voicemail. The app provides a script.
Find a protest to attend wherever you are in the world.
And remember to keep sharing and amplifying Palestinian voices on your social media! Don’t stop talking about Gaza.
None of us are free until all of us are free.
ICYMI…
Previously, on Stacks & Spoons:
Books Are Inherently Political.
Sorry, But Selena Gomez Is Wrong On This One