The "Problematic" Book Review

I tend to read loads of reviews before starting on a book. There're some genres I do not like, regardless, and would prefer to avoid them altogether. I don't want to be unsuspectingly ambushed. Online reviews are quick, succinct and to the point. I read a fair bit of reviews by Kirkus, and an October 23, 2017 article in The New Yorker that mentioned Kirkus warranted attention- Nathan Heller's 'Kirkus Reviews and the Plight of the "Problematic" Book Review'.

The article pointed out Kirkus's removal of a star of a book to be published in January 2018, Laura Moriarty's "American Heart", and revising the accompanying review. It apparently revised the review due to public concern about the "white savior narrative" of this book. I'm unfamiliar with both the writer and the book in question, and I veer away from young adult fiction. (Read other comments about the controversy here, here, and here.)

Kirkus says that the reviewer merely updated her assessment in a way that was "listening" to public complaint. Yet the controversy rattles on, especially because the emendation touches on a broader change, from late 2015, in how the magazine writes about children's and young-adult fiction. Reviews now explicitly note major characters' skin colors. Reviewrs of young readers are given special training to help "identify problematic tropes and representations," and the reviews themselves are assigned to what Kirkus calls "own voices" reviewers—that is writers who share an affinity of "lived experience" with characters in the book.

I'm sort of agreeing with Nathan Heller that "There is nothing wrong with trying to balance point-of-view biases in writing and reviewing." He goes on to point out that he doesn't quite agree with what Kirkus did for the review of "American Heart", that there isn't quite a need to be politically correct, and they should allow readers to form their own opinions, and someone is bound to share the reviewer's initial feelings too. I'm still not sure if I want to read it though. :P

Reading or writing book reviews nowadays is more complicated than ever. I don't envy parents of young children weeding out books for them. It was definitely a less complex matter in the past when our parents simply dumped us at the library and we sought out whatever titles we wanted. Thankfully, I don't have to deal with deciding what sort of books my child will read. A non-existent issue. I only have to vet through the books I'm buying for the friends' children. Even then, I'm starting to buy vouchers instead. That works out much better.

“Over and over, I’ve heard from parents, librarians, teachers, and kids themselves that it would be wonderful to read books about black kids, or Indian kids, or Native American kids who are just being kids instead of being oppressed in some way,” Smith explained. If you start noting ethnicity to make those books recognizable, she pointed out, you really ought to report whiteness, too. Smith conceded that all of this gratuitous description can read strangely, and anyone who makes a survey of Kirkus’s young-adult reviews will agree.