Comments on Reading Everywhere: Conference Recap: KidLitCon 2011

Aw, thanks, Laurie! Such a great conference- and s...

2011-10-03T22:55:52.213-07:00

Aw, thanks, Laurie! Such a great conference- and such a pleasure to meet you!

Thanks for sharing your notes, Alli! I almost feel...

2011-10-03T21:30:31.443-07:00

Thanks for sharing your notes, Alli! I almost feel like I don't need to write my own now, since I shared so many of the same takeaways as you. :) It was great meeting you at KidLitCon!

Abby, your panel was GREAT! I wish you could have ...

2011-09-29T14:01:29.038-07:00

Abby, your panel was GREAT! I wish you could have been there-- I would have liked to have met you. And you would have had so much fun! I hope you do get to go next year.

So glad you had a good time and also glad that you...

2011-09-25T13:34:48.484-07:00

So glad you had a good time and also glad that you found our panel on critical reviewing helpful! :D I am super jealous of everyone who got to go and I hope to attend next year!!!

Thanks for the comment, Beth! I really hope you ca...

2011-09-25T09:43:12.913-07:00

Thanks for the comment, Beth! I really hope you can attend a future KidLitCon- I think you would get SO much out of it and really have fun. You should think about presenting! Maybe something about using contemporary youth literature in the classroom?

Anyway, about critical reviews-- I'm with you. I really valued the discussion at this conference about reviewing critically, and it gave me a lot to think about. I've written a few (very few!) critical reviews on this blog so far, because I mostly shy away from it. I'm apprehensive, because I help host a lot of author visits at my library, and I would feel TERRIBLE if I ever wrote something critical that hurt an author's feelings or annoyed them-- and then they came to my library. So, I tend to tread perhaps more cautiously than most, and perhaps more cautiously than I really need to, because like you said, critical reviewing isn't bashing. I would never bash a book or an author.

And I agree that critical reviews add credibility to a blog. If it's all glowing praise, can you really take the reviewer seriously? I'm going to try to be a little braver about criticism, yet always, always keeping it respectful. One thing that came up at the conference was that reviews are not for the author or the publisher, but for other readers. I think it's important to keep in mind.

I really enjoyed reading your tweets from Kid Lit ...

2011-09-25T06:49:05.046-07:00

I really enjoyed reading your tweets from Kid Lit Con so I also enjoyed this post obviously. I've always been someone who's not afraid to write critical reviews because I felt like I'd be a sell out if I only wrote glowing reviews.

I understand why authors only write positive reviews. They meet authors and develop relationships with them, but I think as long as a critical review isn't bashing a book and you write it with good intentions, they can actually be helpful to an author. I just finished writing a critical review of The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness and even though I personally disliked the story and gave my reasons why it didn't work for me, I made sure to note that I still thought it was a book of great literary merit and deserves to be read by teens and young adults.

I like going to blogs where the reviewer isn't afraid to say what they didn't like about the book just as much as what they did like. It shows me they aren't selling out to the "publicity machine" and that they're staying true to who they are as a reader.