Black-Eyed Susan Book Awards

It's time for all of us to admit that the ostensible goal of the Black-Eyed susan book awards has failed. Failed, failed, failed. On their website, Baltimore County Public Schools says that:

"The purpose of this award is to promote literacy and lifelong reading
habits by encouraging students to read quality, contemporary literature."

In reality, BCPS doesn't give a hoot about quality, contemporary literature. All they're doing by giving their kids the Black-eyed susan list for summer reading is succumbing to laziness. Instead of an individual review board for the selection of summer reading or, gods forbid, a long, long list of optional classic books, like the ones provided by Beth Tfiloh Middle or Franklin High Schools, they rest on the laurels of a dubious "award system". It seems that their logic is "well, if it won an award, it must be noteworthy."

As a librarian, I have to give BCPS a virtual slap on the hand. It's not just because of the hours and hours of my time at work devoted to locating, deliberating over, having trouble finding, and explaining the unavailability of Black-Eyed susan books to customers. It's not the repeated gazing into the eyes of uninterested children who don't really want to read. It's the fact that the parents think they're doing the kids a favor by getting them to read this narrow selection of books.

Quite simply, it puts an unrealistic strain on BCPL's resources for three months out of the year (four if you count September, when most of the kids who didn't actually do the summer-reading in summer come to finally get the books). By making ALL THE CHILDREN IN THE COUNTY read this narrow selection, it inundates our system with requests that we're just not prepared to handle.

Thumbs down.