I discovered that Scholastic corporate communications has a blog after CCFC brought the Scholastic “book” club — complete with toys, videos, and other products — to the attention of New York Times readers.

We’ve seen the Scholastic book club flyers come home in backpacks for several years now. We manage it with two simple rules: No licensed-character books. No books with “accessories.”

And as my daughters have learned, that doesn’t leave a lot of options.

Scholastic defends their book club offerings on their blog:

I have to say, I find [CCFC's] campaign seriously misguided. I’m actually shocked that it continues to get ink.

Scholastic falls back on the argument that reluctant readers need incentives — stuffed animals, stickers, or videos — to engage in reading.

Interesting.

Whenthe Young Adult Library Services Association (a division of the American Library Association) chooses their annual list of the best books for reluctant young readers, they look at the book’s physical appearance, writing style, characters, and plot. No mention of product incentives there.

Ditto for the advice to parents of reluctant readers on Scholastic’s own website, which points to choosing age-appropriate books at the right reading level. It encourages parents to allow kids to read non-book material such as comics, magazines, or newspapers.

But this is not the same as purchasing a necklace or craft kit for your reluctant reader.

This is where, I think, Scholastic got off track. From the Sun Sentinel:

Scholastic calls that a way to “stay relevant” in the battle to engage kids’ interest. But hawking playthings in the name of education isn’t relevance. It’s a sell-out . . . .

Scholastic should be able to sell whatever it wants. But not within the walls of a school.

And if Scholastic is so concerned about reluctant readers, perhaps they should pay a little more attention to what the real experts are saying will help kids.

Only one of the ALA’s 2008 Ten Top Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Readers is available through Scholastic.

And that is why this story continues to get ink.

Take action: contact Scholastic.

Photo courtesy melissann

I wanted to draw your attention to this comment from Mom Librarian on my post on alternatives to a Scholastic book fair, excerpted here:

For the past 8 years, I’ve been Librarian for our children’s private school, and we’ve done Scholastic fairs every fall. . . . Our entire Library budget comes from our Book Fairs, so it’s not an option not to have them.

Here’s the deal. As for the Scholastic, they have always been really nice and extremely concerned and responsive to our needs as far as their distribution strategy allows. I have explained that we don’t want all the licensed characters and cartoon junk, we are trying to promote literacy with well-written books. . . . They always attempt to send what I ask for, but the truth is their warehouse people are not trained in children’s literature, they are packing widgets. They send 8 cases, I pull everything I don’t like and store it in two of them, show the other 6. Call it censorship, call it whatever you like, but that’s the way we do it. . . . Scholastic knows I do it. It is a matter of letting me sell what the parents at our school are willing to buy, and its not cartoon junk.

The really sad thing, to me, is that Scholastic has an amazing network, great people, a massive system already in place, and nearly unlimited capacity to do great things, but in the past 8 years, they have discontinued carrying nearly every kids series considered wholesome classics by most librarians. . . .

Back to square one. As for Fall, we’ll keep struggling on with Scholastic till something more tailored to our needs comes along. But for the stuff I won’t sell, I just say no.

Thanks, Mom Librarian, for sharing your strategy. Frankly, I didn’t know this was even possible. More importantly, however, this is a call to Scholastic to give customers what they want.

Originally posted May 19, 2008.

Susan Linn, Director of the Campaign for a Commerical-Free Childhood, and Joan Almon from the Alliance for Childhood conducted a workshop on creative play at the CCFC Summit in April.

Linn began the workshop with a simple exercise: she held up three puppets, one at a time, and asked us to write down a) what it was, b) what its name was, and c) something it might say.

The first puppet was really just a white sock over her hand with two eyes attached. The second was similar but also had ears and a mouth. The third was a blue, furry monster we all recognized as Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster.

As you may have guessed, the first puppet elicited a variety of identifications, names, and statements from the participants. The second puppet drew a more limited response. Cookie Monster, of course, was a cookie monster and didn’t say too much beyond “Me want cookie.�

This exercise blew me away in its simplicity and its significance, as does Linn’s new book, The Case for Make Believe: Saving Play in a Commercialized World.

Linn is a ventriloquist, among other things. She started as a child, performed on the street corners of Boston and eventually moved on to the Smithsonian and even Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. She eventually used her skills and education to become a puppet therapist at Boston Children’s Hospital.

In addition to being the cofounder and director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, Linn is the Associate Director of the Media Center at Judge Baker Children’s Center and Instructor in Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School.

In The Case for Make Believe, Linn does just as she promises: makes a case for childhood play by helping us to understand why it so important for childhood development and making us realize how far away from play we’ve gone:

Play is so fundamental to children’s health and well-being — and so endangered — that the United Nations lists it as a guaranteed right in its Convention of the Rights of the Child. . . . In the United States and other industrialized nations, seduction, not conscription, lures children away from creative play.

Lovable media characters, cutting-edge technology, brightly colored packaging, and well-funded, psychologically savvy marketing strategies combine in coordinated campaigns to capture the hearts, minds and imaginations of children — teaching them to value that which can be bought over their own make believe creations.

Reading the book, I was really struck by the fact that our society does not value creative play. Linn talks about how play has almost been eliminated in schools in favor of government-backed policies that “promote rote learning.”

I asked her, in an email interview, if we should return play to the classroom and how we could do that.
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Newsweek reviews The Porning of America, a book inspired by a father’s realization that “porn culture and I were in a death match for my daughter’s soul.”

He had battled the Bratz empire.

It’s too early to know exactly how kids who grow up in this hypersexualized environment will be affected in the long term. But Scott and his coauthor say it’s not too soon—or too prudish—to sound the alarm, and to look critically at the sexualized culture we’re exposed to every day. . . . [P]orn themes have gone from adult entertainment to prime time, seeping into nearly every aspect of popular culture. Sarracino and Scott define “porning” as the way advertising and society in general have borrowed from the ideas and characteristics central to most American pornography: sex as commodity, sexuality as overt, narrow views of women and male-female relationships, bad girls and dirty boys, domination and submission.

This isn’t about sex. It’s not about morality or sexual freedom or abstinence or teen pregnancy or any polarizing belief or issue.

It’s about kids’ mental and physical health. 

Last year, the American Psychological Association put out a compelling report that described the sexualization of young girls: a process that entails being stripped of all value except the sexual use to which they might be put. Once they subscribe to that belief, say some psychologists, those girls begin to self-objectify—with consequences ranging from cognitive problems to depression and eating disorders. 

Fact sheet on childhood sexualization from CCFC. 

Emphasis mine. H/T Whole Kids Project.

Cross-posted from Tracee Sioux at Empowering Girls: So Sioux Me.

“Kids close your eyes!”

How many times do you find yourself trying to protect your children from harmful and destructive images while watching family television?

Two years ago, while watching television, I was assaulted with an image of a woman wearing a see-through nightgown, nipples protruding and visible, erotic soft lighting, floating in a bathtub. It was intentionally erotic, except that she had been violently and bloodily murdered and this erotic woman was, in fact, dead.

“What the heck is going on?” I thought. “Why are my children and I being subjected to this kind of sexually violent imagery in a commercial?”

So, I wrote the FCC. The Federal Communications Commission used to be the people who governed our airwaves. They used to control when and what was allowed to air during times when children were expected to be viewing television. Remember when they wouldn’t let radio stations play George Michael’s, I Want Your Sex?

Many months later they wrote back.

“Each network or television station has control over what it airs during commercials. You’ll have to write each network to complain about every commercial you feel is inappropriate,” they informed me.

“What? Who made that stupid rule?” I wanted to know.

And now that I’ve read So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids, by Diane Levin, Ph.D, and Jean Kilbourne, Ed.D, I know who made that stupid rule.

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Ditch the Characters for the Classics, from the Tampa Tribune:

At a recent book fair in Hillsborough County, young readers could find plenty of books about Sponge Bob, Barbie, Transformers and Pokemon, but would have been hard pressed to turn up more than one Caldecott Award winner.

And the timeless classics of children’s literature? Forget about them.

. . . . (A) company committed to literacy ought to recognize that quality counts in the material children read. They should keep in mind that many families rely on Scholastic for affordable children’s books, and they don’t want a cheap imitation of what literature should be.

Scholastic would do a new generation of young readers a tremendous service by making the best of their titles readily available and minimizing overtly commercial works.

Need better books? Shop Unplug Your Kids Store which has a nice selection of Fall-themed, non-licensed-charactered books available now. It’s Babysitter Approved!

And today’s the last day to click over to MOMboTV and help PEM win $100. Check out Eco Cheap: Going Green on a Budget. And thanks to everyone who has taken the time to click this week!

CCFC is a getting some good press since Scholastic decided to drop the Bratz brand from their school offerings. I have to say, though, that I’m taken aback by all the people likening Scholastic’s decision to “censorship.”

We’re not talking about a public library here, or even a school library. Scholastic is a for-profit corporation.

This ain’t censorship.

(And if you really want to get your hands on some Bratz books, looks like Amazon only has about 250 titles to choose from.) 

Unfortunately, children in public schools are a captive audience who have no choice but to be the target of Scholastic’s product pitches.

It’s funny: I’m always hearing that it’s the parents’ responsibility to say no to their kids and to let the free market work. Isn’t that just what happened here? I took the responsibility to let my girls know that Bratz-branded products are not allowed in our  house. And as a Scholastic customer, I let Scholastic know that I would not be purchasing Bratz books from them. So did many other parents. Scholastic responded by dropping the Bratz books from their product line. How is this censorship? Isn’t Scholastic just responding to their market?

You can still help Parents for Ethical Marketing win $100 by clicking over to MOMboTV. Today’s suggested post: An interview with Ted Ning from Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability (LOHAS). LOHAS encourages business leaders to be more responsive to the needs of socially-conscious consumers.

Without admitting why, Scholastic has pulled Bratz books from their fall offerings to schools:

The company confirmed Wednesday that its fall product line for schools no longer includes the Bratz brand — a switch from last year, when Scholastic said the books appealed to “reluctant readers” and its job was to “offer materials that appeal to children where they are, not where we would like them to be.”

Could it have been CCFC’s 18-month campaign resulting in 5,000 emails to Scholastic? Details at Shaping Youth.

Corporations are willing to listen and respond to our concerns. They are concerned about their reputations. They want to keep us as customers. We just have to let them know what we want.