Part III: Author Reactions to Common Sense Media

In Part II of our series on Common Sense Media’s reviews on www.barnesandnoble.com, we presented both sides of the argument — what they are doing right and what needs tweaking.

Today we bring you reactions from the authors themselves– a LiveJournal comment and several Tweets. Please understand that some of the Tweets from authors were responses to questions we were unable to view and — although we could make good guesses about the question — we can’t reproduce the Tweets in good conscience.

However, here are a few worth noting.

First is Shiver author Maggie Stiefvater’s response to a LiveJournal entry by fellow author Sarah Dessen:

On February 25th, 2010 03:25 am (UTC), m_stiefvater commented:

Now I had to go look at SHIVER’s! Okay, I had to admit, it didn’t bother me, but my “common sense rating” also let me off pretty easy, I thought. I have to say that the age recommendation thing is not going to affect that many people — Amazon and Borders have had “age ratings” on books forever, and I generally find them fairly to incredibly ridiculous.

I think the people who never pay attention to age rankings won’t pay attention to what is essentially just a longer age ranking, and I think it might be positive for those who do closely police their teen’s reading (I personally believe in reading with your teen but not censoring them) — people who thought OMG THERE IS SECKS IN SHIVER I CANNOT BUY THAT FOR MY DAUGHTER will have their fears assuaged by a description of the sexuality. I am not thrilled to pieces by the spoilery nature of the common sense review, but there are spoilers in the reviews right there on the site, too, so I guess I can’t grouse too much.

So I think my verdict is Team Ambivalent. Does that make me a bad person?

However, as mentioned in Part II of this series, she noticed a big difference in Common Sense Media’s reviews on their own site as opposed to the ones on www.barnesandnoble.com:

Beautiful Creatures co-author Kami Garcia also weighed in on the action (I’m pretty sure she meant “gay” not “guy” in the first tweet):

And in reference to authors and censorship:

Amongst the chatter there was also mention of a “general petition” to have the Common Sense Media reviews removed or at least modified. So far, no action by authors has been taken of which I am aware, but as mentioned in an article by Publishers Weekly (referring to Common Sense cofounder/editor-in-chief Liz Perle):

Her tech people as well as those at BN.com, she says, are working on correcting the reviews, not just for books, but for all the other areas that Common Sense rates on the site, including movies and games, so that they appear in their entirety.

Here’s our challenge to you: Take a look at some of the reviews of books you’ve already read and compare them. Are they objective or subjective? Do you agree with the ratings and age recommendations or are they too conservative/liberal?

Leave us a comment or send an e-mail to clumzbella@yahoo.com.