Algoritem arene: Priročnik za branje kakovostnih mladinskih knjig 2012 ed. by Darja Lavrenčič Vrabec, Ida Mlakar (review)

The Centre for Youth Literature and Librarianship of the Ljubljana City Library has taken on a difficult task of compiling yearly reviews of all the books for children and youth published in Slovenia. This effort is surely made easier, one would think, by the relatively small number of books a country like Slovenia can produce. But the figures in the manual’s introductory analysis tell a different story: the number of books published in 2011 alone exceeds 1,180 titles (1,003 for 2010 and 1,044 for 2009), in a country of two million people.

A team of experts (librarians, critics, members of IBBY Slovenia and also employees of the Slovenian Book Agency and the Slovenian Reading Badge Society) sifts through all the books for children and youth published in Slovenia the previous year, not only original Slovenian fiction, but translated literature, non-fiction, and new editions of older books as well. In a country where approximately 60% of the books published each year are translated, such a review is invaluable.

The manual is aimed at librarians, teachers, and reading-conscious parents, at people, in short, who recommend reading material to children and youth. Publishers and editors may find it interesting as well, to see how their books did in the reviews and how they fit the current ideal of literature for young people.

In the manual, the books are divided into categories according to the age of their target readers (from preschool to secondary school), their genre and content: “fantasy” and “realistic” novels are treated separately, for instance. For each title entry, the author (and translator), publisher, genre (adventure story, science fiction etc.) and main topics are listed, which is very convenient for a user who is searching for books on a certain subject, a teacher who wishes to discuss gender issues with his or her pupils, for instance. The manual also includes an index arranged by subject so as to make searching easier.

The most important part of each annotation, however, and the main purpose of this manual, is the grade that each book is given by its reviewer: the grades range from “excellent” and “very good” to “good”, “insufficient” and “unsatisfactory” (translation by K.B.); “excellent” books are equipped with a short summary of their contents. Some books, particularly those written by children, are not graded, but are rather just listed as a separate category.

This is, obviously, the most controversial part of the manual. Even though the introduction offers a short description of criteria for each of the grades, some users would undoubtedly wish for a more elaborate explanation. Publishers, for example, would surely be interested in knowing what to strive for in producing new books.

In addition to that, books which are deemend exceptional are awarded a special label, the “Zlata hruška” [Golden Pear], which is then made visible in libraries by instantly recognizable pear labels. Only three books, however, are given actual prizes, the Golden Pear Awards, at a special ceremony each year in the categories of “Original Slovenian youth fiction”, “Translated youth fiction” and “Original Slovenian youth non-fiction.” This year’s “Translated youth fiction” award, for example, went to Stana Anželj’s translation of Walter Moers’s Der Schrecksen-meister (Vreščji mojster).

Apart from this annotated book list, the manual offers concise statistics of the books published, the figures for translated and original Slovenian books, and the number of books in each of the age groups and grades. This last information is particularly important and worrying: of the 991 graded books, only 119 were judged to be “excellent,” and almost 40% of these were reprints of older books. A particularly interesting table also presents the distribution of Golden-Pear-awarded books among Slovenian publishing houses. Something that the users of the manual might miss in this introductory...