C. Lee McKenzie

Young Adult and Middle Grade Author

Winners! Ageism in PBs, Volume 3

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Remember this little Meme Hop? Well, it turned out to be a lot of fun and easy to do. It wasn’t easy to pick winners, however. Tara, Christine and I had a devil of a time. But here they are. All very funny. And I only am showing one of each entrant. Some had several. Way to go writers.

Thanks for playing everyone! Here were the book prizes. 

PepperWords won one of the $25. GC from Amazon. 
J.Lenni Dorner won an eBook of Double Negative. 
Junetta won a copy of Sudden Secrets





Check out the other winners on Tara and Christine’s sites. They each offered copies of their books, and there was one more $25 GC. Were you one of the lucky meme-makers?
L.L. is one of my Newsletter followers and she just won a signed copy of A. Formento’s Twigs. Congrats L.L. The book is on the way.
My March Newsletter goes out next week. Hope you’ve signed up. I’m sending everyone a Marketing Checklist with examples of how I’m using it to improve my marketing. More about my marketing next month. There’s also some news. Yes. I actually have NEWS. 


In case you’re interested: My previous posts on AGEISM. Post 1 Post 2

David Wiesner is one of my favorite picture book writers, and I have three of his books. I decided to take a look and see 1) if he had any elderly characters and 2) if he treated them fairly or as stereotypes. Here’s what I found. In one book there were zero elderly, even the animals were young. In another there was one picture of adults, however, I couldn’t count them as elderly. They were reading while their son explored the beach. In the third book there were four characters that were pictured as elderly: round glasses, gray hair and facial lines. All were stern and, while not unkind,  they were stiff and all business. It didn’t look as if being older was much fun.

A writer friend, Cynthia Jaynes Omolou published this PB, so I took a look at it again to see what she’d done with elderly characters. Hurray for Omolou. She not only had three elderly characters ( two men and a woman), but they were of varied ethnicity.

Quote of the Week:  “Knowing what’s right doesn’t mean much unless you do what’s right.” Theodore Roosevelt

More About Ageism in PBs & the Great Meme Hop

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The reason I started posting about ageism in picture books is not that I write them, but that I love them. And, of course, because my interest has always been in the power of the word. 

The point in the studies I looked into last week wasn’t that we see “old” differently as we ourselves age, but that if we present a negative view of aging to our young readers, that sends the very worst message to them. If old equates with sad and lonely, who in the hell can embrace aging? Not me.

Here’s a great quote from Lindsey McDivitt’s blog. 

“Many books for kids lead them to believe that old=bad. It’s not their natural inclination, it is us socializing them to believe it–by not showing them a more diverse older population.”

Here’s some good news. 

  • Although children are subjected to stereotypes of older people in their picture books, other mediums such as TV and films  still underrepresent and sometimes portray them in a negative light. So book writers aren’t the only culprits here. Yay!
  • There are some excellent PBs out there that depict older adults in a positive light. I’m finding them and buying them. I want the kids in my family to have a positive attitude about growing up and growing old. It’s a natural and wonderful process, not something to fear.

My Very Own Meme!
If I can do it you can too.

Hope you’re ready to jump on board our Blog Hop and have some MEME fun. If you’re not sure how to create a meme, here’s a quick and easy-also free-site for you. Imgflip Now go and make something amazing and win books and $$ to buy some.


Quote of the Week: “The thing is, you can’t see people as fully human if all you can feel for them is pity.” Uma Krishnaswami, picture book author.

Teen Bookfest and Unintentional Ageism in PBs

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Teen Bookfest

This has been a Wowaful weekend. The Teen Bookfest organizers were fabulous, the readers we met equally so. And then there were the writers. I finally met Yvonne Ventresca, my long-time crit partner. And she’s as great in person as she is on paper. Here she is at one of the Panels.
Beth Feldbaum and A. Formento at the book signings.

Our host state! It was delicious.

We read blogs and forums about disliking sexism and racism in literature, but I haven’t read too much about ageism there. Did I miss it? Let me know. 

Anyway, I stumbled on an interesting study of picture books (Ansello, 1977) and how they included and depicted old people. Here’s a quick summary of that study, which included 549 books.

Characters were classified “older” if they were described physically, verbally or occupationally as older. They had to have at least two of these mentions to be tabulated in the study. What they was that “older characters are only present in 16.03% of those 549 picture book. When “older ” characters were included they were most likely White (66.1%). Blacks were  represented at 3.4%, Hispanics 1.7%, Native American’s  0.8%. 

The thing that caught my eye in the 1977 data was that 75.5% of “older” characters were described by only three adjectives: old, little and ancient. 

Well, I thought, by now that’s all different, so I searched Mr. Internet and found another study (Hurst 1981). This study included books made up of Caldecott Medal winners.  “Older” characters in this sample of picture books were only shown interacting with children 3% of the sample and 48% of the “older” characters were described as old. Still? Well, one book used nice and in two others wise. The rest of the adjectives were funny, small, little, grumpy, lonely, poor and weak. 

It seems “old” was used so frequently that in another study by Dodson and Hause, they concluded that “no other generation is so completely described by the use of a single word” (qtd. from McGuire, 1993).

Hmm. So I kept looking. There had to be a study that showed an enlightened change somewhere.

And I found one by Dellmann-Jenkins and Yang (1997). This study compared a
total of 95 award winning books (1972–1983 and 1984–1995) for the presence of older people in
main or secondary roles. They used 11 books and found that “older” characters appeared in 12%; however, the descriptions were now words like “clean, healthy, happy, good, caring and interactive with others.” Also the illustrations had a much more positive depiction of these characters. 

Now I’m a bit happier, but I keep digging. I’ve found another study that was done even more recently. I’ll read it carefully and let you know what that one says next week. 

Do you enjoy going to book events? Have you ever paid attention to how the elderly are depicted in young people’s literature? 

Quote of the Week: “Aging is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person that you always should have been.” David Bowie