Comments on: WHY is this still considered acceptable?

By: k_rin

k_rin — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 09:31:17 +0000

hi, I somehow accidentally came across your post, but I wanted to comment how much I, too, truly WISH that authors would be more considerate or really just more AWARE of how the language we use and read CAN affect how our children grow up to think. I was wondering if by any chance you have read Marshall Rosenberg’s book called “Non-violent communication: A Way of Life’? I never really thought about language before I read that book, but ever since, I’ve been doing a double take on all the children’s books and thinking twice about the language used around me.

By: cate

cate — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 22:10:42 +0000

Thank you for this. I didn’t realize how prevalent that word was until I had my daughter, who has Down syndrome. It really does hurt when people use it.

Funny, though, I’ve had more than one person try to argue that it’s okay. Like it’s been around so long it’s lost its meaning. I don’t agree.

By: Melissa

Melissa — Wed, 13 May 2009 04:46:58 +0000

Kelly, I absolutely agree about the Alexie – it IS jarring, but it also belongs there.

Wendy – I just don’t know how everyone gave it a pass. And don’t forget the agent! How many people read those manuscripts and those ARCs and didn’t say, “Hey, you need to change this word!”?

By: Wendy

Wendy — Tue, 12 May 2009 05:04:50 +0000

Yes, yes, and yes. This has been something I’ve been astonished to read in a few middle-grade and YA books recently–an example of something that really, you would not find in a book twenty years ago that mysteriously seems to be acceptable now; it fell in on the same “now acceptable!” dump that mild profanity did. (I don’t object to that, largely.) I’ve had the same thoughts: how did this POSSIBLY get past the author, the author’s writing group, and multiple people at the publisher? It is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, and I can’t imagine what people think it adds to books. You think “that’s how kids really talk”? Not all kids, bucko, and if they do–they SHOULDN’T.

By: Kelly

Kelly — Tue, 12 May 2009 03:23:15 +0000

I just read Alexie’s Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and was kind of jarred to see “retard” in the opening pages — HOWEVER, I think it was completely appropriate in that instance. If I run into it where people use it as a synonym for stupid, I’m putting the book down.