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andrewkarre Profile picture
andrewkarre
@andrewkarre
Executive editor at Dutton Books for Young Readers (@DuttonYR), an imprint of Penguin Random House. Tweets are my own. he/him
Feb 2, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Bans go after books, but in this wave it’s clear truth in the discourse about schools and libraries is as much or more the target.

If challengers talk enough about “age appropriate” books for high school students, people accept that age appropriateness is somehow science. If they call books “pornographic” loudly and often, some people will start asking about the porn in school libraries.

If they talk about books “grooming” young readers every chance they get, some will accept that grooming is a thing books do.
Feb 1, 2022 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
I find this letter sickeningly disingenuous. Out of Darkness does contain these depictions. It is also 400 pages long and narratively quite sophisticated. Like all novels, it immediately eliminates whole swaths of readers who are not ready for it. This how books work. Meanwhile, the parent seems to believe that a kid picks up a book, somehow encounters a depiction they’re not ready for, and is harmed. A parent is entitled to this belief, but no one is obliged to pretend that because she believes a nonsensical thing, her wish is their command.
Jan 27, 2022 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
In light of a Tennessee district banning MAUS, I'm sharing the greatest two pages ever written and drawn about the importance of children's literature and protecting children's access to books, starring Art Spiegelman and Maurice Sendak. From the New Yorker, September 27, 1997. I have turned to this comic as a compass for what I believe in as an editor for a very long time (it's been framed over my desk for almost a decade and if I ever got a tattoo, it'd be panel #8). It's no less orienting as a parent navigating the limits of "protection."
Sep 30, 2020 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Trump is not childlike. Trump is not childlike. Trump is not childlike. Trump is not childlike. Trump is not childlike. Trump is not childlike. Trump is not childlike. Trump is not childlike. Trump is not childlike. Trump is not childlike. Trump is not childlike. THREAD. What happened last night—what's happened regularly for an entire presidency—is not a toddler's temper tantrum, and it doesn't resemble one. To call it that is to reinforce the ongoing delusion that we have a problem with one immature, erratic, anomalous man.
Sep 29, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
“Graphic novels are like ice cream. You can read them after you read prose books.” Or so the 12-year-old’s English teacher reportedly said regarding what books he can pick for assignments.

LOOK. Virtual school is so hard. I want all the slack for teachers. But come on. Can we not do this literary elitism bullshit now? In a virtual learning environment where you can’t put an alternative in a kid’s hand and support that redirection, why in the world would you tell a kid not to read something?
Sep 28, 2020 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
THREAD. We're almost a month into virtual school, and it's really hard. Doing this for many more months feels impossible. The Trump tax story should be a reminder of *why* it feels this way. It's not impossible simply because virtual learning is inherently challenging. It's fair to say fighting WWII in the Pacific was always going to be challenging. What would have made that difficult task impossible would have been refusing to spend the money to build insanely expensive aircraft carriers faster than any other country in the war.
Sep 25, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Remember WWII, the national cataclysm whose death toll we're definitely going to pass within six months? During WWII there was a 94% tax bracke, kicking in on income over $200k (over $2 million in adjusted dollars).

Every millionaire should be a huge fan of Markey's plan. (American death toll, that is.)
Sep 24, 2020 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
If you're able to look at the law that allowed Breonna Taylor's unpunished murder and accept that the grand jury correctly judged the facts & followed the law, then you must ask yourself whether the version of "public safety" defined by these laws is one you can live with. The grand jury decision and a close reading of Kentucky law offer no moral safe harbor and no comfort for anyone.

The books does not close with them.

Can you live with with laws that say the violent death of Breonna Taylor at the hands of police served your safety?

I cannot.
Sep 18, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
There may come a day when I am indifferent to an article about Michaela Coel. Today is not that day.

garage.vice.com/en_us/article/… Interviewer: "What else powers you?"
Coel: "My childhood. My formative years, my teenage years. I feel very empowered by my own history. The life I’ve lived, the lives of my friends. I want to honor them. I want to honor everything that made me what I am."
Sep 9, 2020 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Most long bike rides I do take me through various suburbs, and I’m always intrigued by the lawn signs. This one, in particular, has been on my mind a lot in the context of ongoing conversations about police and the white imagination. It’s the “We don’t dial 911” that gets me. ImageImage This sign is not in the country. The people who posted this are not off the grid by any stretch. They are simply suburbanites threatening to shoot first at people who...come on their lawn? And then not call 911 as their victim bleeds out on the grass? I guess?
Sep 3, 2020 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
One hears a lot of "what about 911!" in public police discourse, as though 911 and police are somehow inextricably linked. I think the stranglehold policing has on 911 is a serious public safety problem. Daniel Prude's death is a prime example. nytimes.com/2020/09/02/nyr… Multiple people called 911 because they recognized a man having what was fundamentally a healthcare emergency. What they summoned by calling 911 was not healthcare but the use of deadly force. No one should feel safer because of this outcome.
Sep 1, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Absolutely false.

We must reject the premise that public safety necessarily hinges on a cop's shoot-or-don't decision. The police brought deadly force into this situation. Just as they did with George Floyd, Philando Castile, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, John Crawford... Where was the pressure when the officer pulled over Philando Castile for a crime he had nothing to do with based on no greater evidence than his race?
Aug 26, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
The police shot a man seven times in front of his children. Police fired projectiles and poison gas at protestors. Pro-police vigilantes showed up with guns and used them to kill people.

Do not miss where the lawless and disorder are. In American politics, “law and order” has never meant anything more than “we are willing to kill to preserve a social order that favors us over you.” It’s a threat.
Aug 26, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
nytimes.com/2020/08/26/us/…

Police shot (again) an unarmed man. Justifiable outrage led to protest. The police (again) go to their limitless supply of riot-escalation gear.

The police and their vigilante allies have decided to insure all protests are obscured by police violence. Law enforcement is reliant on guns and weapons of war in a way that’s unique to America. That’s not really debatable. And policing in America is beset by systemic racism to at least the same degree any other large institution in this country is. No serious debate there either.
Aug 23, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Much of the enthusiasm for the policing status quo comes from people who live outside the Twin Cities. Not a single one of those “We Back the Blue” signs you see in the suburbs is sincerely meant for suburban cops. It’s all about their fantastical vision of the lawless city. I think a lot of the young suburban tourists who arrived here while the Minneapolis Police Department was rioting after they murdered George Floyd did so because they were carrying the urban fantasy they were raised on to its logical conclusion.
Aug 18, 2020 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Dude who makes 9 million a year coaching unpaid players worries about the financial consequences of cancelling a tournament designed explicitly to exploit those players.

espn.com/mens-college-b… And then his millionaire counterpart John Calipari suggests the WNBA and NBA have shown "the path" forward with quarantine bubbles, conveniently overlooking the fact that every single one of those bubble players IS GETTING PAID.
Aug 16, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Performing willful misunderstanding of Black Lives Matter might be reaching its white pinnacle on Facebook now. It’s horrific. White people are literally politicizing the murder of a child in an effort to avoid a reckoning with white supremacy and police racism. A thread. 1/4. 2/4. BLM advocates: here are mountains of scholarship on the racist origins of American policing with specific, recent examples of that history leading to the entirely predictable deaths of Black people at the hands of police, who are rarely prosecuted and less often convicted.
Aug 14, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Writing a novel takes forever by civilian standards, but CITY OF THE UNCOMMON THIEF took a long time even by fantasy novelist standards. So forgive my giddy delight when I called Lynne to read her the first review—a ★ from ⁦@KirkusReviews⁩. “A macabre marvel of a tale.” Image And I love it when we can catch the jacket proof in time to add that first review. Image
Aug 13, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Americans—particularly Boomers—have spent decades venerating "the Greatest Generation," buying millions of books, movie tickets, airfare to Normandy, etc.

And yet when faced with national challenges significantly similar to those that defined the Greatest Generation...nothing. Turns out you can walk on the beaches of Normandy marveling at the sacrifices of your parents in 2019 and then in 2020 refuse to wear a mask while demanding to eat inside your favorite bar so you can watch uncompensated amateur athletes play football during a pandemic.
Aug 10, 2020 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
There’s a common framing in this piece that I hate: “Many people feel scared to go back into restaurants, so restaurants can't return to normal.”

No, restaurants can’t return to normal because people are afraid to acknowledge pandemic realities.

npr.org/2020/08/09/900… Rather than saying the I, the one who will not enter a restaurant, am “scared,” would it not just as true to say I’m making a rational choice for personal safety as well as polictical one?
Aug 3, 2020 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
A horrific account of abandonment by state and federal leadership.

I think it's imperative that any superintendent who feels better positioned to return to in-person school think carefully about what their return means for a school like this one. Maybe your district has the means—the plexiglass, the sanitization processes, whatever—to make a good- faith effort to return. But that return is a political act too. And it will have moral consequences in an environment where poor kids and kids of color face unequal resources.