|
|
sgaana (![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} sgaana) wrote in ![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/community.gif){kind=small} unfunny_fandom, |
I actually agree with your comment otherwise, but this stuck out to me:
It's like having a cowboy character with a bowler or a Tyrolese hat.
Er.... Bat Masterson wants a word with you....
(While not a "cowboy" in the purest technical sense, Masterson is one of the famous gunslinger figures of the Old West. The bowler was... just a hat, and people wore them in the Old West. No, really. They had all kinds of accents besides a Texas drawl, too, because they were immigrants who frequently headed directly West -- John Cleese's sheriff is one of the great details in the movie "Silverado".)
Otherwise, though... I'm in complete agreement that all of the mistakes add up into something incredibly sloppy, and I actually think it's WORSE because it's a YA book. The POV character being ignorant would be fine with me, because plenty of Americans are that ignorant about Turkey. But it would only be fine with me if the point of her being ignorant was so that she could have her ignorance corrected through the course of the book, and thus the readers would learn something, imagine that.
And the point really OUGHT to be that neither the editor nor the author should need to be Turkish to care about getting some very basic details about another country correct.
It makes me wonder if I'm just being hopelessly naive in thinking that people who write YA books should make even more of a point than usual to be educating those who will read the books, as well as entertaining them. (*sigh* Probably, yes.)
It's like having a cowboy character with a bowler or a Tyrolese hat.
Er.... Bat Masterson wants a word with you....
(While not a "cowboy" in the purest technical sense, Masterson is one of the famous gunslinger figures of the Old West. The bowler was... just a hat, and people wore them in the Old West. No, really. They had all kinds of accents besides a Texas drawl, too, because they were immigrants who frequently headed directly West -- John Cleese's sheriff is one of the great details in the movie "Silverado".)
Otherwise, though... I'm in complete agreement that all of the mistakes add up into something incredibly sloppy, and I actually think it's WORSE because it's a YA book. The POV character being ignorant would be fine with me, because plenty of Americans are that ignorant about Turkey. But it would only be fine with me if the point of her being ignorant was so that she could have her ignorance corrected through the course of the book, and thus the readers would learn something, imagine that.
And the point really OUGHT to be that neither the editor nor the author should need to be Turkish to care about getting some very basic details about another country correct.
It makes me wonder if I'm just being hopelessly naive in thinking that people who write YA books should make even more of a point than usual to be educating those who will read the books, as well as entertaining them. (*sigh* Probably, yes.)
Post a comment in response:
