As frequent visitors to our site have noticed, we discontinued our popular “Books to Avoid” section.  During this period of leadership transition we have clarified our Mission and are taking stock of everything we do, Our Mission is to educate, and for that reason we have decided not to merely post a list of “books to avoid” but rather to expose our readers to the criteria we use to differentiate between books and to identify books to avoid.

We know it might be more efficient for the reader to have us “tell you the answer” but that does not feel like a liberating approach to education. Supporting others to develop the critical thinking skills needed to discern what about a book is appropriate and inappropriate better serves our mission and our supporters.

Publicly posting our criteria also let’s us be more transparent about what we do and why we make the decisions we make about books, CDs and DVDs. We think that’s important too. It will allow us to be in more open dialog with readers, writers and other educators. You may find we have made mistakes about some books. We did! In reviewing this criteria, we found we had made some mistakes about books and were selling books that don’t stand up to our criteria.

 In the past, we have made choices about books that we wouldn’t make today. Generally, if we chose a book that didn’t fully meet the criteria it was because the book filled a particular niche that was important to fill and couldn’t be filled any other way. Today, there are so many more good books available than there were 20 years ago when we started.

 We hope you will give this a try. Let us know how you’re doing using the criteria:

How to Tell The Difference: A Guide

Oyate Criteria for Evaluating Books