Not good for whom

A woman in Doha has written a picture book for children aged four to six and drawn the cover herself. She shows it to her sister, who looks at it for a long moment and says it is not really very good.

That sentence sounds like a verdict. It is actually two quite different sentences dressed the same way.

The first is: I do not like it. The colours are not my colours, the drawing is not my taste, it does not speak to me. That is honest, it is easy to say, and it is close to useless. Her sister is thirty-four and has no children. The book was never made for her.

The second is: I know what makes a four-year-old reach for one book rather than another on a low shelf, I know what the parents who buy these books look for, and this cover will not get picked up. That sentence is rare. It takes having watched the audience, not just having an opinion. When it is true, it is worth more than any amount of praise.

The trouble is that people nearly always say the first in the tone of the second. Taste borrows the voice of expertise, and the person on the receiving end cannot tell which one has arrived.

So the useful reply to any version of not very good is a question. Good for whom?

And the useful habit, for whoever is giving the opinion, is to ask it of yourself before speaking. Do you really know the readers this was made for? Have you watched them choose? Or do you simply not like it, in which case the kinder and more accurate thing is to say exactly that?