-"High school students were the intended audience, and adult titles formed the bulk of the final list of thirty new titles" (Holley, 2010).
Similar to my thoughts about Anthony Bernier's paper I could help but wonder, who better but young adults to talk about what they want? As we have made note of in class we shouldn't try to compare our experiences as teens with teens today, as they are quite different, therefore why do adults librarians, reviewers and so forth think that they know any better than teens about what they want?
McCoy, Karen. What Teens Are Really Reading. School Library Journal, 58(1): 32-34.
-I agree wholeheartedly with McCoy's statement that, as of January 2012, "The sense is they're [vampire novels] are being replaced by books about supernatural beings, particularly zombies and angels, and, of course, there's a huge shift to steampunk and dystopian" (McCoy, 2012). I personally think that of the 110 books that I read last year anywhere from 80-90 of those books fell within one of these categories (if not a combination of them, for instance, Lia Habel's "Dearly, Departed", a zombie steampunk novel.
-On the note of McCoy's statement, "It's difficult to predict the next shift in YA and Middle Grade books" (2012). I personally feel that we are shifting away from the aforementioned paranormal/ dystopian novels and because of the rise of New Adult literature that contemporary will once again come to dominate YA.
Melanie D. Koss and William H. Teale. What’s Happening in YA Literature? Trends in Books for Adolescents. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 52 (7): 563-572.
-Admittedly one of my pet peeves in the world of YA is the emphasis on, "YA literature considered to be high quality (award winners)..." (Koss and Teale, 2009), and on the idea that anything less than award winners aren't deserving of being read or are "inadequate". Add "Young Adult Literature- Any young adult literature" into the following image and you have my opinion on the matter:
-I was really taken aback by the finding that "Books were coded as to whether or not they had gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or questioning characters. The majority of the sample did not, but at least one GLBTQ character was found in six of the titles (10%)" (Koss and Teale, 2009). Since 2009, a mere 4 years ago, I do think that we have seen an uprise in the number of GLBTQ characters- especially with the inception of such authors as Malinda Lo (personally I can name 10 books off of the top of my head who features GLBTQ characters).
No comments:
Post a Comment