Week 7

When I was in my last semester of library school last year, I realized that I hadn't read any teen books since I was a teen, so I made it my goal  to start reading teen books again, starting with the Hunger Games trilogy. What started as an attempt to ready myself for being a librarian, turned into a love for YA literature. I read other things, but YA books do make up the vast majority of what I read now, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Needless to say, I'm pretty excited about this week's assignments.

Assignment #1:
I really enjoyed this flowchart, and found that I agreed with a lot of the books that were on the chart. There were a few that I had never heard of before that sound awesome, so I've added those to my to-read list.

Assignment #2:
"The Next Big Thing: Adults Reading Teen Literature"--This article states that 55% of those who buy YA books are over 18, and 78% of those people say they are buying those books for themselves. This doesn't surprise me at all. I think a lot of the reasons they list for this change are probably accurate. I was particularly struck by reason two, "teen literature signifies coming of age," I hadn't put this together as a reason why adults enjoy YA, but it makes complete sense.

"YA Comes of Age"--This article quotes Alexandra Balzer, saying, “There are no more taboos; YA covers every category.” I think this is so true. It actually reminds me of an article that I found on Stacked from Chuck Wendig in which he says  that "Young Adult is not a genre...Young Adult is a proposed age range for those who wish to read a particular book. It is a demographic rather than an agglomeration of people who like to read stories about, say, Swashbuckling Dinosaur Princesses or Space Manatee Antiheroes or whatever the cool kid genres are these days." I think this really shows that YA has as the PW article says, come of age, now that YA literature has many of the same genres that adult fiction does.

I posted comments for Diane S.'s and Zeke W.

Assignment #3:
John Green's tumblr is largely written by him, but he also reblogs things from other people. There was a particularly interesting post about why his YA books have taken off in comparison to others. Given Green's huge Internet popularity, his tumblr is very successful. It's a place where his readers, teens and adults alike can interact with him. It also has information about his books, and him as a writer, particularly why he writes YA.

Stacked is written by librarians. It is primarily reviews, but also posts about YA literature more generally. I've already found some new and upcoming titles that I hadn't seen before, so I find it to be a very useful resource. The labels on the side of the page are also helpful for looking for specific titles, or subsections of YA fiction.

Assignment #4:
Harper Teen seems very focused on Veronica Roth's Divergent trilogy, which makes sense, as the final book in the trilogy comes out in the fall! On that note, dystopian novels are definitely part of the trend at Harper. As well, there's a heavy focus on contemporary teen novels with a new book in the Pretty Little Liars series, and a new one by Lauren Conrad. There also is a trend of fantasy novels.

The trends at Penguin are a little different. First, I see a focus on teen romances, with a lot about Sarah Dessen and her new novel on the website (and some about Gayle Forman too!). There's again a heavy focus on dystopian novels, with advertisements for Khoury's Origin and the wonderful 5th Wave by Rick Yancey. Penguin also goes along with the fantasy trend.