Week 7: YA and adults

Assignment 2: YA articles


The two articles I read were Who's buying teen books? Lots and lots of Adults and YA Comes of Age.  While neither author stated this explicitly, I feel as though the underlying theme found in both articles is this: YA gives adult readers a chance to engage in escapism. The YA comes of Age article speaks of the shift in YA from paranormal to dystopian. Books of both types feature worlds that are far different from reality and have a large degree of inventiveness.  This, coupled with the relatively simple style they are written in, allows adult readers to easily become removed from their current circumstances and into a far more interesting and outlandish one.

Neither article mentions this, but reading YA is also a possible nostalgic experience for adults, taking them back to a more exciting and carefree time in their lives. This may enhance the escapist effect that these books have on adult readers and heighten these books’ appeal to them


Assignment 3: YA Blogs



Teenreads:

Teenreads is clearly intended for teen readers. They have a reading list entitled the Ultimate Reading List that is described as:

a list of more than 400 titles that we think make perfect pleasure reading for teens. Our criteria: We looked for books that were compelling, beautifully written, pure fun, thought-provoking or edge-of-your-seat gripping; books that we would hand to someone and say, “read this!” We hope that you will use the Ultimate Reading List when selecting books for independent reading

The site features reviews from both adults and teens as well as author interviews. Two interesting features found on the site is the Real Talk Publishing and Adult Books You Want to Read. The Real Talk Publishing section explores working with books as a career and the Adult Books You Want to read is self-explanatory. TeenReads is clearly successful in creating a site that is fitted for teens and reading.


Someday My Printz Will Come:

Someday My Printz Will Come is described as “the place to speculate wildly about books we think are likely to be under consideration for the YALSA‘s annual Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature”. All of the reviewers appear to be adult, as well as those who provide their thoughts in the comments section. The first post for this award season was made on September 9^th. This post introduced the list compiled by the blog’s contributors. It also described the selection criteria and explained some of the features of the list (leaned heavily towards fiction titles). The next two posts are reviews of books on their list. The reviews are straightforward and are clearly written for an adult audience. They highlight the positives and negatives of the books and discuss why the particular title might win any awards. The reviews also actively solicit user comments and suggestions.

It appears form browsing the blog that it’s clearly geared towards adults who care about who would win the Printz award. There didn’t seem to be any actual teen participation at all.

Someday My Printz Will Come is definitely successful in appealing to its target audience. Those who find speculation about awards to be of interest should definitely follow this blog.

Assignment 4: Teen imprints

I browsed the teen sections for HarperCollins and Harlequin. For their late summer releases, there appeared to be numerous titles ( Don’t Ever Change, Paper Weight, The Notorious Pagan Jones) that can be considered realistic fiction that have character-driven storylines. Many of the Teen titles also seemed to feature multiple character perspectives.