Week 7: Teen lit
1) I read New Adult: Needless Marketing-Speak or Valued Subgenre? from Publishers Weekly and The Next Big Thing from YALSA. Enjoyed both. Since I recently "attended" a Webinar on Teen Lit that also talked about New Adult, I was familiar with the term, the statistics about adult readership, and the general buzz about this new genre. What I took away from the first article was that the term "New Adult" can characterize a book that includes more mature SEX, more gruesome VIOLENCE. Worthwhile designation for that reason alone. Personally, I suspect that the subject matter of New Adult lit is what will eventually define it more than anything else.What I mean by that is this: although I am an ardent fan of teen lit, I can only read so many angsty, hip-edgy, self effacing, hormonely drenched titles before I crave a strong dose of Barbara Kingsolver or David Mitchell.
I thought that the second article beautifully laid out the appeal factors and rationale for the rise of adults reading teen lit. Couple that with this observation: Recently, NPR did a weeklong series on Kids and the Media. One day they had a report that startled me -- older teens are reading well below "grade level" compared to 30-40 years ago. And they are not reading the classics as much as they used to, partially because there was a movement back then to "dumb down" the canon a little in order to appeal to the then-teens. So what I took away from that report was that those then-teens/now-adults are still reading "below grade level," only now they have a much juicier selection of material - the New Adult canon!
I posted comments on Sam O'Herren's and Justin Hartzell's blogs.
2) Am following two blogs -- Squeetus Blog by Shannon Hale and Cassandra Clare's Tumblr. They couldn't be more different!
Cassandra's is all visuals all the time. Gritty trailers and clips, provocative still photos, everything written in nanobites. Very post-millenial generation appeal for a visual mash up of Hunger Games and Twilight -- I think that the girl star of the new Mortal Engines movie even looks like Kristen Stewart. I got turned off by a quote from the book about the heroine's attraction to the bad boy. It was so gaggingly '50s -- what did we women struggle for if we are still swallowing tripe about "she understood everything he said and laughed when he laughed and understood him like no one else and blah blah blah"??? Blek. However, I suspect the teen girlies are eatin' up this stuff -- the new movie hottie is pretty, well, hot.
After following this blog for a few days, I have not changed my initial impression. I do think that she's got one smart publicity crew plugging that movie for her, and now she's got other media helping her out, e.g. there is a Teen Tribute magazine interview with the two leads included on the blog now, replete with yummy photos. I'll certainly mention this to any teens who are interested in the movie, but I strongly suspect that they already know all about these resources, and it's only the old underrock dwellers who find this info new and exciting.
Shannon Hale, on the other hand, is comfortable writing at length and in depth about her life as a mom-writer. Have to wonder who she perceives as her audience -- surely no teen could care for long about all of her sacrifices and discipline and insufferable adultness. Have read other blog posts by her this week and although I enjoy them as a wannabe author, I can't imagine any teen in her right mind would be interested.
3) On the whole, the publishers' teen sites are a pretty insipid batch. However, while I find the content tedious, I'm sure there are some young middle schoolers who find it just fascinating. Which is good, because my sense is that most of the content is aimed at those very very young preteens and new teens. These sites remind me quite a bit of the teen mags from my own adolescence, which makes perfect sense. Same message, just a different medium. The one exception seemed to be the Little Brown site for teens, which was more balanced in its appearance and content. More adventure/thriller titles prominently displayed, less slick photoshopped teens girls with their hair blowing in the cosmic wind.
Most of them have links to apps, author sites and embedded book trailers. Kids can also follow them on Facebook, Twitter , Tumblr and Pinterest. So the marketing people can get them coming and going. But this is a good thing for kids who are sincerely interested in a specific author; several of the kids who came to the Young Writers Give Back program at my branch had been following the writers on their social media of choice and that was how they knew about our program.
The paranormal continues to be a predominant trend, whether in romance, science fiction, or "straight" fiction. Gossipy girl titles and glamourous girl faces on the covers also saturate the teen market, but what tickles me most is the huge amount of fantasy that teens are consuming. Dystopias rule, but still, it's fantasy. Hope that they continue reading it when they're adults!
While I agree that there seems to be a movement to "dumb down" literature as part of the curriculum in schools, I also feel as though some of the YA literature that exists solely exists to be a quick, enjoyable read that doesn't require as much thinking on the part of the reader. Whether that is a net good or bad thing is the subject of endless debate, I would imagine.
ReplyDeleteI maintained on my own post that "New Adult" was a solution in search of a problem - there's functionally little to no difference between New Adult and YA, in my mind. A parent will react just the same to a novel, regardless of whether its cataloged as New Adult or Young Adult - they'll either think "Huzzah! Stuff for my teen to read." or "No! Enough of this quasi-smut!"