Age Appropriateness
My BVC blog today is about age appropriate reading, and how to define it--something I've talked about here off and on over the past few years.
Here's what I'm wondering now. As YA books get longer, and lift the lid on more and more formerly forbidden subjects, I wonder if teens are reading YA longer. So many of us oldsters basically made the jump in our reading to adult books around twelve.
When I was a young teen, as I recall there was basically Betty Cavanaugh. The Young Adult shelf was one shelf in a bookcase at the library, directly adjacent to autobiographies, and as I had no interest in young romances, I started reading those autobiographies. At that time, memoirs of WW II were really popular, and I ended up reading some fairly harrowing concentration camp survivor memoirs at age thirteen.
My forays into adult books produced the good (Count of Monte Cristo) and the nightmare inducing (Lord of the Flies, at age twelve), and the disgusting and bewildering (The Carpetbaggers) so I became more choosy, often going back to kidzbooks for comfort, and then later, as YA publishing got better and better, for appreciation.
Anyway, I wonder how reading patterns are changing, if they are changing. YA is the best it's ever been--when I served on the Andre Norton Jury this past year, I was almost in despair because there were so many good books in our genre alone that were published last year, it was really, really rough to winnow them down to make a shortlist. I wonder if teen readers are staying with YA longer--if they're getting what they want from the books marketed for their age, unlike so many of us older folk.
Here's what I'm wondering now. As YA books get longer, and lift the lid on more and more formerly forbidden subjects, I wonder if teens are reading YA longer. So many of us oldsters basically made the jump in our reading to adult books around twelve.
When I was a young teen, as I recall there was basically Betty Cavanaugh. The Young Adult shelf was one shelf in a bookcase at the library, directly adjacent to autobiographies, and as I had no interest in young romances, I started reading those autobiographies. At that time, memoirs of WW II were really popular, and I ended up reading some fairly harrowing concentration camp survivor memoirs at age thirteen.
My forays into adult books produced the good (Count of Monte Cristo) and the nightmare inducing (Lord of the Flies, at age twelve), and the disgusting and bewildering (The Carpetbaggers) so I became more choosy, often going back to kidzbooks for comfort, and then later, as YA publishing got better and better, for appreciation.
Anyway, I wonder how reading patterns are changing, if they are changing. YA is the best it's ever been--when I served on the Andre Norton Jury this past year, I was almost in despair because there were so many good books in our genre alone that were published last year, it was really, really rough to winnow them down to make a shortlist. I wonder if teen readers are staying with YA longer--if they're getting what they want from the books marketed for their age, unlike so many of us older folk.