Week Seven - Assignments

1. The Lawrence KS teen dystopia flowchart is amazing. I hope our librarians have been using that for customers who are looking for something else to read after The Hunger Games and Divergent series.

2. As the Teen book selector and considerably involved in YALSA, I have read a number of the articles that show that adults are buying more teen books than teens are - and of course many of those adults are not simply buying them for the teens in their life but reading and enjoying the books themselves. I reread the Christian Science Monitor article "Who is Buying Teen Books?" and it seems that in the past two years since it was published the trend has only continued to grow. This is certainly the case with The Fault in Our Stars and other books that have been published under the Teen banner but are just as enjoyed by adults. The Publishers Weekly article on New Adult is another wrinkle in the question of who is buying the books and for whom, as New Adult bridges teen and adult. Not only do we in Collection Development struggle with which of the New Adult books belong in Teen and which in Adult (most fall in Adult), the buyers of these books are largely older teens and twentysomethings that want to see their lives in a mirror. So far New Adult has been focused mostly on romance, but urban fiction and realistic fiction titles have also been published.

3. I chose two of the blogs that are near and dear to me. Forever Young Adult definitely appeals to me as a forty-something who mostly reads Teen books. Their recent posts about their activity at BookExpo (which I also attended were amusing and occasionally I felt like I was looking at myself in a mirror. Many of the scenes were reminiscent of what I experienced at BookExpo, but quite a few others were new to me. It was nice to see a blogger's perspective of the show. I also looked at Someday My Printz Will Come, which is of note because I served on the 2012 Printz Committee. Therefore, I have participated on that blog in the years before and since (though I didn't type a word during my Printz year due to secrecy). That blog, along with Heavy Metal (Newbery) and Calling Caldecott are amazing in the intricate analysis of potential award-winning books. That said, I find it funny how far off the picks are from those of the committee's, particularly on the Someday blog. Nonetheless, I often see things in books that I would have never realized if it weren't for the highly skilled bloggers and commenters on Someday.

4. I selected HarperTeen and Little, Brown for my teen publishers. HarperTeen's site was interesting in that much of the current content has clearly moved to social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. Titles that are being pushed on the site seem to be an afterthought. Little, Brown's site, on the other hand, looks vibrant and curated. It also looks like it has been updated consistently. That said, it is also clear that much of the most current content has moved over to social media. The continued interest in realistic fiction is the biggest trend that I see from both publishers, with some remaining focus on paranormal aspects of otherwise straightforward fiction and finishing up dystopian series.