diligently working to catch up here...
This whole New Adult discussion makes me imagine the library as a spiral tower lined with shelving spiraling upward. Board books for the youngest patrons would be at the bottom, in the beginning, and at the very top of the tower where shelving comes to an end, we'd find the books by Diana Athill and Jane Juska for the geriatric readers. New Adult would be found between Young Adult and (full-fledged?) Adult. Shelf labels by AA Milne...Now We Are 32.
I read the Who is Buying Teen Books? and New Adult: Needless Marketing...articles, and some of the blogs, too. New Adult seems to be an ambiguous category; does it mean more sex than YA? Lots of crossover appeal? 19-25 yr old characters? Angst about getting launched? I think it's great that the teen market has exploded the way it has and am not surprised about the crossover. I just don't see it as a new genre but instead, a marketing and merchandising technique which certainly has its own merit. Wow! to the LPL flowchart--I liked the way it was organized, and enjoyed seeing all the subgenre suggestions.
The sites I'm following for this assignment are Stacked for its plethora of links to external articles and videos on the topics it raises, and Teenreads since it contains lots of book reviews. Be back at the end of the week. :)
Lori,
ReplyDeleteI liked your joke about AA Milne: "Now we are 32" It makes me wonder.... do most people like to read about people their own age? Or is this just a characteristic of teens and young adults? For me personally, I love coming of age stories; however, I stick to Adult Fiction books for the most part. On the contrary though, I think that most teens would not want to read about someone my age! (I am in my 50's) I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think this new genre will definitely sell, but the characters have to be their age!
Hi Debbie. Like you, I mainly read Adult fiction or non-fiction, but I do occasionally stray to teen or children books. On another blog, someone pointed out what a large percentage of Young Adult readers are much older than the YA category. To me, that seems like one more reason not to shelve that new category separately as I think that makes a collection both less accessible and less appealing to a broader range of readers. Of course, I'm a fan of shelving nearly all adult fiction together and bringing back the genre labels---I think it makes it more fun to browse, and more likely that someone picks up a book out of their typical reading patterns.
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