Week 7: Not Just for Teens

This morning I read two great articles about the trend of adults reading young adult fiction: New Adult: Needless Marketing-Speak or Valued Subgenre by Rachel Deahl (Publishers Weekly) and A Not-So-Young Audience for Young Adult Books by Meg Wolitzer (New York Times).

The first article addresses the term "New Adult" used in-house at various publishers to describe books that would interest YA fans entering actual adulthood, ages 18-23. Editors and agents like the term because they feel it is an effective way to communicate their marketing goals for the books. On the other hand, you have book sellers  (and, I assume, Librarians) who told the reporter that they have not heard of the term yet, or they think it is lame. All in all, there seems to be agreement that there needs to be a good way to organize these books, that are very much YA but with slightly more mature content. It seemed to me that many of the examples of New Adult were basically romances but with younger characters. If that trend continues, a "Young Romance" tag might be effective.

The New York Times article focused on those adults who enjoy reading YA and explored possible reasons why some prefer YA over adult fiction- and it's not all about nostalgia. I happen to be an adult who enjoys reading not just YA but also children's fiction. I like the variety these genres offer, especially in children's. Characters can be of many different ages and backgrounds and they can be anthropomorphic, too. I also account my interest in these genres to having been a reluctant reader as a child, so now I am trying to read all of the awesome books I missed.

I personally think the distinction between children's, YA, and adult is most useful for recommending appropriate content.


I also had the opportunity to explore two YA-inspired blogs.  The first was John Green's tumblr. John Green is the author of some very popular YA novels, including The Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns. He also publishes podcasts and some very entertaining mini-lessons on Youtube on his channel Crash Course. His tumblr is geared towards his fans who are interested in all of the interesting things he does in addition to writing spectacular YA novels as it contains alerts to newly published podcasts, youtube videos, comics, etc.


I also looked at a cool blog called Forever Young Adult. This blog seems to be feared towards older fans of YA as it contains posts devoted to nostalgic teen things from the 90s era, like Dawson's Creek and Baby Sitter's Club. Having said that, it also provides timely updates on new YA releases. I like how it includes lists (I LOVE lists) like "most anticipated books of 2016" (of which there are two, one for standalones/series starters and another for sequels/follow-ups).

Lastly, I browsed the new teen releases for Harpers and Penguin. I noticed a nice trend of books that have LGBTQ characters. Besides that, there is your usual books focusing on high school drama/cliques and/or dystopia settings.