Week 7

Assignment 1

Interesting flowchart, although I'd call it multiple flowcharts. I now have a few more books to read.


Assignment 2

Article #1: New Adult: Needless Marketing Speak or Valued Subgenre.

I could see how the term "New Adult" could be useful from a marketing standpoint but I think would be confusing in a library setting. All of our sections (Adult, Teen, Childrens) are pretty much self explanatory. To me that just sounds like new adult fiction. The article mentions the term reading down, which I don't really like. Sometimes you just want to read a book that's in another age range about a theme or subject matter you might like. To me that's just putting the reader down. There is a part of the article that states "Another thing the new adult tag does, insiders noted, is signal content that some will consider too mature for teen readers". There has been sex and adult situations in YA for years. I just don't think we need another label for a subsection of  readers.

Article #2: The Next Big Thing: Adults Reading Teen Literature

Personally I think this is great. I've been reading Young Adult books now for years and I'm glad to see a new group of readers discovering them. I do think a lot of it has to do with the movies, where adults see the movie in the theater and want to read the book. TV (Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, and The Secret Circle) is also another big reason for the crossover. At least when adults are finished with the TV and movie titles they want the read-alikes, then we've got them.


Assignment 3

I chose to follow Stacked and Squeetus Blog. Stacked is a well written blog that is geared toward those who like Young Adult Fiction and Non-Fiction. It is written by a librarian and a former librarian who both have a good grasp of what's going on in the world of Young Adult literature. Squeetus Blog is written by the author Shannon Hale. When picking this blog I should have look at the amount of post that were done as the week I followed it only had one post.


Assignment 4

Harper Teen: So far the most of the books at Harper Teen run the gamut as far as genres go. Fantasy Fiction, Gothic, Suspense among others are here. The only real trend I can see is that the majority of the titles have a female main character.

Teens @ Random: Same as Harper Teen. Many different genres with a female main character.