by Cecelia Goodnow
Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Leslie Cornaby, 16, a sophomore at Shorecrest High School
picks up a load of books at the Lake Forest Park Library on Thursday.
Like a lot of teens, Leslie Cornaby has a crowded schedule — her days crammed with homework, hobbies and an array of techno diversions. When she’s not checking e-mail, she’s cruising YouTube or scrolling her iPod to tunes by Pink or Christina Aguilera.
She’s also reading — just for the glorious fun of it — and says, “Most of my friends are readers, too.”
The Shorecrest High School sophomore may not realize it, but she’s enjoying the fruits of one of the most fertile periods in the history of young adult literature.
It’s a time of strong writing and strong sales as readers in the 12-to-18 age group rock the marketplace.
“Kids are buying books in quantities we’ve never seen before,” said Booklist magazine critic Michael Cart, a leading authority on young adult literature. “And publishers are courting young adults in ways we haven’t seen since the 1940s.”
Credit a bulging teen population, a surge of global talent and perhaps a bit of Harry Potter afterglow as the preteen Muggles of yesteryear carry an ingrained reading habit into later adolescence.
Not only are teen book sales booming — up by a quarter between 1999 and 2005, by one industry analysis — but the quality is soaring as well. Older teens in particular are enjoying a surge of sophisticated fare as young adult literature becomes a global phenomenon.
All of which leads Cart to declare, “We are right smack-dab in the new golden age of young adult literature.”
Rebirth began after 1990s
It’s a welcome development in a field that has seen ups and downs since the salad days of the 1970s — the era of greats such as Judy Blume (“Forever”) and Robert Cormier (“The Chocolate War”). By the 1990s, critics said teen fiction had grown tired and formulaic.
Now comes the rebirth.
Fantasy and graphic novels are especially hot, and adventure, romance, humor and gritty coming-of-age tales remain perennial favorites. In addition, racy series such as “The Gossip Girls” — often likened to a teen “Sex and the City” — have created a buzz.
More notably, though, there’s a new strain of sophistication and literary heft as publishers cater to the older end of the spectrum with books that straddle teen and adult markets.
King County librarian Holly Koelling has been tracking these trends as she writes an upcoming edition of “Best Books for Young Adults,” an American Library Association reference book.
“There has been an increase in the age of the protagonist, the complexity of the plotting and the content — the gravity of the content,” Koelling said. “I think it may be a reflection of a more sophisticated teenage population.”
That’s welcome news given the recent gloomy update from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which found that 12th-graders nationally scored lower in reading in 2005 than in 1992, with scores virtually unchanged since 2002.
Declines were seen at all levels except the top 10th percentile of students — the teens who presumably make up a good share of the book-buying public.
The teens who are reading welcome the growing sophistication of young adult literature.
“Chick lit and a lot of the ‘teen books’ out there are great for vacation or a quick read,” said Jennifer Schmidt, 15, part of the Shoreline library’s Teen Advisory Group, “but I think there are a lot of teens out there who like reading stuff that’s a little deeper.”
Take a look at the New York Times children’s bestseller list.
At No. 7, holding strong after 46 weeks, is “The Book Thief,” a Holocaust tale narrated by Death and written with stunning beauty by a young Aussie author, Markus Zusak. It was published in Australia as an adult title.
At No. 5 is Ellen Hopkins’ new novel, “Impulse,” the tale of three suicidal teens who meet at a psychiatric hospital. Like her meth-addiction novel, “Crank,” it’s written in a challenging format — free-verse poetry.
Then there’s “Octavian Nothing: Traitor to the Nation,” the 2006 National Book Award winner for Young People’s Literature.
Set in Revolutionary War-era Boston, it’s a searing, audacious tale of racial experimentation that the author describes as part of “a 900-page, two-volume historical epic for teens, written in a kind of unintelligible 18th-century Johnsonian-Augustan prose.”
Obviously, teen lit is fast outgrowing its bobby socks.
“It’s not just ‘Sweet Valley High’ right now,” said Hayden Bass, a librarian at the Seattle Public Library’s downtown Teen Center. “The quality has been pushed way up.”
Turnaround reasons cited
As for which came first — the surge in quality or the receptive audience — no one is entirely sure.
“It’s both at once,” said Nancy Hinkel, publishing director at Knopf Books for Young Readers. She likens the phenomenon to a “snake that’s swallowing its tail.”
Reflecting the field’s growing stature, the National Book Foundation in 1996 expanded the National Book Award to include not only fiction, non-fiction and poetry, but also a category for Young People’s Literature.
Four years later the American Library Association created the Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature — big brother to the better-known Newbery and Caldecott medals for younger readers.
Pierce County librarian Judy Nelson, president of the national Young Adult Library Services Association, said the move reflects the “ever-increasing volume of excellent literature for teens.”
Today’s creative ferment is a sharp change from just a decade ago, when Cart warned that young adult literature was being gutted by chain-store marketers who were supplanting librarians and editors as arbiters of taste.
Horror and other pulp series prevailed, most titles were aimed at ages 11 to 14, and older teens were becoming an “endangered species” in the marketplace, Cart chided in his 1996 book, “From Realism to Romance: 50 Years of Change and Growth in Young Adult Literature.”
Reached by phone in Indiana, Cart laughed softly and said, “That was then and this is now.”
There are many reasons for the turnaround, not least the sheer size of the teen population — well over 30 million kids with ready cash in their pockets. Called Gen Y or Millennials, they trail only the baby boomers in number.
“The publishing world has recognized that teens have a lot of disposable income, and they’re willing to spend it,” Nelson said. “They buy books. They (especially) buy paperbacks.”
They also visit the library. In the King County Library System, teen fiction now circulates at a higher rate than adult fiction.
“In the summertime, the shelves in my teen section are almost empty, which is great!” said librarian Rick Orsillo of King County’s Shoreline branch.
The staying power of books is especially remarkable given the lure of YouTube, MySpace and other techie diversions. Shrewdly, the book world is meeting teens on their own turf, with libraries creating MySpace pages and publishers advertising on popular teen sites.
Noting that the Web has been used to “hype, announce and promote books,” Cornaby, 16, the Shorecrest 10th-grader, said, “I don’t have to go to my school’s library anymore to find out what the latest books are, and I can also get a book on audio and put it on my iPod if I really want to.”
Seeking teen input
Finally, teens are actively shaping the literary scene, as more libraries — including the Seattle Public Library — form teen advisory groups to attract young readers and help influence collections.
Publishers sometimes use them as focus groups, and the American Library Association solicits teen input before it votes on its annual list of Best Books for Young Adults.
In January, the Best Books panel, meeting at the ALA conference in Seattle, heard from about 40 Northwest teens — many of them from the Shoreline group led by Orsillo, a member of the panel.
Zeno Dellby, 16, with a gray watch cap pulled down around his ears, marched to the microphone to support crowd favorite “Octavian Nothing,” saying, “I thought it was wonderfully grim and unusual.”
Victor Li, 17, panned “Inside Delta Force,” saying, “The writing was slow-paced. It just dragged on.”
Feather Osborn, 15, pitched “Wintersmith,” wooed by the humor of satirist Terry Pratchett. “Terry Pratchett,” she said, “is simply a comic genius.”
Their comments wowed Angelina Benedetti, a King County libraries manager and Printz Award panelist. She said later she was shocked the teens talked more about “Octavian Nothing” than stereotypical chick lit.
“They finally have something to challenge them,” she said. “It is really a golden age.”
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