We read YA.
"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth book in the Harry Potter series, is six pages longer than Anna Karenina."
~ In case you didn’t make it that far into the article, I just wanted to highlight this quote that made me smile. (quote from McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: The State of Publishing: Young People Are Reading More Than You.)
#yashowdown
Here’s the recording if you missed the always delightful Maureen Johnson on NPR this morning talking about darkness in YA with WSJ children’s book editor Meghan Gurdon - http://t.co/w2BtkHF. MJ made several good points in not much time and (as happened with the whole #yasaves thread in the first place) the #yashowdown tweets are really adding to the ongoing discussion.
The quality of the callers was overall great - wonderful to hear from a librarian, a parent, a teen and an author (Cheryl Rainfield, whose SCARS is now on my reading list), except for the guy who was obviously just making a plug for his new YA book and said there aren’t any good books for pre-teens (see: Judy Blume, Rick Riordan, Nancy Drew Mysteries, The Babysitters Club, The Chronicles of Narnia, Pippi Longstocking, Beverly Cleary…I could go on and on but then I just get upset).
It’s a complicated world and this whole argument is one of many that doesn’t completely have a black and white answer. But in my mind reading = good. If you’re concerned about what your kids are reading, talk to them about it, read together, go to the library or bookstore with them and take an honest interest in what they’re consuming and why - don’t just put on blinders or think that because you kept them from reading “dark” books their world will now be perfect or safe.
Was just browsing through a collection of weird things customers say in bookshops and this one seemed appropriate -
Woman: Hi, my daughter is going to come by on her way home from school to buy a book. But she seems to buy books with sex in them and she’s only twelve, so can I ask you to keep an eye out for her and make sure she doesn’t buy anything inappropriate for her age? I can give you a list of authors she’s allowed to buy.
Me: With all due respect, would it not be easier for you to come in with your daughter?
Woman: Certainly not. She’s a grown girl, she can do it herself.
"And more importantly, what authors mean doesn’t really matter, I don’t think. What’s important is that critical reading can be a way into thinking quite deeply about questions that are difficult and complicated. And not in some, like, boring and abstract way, like ‘Ohh, in Moby Dick, white is a symbol for nature’s ambivalence to man,’ but instead in a concrete and totally interesting way like, nature’s complete indifference to you, as expressed by the color white in Moby Dick, is something that you had better get your head around or else you’re going to end up like Captain Ahab! So it’s not so much about uncovering secret mysteries for the sake of uncovering secret mysteries, it’s about using story as a way into thinking about our actual lives and how we’re actually living them."
~ John Green, in his latest video. (I agree). (via asmuchasmyselfastoyou)
(via effyeahnerdfighters)
“Look around for your people.” Love author Tanya Lee Stone’s advice in this collection of 35 authors and illustrators in an “it gets better” video. High school wasn’t terrible for me (seemed to instinctively know it would get better), but having close friends who really got me did make a world of difference. Seems like these days it would be even easier to find people - nerdfighters are everywhere. #dftba
Study says reading as teenager gets you a better job
From @neilhimself #savelibraries
