I wasn't gonna post today, but yesterday's Wall Street Journal article about YA books "Darkness Too Visible" has me and lots of other folks pretty steamed up.
Check the Twitter conversation #YASaves for reaction from authors, readers, and librarians; we gotta wonder about the article author's qualifications as a book reviewer... (search her name and tell us what you think)
Did she ask any independent bookstore folks about what books they would recommend to the worried mom in paragraph one? How about her child's school librarian? Or their public librarian?
Maureen Johnson (whose 13 Little Blue Envelopes and The Last Little Blue Envelope are bestsellers and won't get the full BooksYALove treatment - so just go read them!) has a new favorite picture, by Anastasiy Gorbunov, which illustrates exactly how books lead to new interests and visions and experiences. (The caption translates as “Reading isn’t dangerous. Not reading is.”)
Dr. Teri Lesesne, "the goddess of YA literature" and major expert in the field, was explosively ticked-off by the article, as her LiveJournal today shows. The points that she notes there are exactly why YA books are so important, and why I'm trying to get the word out about the great titles that you'll miss if you don't dig past the big display stacks at the big-box bookstores or the "you'll like this one" lists at the big online retailers.
Too bad that the mom in the WSJ article didn't have someone to help her find that great book for her 13 year-old daughter... like Smile and Dancing Through the Snow and Sequins, Secrets and Silver Linings... sigh...
At least the #YASaves hashtag is trending high right now (#3) so the conversation continues! C'mon over to Twitter and join in.
**kmm
I was planning to post later today about this, and my first thought was, "I hope Katy says something in all her YA glory!" So glad you did. I come at this from the mom of YA readers as well as an author who writes a YA voice. SO much to think about.
ReplyDeleteTia - have you checked the #YASaves Twitter conversation? What really grabbed my heart were the tweets from readers (teens now and now-grown) about how reading YA had saved them. Every book is NOT for every reader...
ReplyDeleteI'll be watching for your post, too.
signed, grandmother of YA readers
**Katy