Thoughts on YA, New Adult, & Graphic Novels (Prompt Response)

While reading my classmates' blog entries, I realized I got into YA books at the same time it began to take over the market. Twilight, Divergent, and Hunger Games were all books I read as guilty pleasures. I needed a light fast read during the summer between years in college and got hooked. I recognized they weren't well written from a literary perspective, but I couldn't help liking them and I didn't want to admit it. 

I think a lot of adults reading this "genre" feel that reading these books is something to hide or justify. I was always defending the genre to adults when I worked with teens and read the books myself. Many of the coming-of-age books in YA, like John Green's and A.S. King's books, are incredibly thoughtful and insightful. They help readers discover what they value in life and think about how they want to live life when it can be lived on their own terms. We should all think about this in our lives.

I appreciate that there is an emerging New Adult genre. Although, I know it has been emerging for a number of years, and some people have trouble feeling it is legitimate as its own thing. I advocate for it because I can see from the perspective of working with teens that there are a lot of books marked as YA that are really just meant for adults who read like the YA appeals, not really meant for teens. These books would better fit New Adults to distinguish the true audience. I know I've read articles about this problem but I'm having a struggle day and can't find these to link.

There are ALA lists made that recommend adult books for teens (Alex Awards) and I think it might be clever to pair these with lists of YA books for adults, too. Make an annotated list that describes the appeals to help readers see past the YA label and help legitimize its appeals in the eyes of readers who want to hide their tastes. 

I've seen a number of Historical Fiction books in YA that would have cross-over appeal for readers that don't normally enjoy YA (Passion of Dolssa and They Went Left). These could be incorporated into regular historical fiction displays without bringing attention to the difference. There are also a number of historical fiction graphic novels that could be thrown in with this display. While it is not going to draw in every typical historical fiction reader, it may help patrons see that the library is putting all these on the same level.

I always tell parents that there have been studies showing that reading comprehension of a story from a graphic novel version of a book is just as good as from the regular version of that book and that kids do pick up new vocabulary from these books (also can't find these articles today). They often don't believe me, but those of us in the library know that any reading counts as reading and helps us learn. I had a college feminist literature course that had me read a graphic novel memoir and that probably helped legitimize the content of them for me.