![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Theorie und Praxis
Nov. 22nd, 2006 12:52 pmI'm feeling alienated from my chosen profession again. This happens approximately every 2nd time I read theory or written communications about the young adult field. And I'd like to be a teen librarian. Now, I understand that average teenagers do not have my reading tastes or reading difficulty range. By the time I actually was 13, I was in high school and reading through Byron's "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" and Herman Hesse and Machiavelli for fun. Of course I read Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore and Tamora Pierce and straight up picture books too, all with equal pleasure. I read piles of hack-ish novels that fed my overly romantic 13yr old dreams. At 13, my absolute favorite book was "Exit to Eden" by Anne Rice writing as Anne Rampling - which is just essentially an S&M romance novel.
So the "teen" that all the professionals describe alienates me. The actual teens I'm fine with - I know that books on tattoos and drug lords and abusive parents and young teenage guys who find themselves parents are way more popular than other stuff. That a lot of teens have trouble with fantasy because they don't easily imagine worlds other than the ones they live in. That they like shorter books with simpler sentences because long sentences may confuse them - their reading level isn't high, or they're struggling to master a second language, or...
But when I read the Margaret Edwards book "The Fair Garden and the Swarm of Beasts" her argument was that the young adult librarian was supposed to support the student in making the difficult transition from children's books to adult books. Most young adult librarians who are active on Yalsa-Bk seem to think that the point of a young adult librarian is to get people reading young adult books. Personally, I think that you just look for good books that will appeal to young adults, and that the field has allowed itself to be somewhat captured by the existence of this marketing "niche" - into thinking of books for young adults as primarily those that are marketed and written for young adults.
Which is odd, because the single most requested book by teens in our library is "A Child Called It" which is most emphatically not written as a young adult book.
So clearly, there's a disconnect. Grr. I'll shut up because I'm rambling, but *grrr*.
Btw, this *grr* was set off because as far as I can tell, my email to yalsa-bk about horror stories was edited off the compilation for some reason. A teacher requested "extra gory horror stories" for a high school senior lit class, and I suggested a bunch of great classic ones from horror and science fiction authors. I sent the email the late night of the 20th, and as of late night of the 21st, it hadn't gone through to the list. The only reason I can think of is because of the selection of adult authors?
The rest of the suggesters were suggesting things from stuff like "Scary stories" compilations. I mean, c'mon: extra gory horror does not mean ghost stories about cats. It just doesn't.
*grr* again I say.
So the "teen" that all the professionals describe alienates me. The actual teens I'm fine with - I know that books on tattoos and drug lords and abusive parents and young teenage guys who find themselves parents are way more popular than other stuff. That a lot of teens have trouble with fantasy because they don't easily imagine worlds other than the ones they live in. That they like shorter books with simpler sentences because long sentences may confuse them - their reading level isn't high, or they're struggling to master a second language, or...
But when I read the Margaret Edwards book "The Fair Garden and the Swarm of Beasts" her argument was that the young adult librarian was supposed to support the student in making the difficult transition from children's books to adult books. Most young adult librarians who are active on Yalsa-Bk seem to think that the point of a young adult librarian is to get people reading young adult books. Personally, I think that you just look for good books that will appeal to young adults, and that the field has allowed itself to be somewhat captured by the existence of this marketing "niche" - into thinking of books for young adults as primarily those that are marketed and written for young adults.
Which is odd, because the single most requested book by teens in our library is "A Child Called It" which is most emphatically not written as a young adult book.
So clearly, there's a disconnect. Grr. I'll shut up because I'm rambling, but *grrr*.
Btw, this *grr* was set off because as far as I can tell, my email to yalsa-bk about horror stories was edited off the compilation for some reason. A teacher requested "extra gory horror stories" for a high school senior lit class, and I suggested a bunch of great classic ones from horror and science fiction authors. I sent the email the late night of the 20th, and as of late night of the 21st, it hadn't gone through to the list. The only reason I can think of is because of the selection of adult authors?
The rest of the suggesters were suggesting things from stuff like "Scary stories" compilations. I mean, c'mon: extra gory horror does not mean ghost stories about cats. It just doesn't.
*grr* again I say.
