Tuesday, November 24, 2009

A New Genre? New Adult Fiction, Good News For Young Adult Writers


I do weekly research on the publishing industry and anything writing related. I came across this news about a new genre at jmeadows.livejournal. Read here where the "New Adult" fiction is better explained. And further reading on where NA might go on the book shelves.

It appears to be a genre between young adult and adult, ranging around 20-26 years old. Not completely adult stories, but closer to adult than young adult in ideas and writing.

Personally, I'm glad to hear of this. I've been a bit concerned that younger, and younger children are reading adult level books. For years, I've believed there is a hole in age level reading for what I originally understood as Young Adult. And am I remembering it right that young adult used to be between 20-27? Just because "the powers that be" lowered the age level for a legal adult from 21 to 18, doesn't mean that young people zap into adults at age 18.

Of course as children mature at different levels, some young people are ready for some adult books. But, with many adult literature, children are not mature enough to be processing what it means to deal with grown up issues. Children have enough to handle just being children right where they are emotionally, with the overload of work they take home from school and after school activities. We already know many can be overwhelmed from this alone, not to mention those who return at night to their broken down families. Then, they deal with that.

I'm not one who thinks we should pamper our children and not require responsibility from them, but why would we want our young people struggling to find something to read and choosing a book that's too advanced? And whatever happened to the librarians and teacher's warnings that this is "too advanced" for your age group while learning to read?

Don't you think when a child learns to read well, it shouldn't mean they are ready emotionally for any all all adult themes? From my perspective, I am delighted this new genre seems to be forming. You can be sure that I am eager to see how quickly or not so quickly it takes root.

Any comments on this interesting new genre? I would love to hear from you.

Until next time . . . Write and write daily (during a work week), even it's it one sentence.



No comments:

Post a Comment