Inspiration for Twilight

Is it not a little sad that Meyer names 12 artifacts as inspirational for her books but only two are books? Jane Eyre and Lucy Maud Montgomery. I have to be a little happy I suppose that a Canadian made the list but still, not Mary Shelly? No Bram Stoker? Not even Anne Rice?

As well, I'm a little disappointed that Buffy wasn't one of the movies listed. As great as Tina Fey is, how does she rate above Joss Wheadon?

Stodgy No More

In case you think the ALA (American Library Association) is a tad stodgy in their list generation (they narrowed the nominations down so that young people could vote on a slate prepared by adults) you can click over to the Cybils.

The list is long and I definitely don't have time or money to look at the whole thing but I love the fact that the Internet has allowed disparate readers to gather together. As a young person, I would have loved to have had conversations about books but wouldn't want to be a geek in my own school. The Cybils represent a great new way of thinking about reading.

Top Ten Teen Books

The American Library Association has a teen read week every year and they allow young people to choose the past year's top ten books. Here they are (apparently over 8000 votes):

1. Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer
2. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling
3. Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
4. Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead
5. Maximum Ride: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports by James Patterson
6. City of Bones by Cassandra Clare
7. The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray
8. Extras by Scott Westerfeld
9. Before I Die by Jenny Downham
10. Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson

Why care? First, unless high school English has changed a lot, none of these books are assigned reading. There is clearly a disconnect between the lists of what young people want to read vs. what adults think they should read.

Second, since there is such a disconnect, I've got to wonder whether young people employ different ways of reading for 'pleasure' vs reading for class. I'm thinking that young people are learning to read in one way (analytical) but are choosing another way to read outside of the school context. Should we not help young people integrate the two?

Third, I know Romeo and Juliet a whole lot better than I know the Twilight series. If I hope to talk to young people about reading, I better get cracking at reading about adolescent vampires.

Book lists

I'm ramping up a project on trying to figure out how young people read. I know that the physical process is similar for everyone but there are so many things different about young people - their developmental stage, the culture they are immersed in, the schools they learn to read in - that I'm betting that they read in a different way than people in other developmental, cultural or educational contexts.

Saying that, I've been combing the Internet for interesting places to find young people reading. One of the things that I've been interested in is lists of books that people now believe were important for them to read as young people. Jeff Keuss, who I met over the weekend, has such a list in his "book shrine." While I will never agree that Mill on the Floss should be required reading for young people, I wouldn't mind if my daughter read it as a young person.

All of this is to say, any lists out there? Any push back on Jeff's? He has no comments in relation to the post so who knows, maybe people don't care about books.

New Blog

I recently found a new blog that ties into my interest in how young people read - Guys Lit Wire. It is mostly written by those who are invested in the YA genre but who aren't young people (largely, there does seem to be some young reviewers). To that extent you get an alternative take on YA lit, alternative that is from the industry but not alternative as in from young people themselves. Still, worth checking out, especially if you want to help a young male in your life find interesting things to read.