Should we as librarians work to ensure adults can read whatever "genres" they want? Yes, absolutely! I have never understood why any literary choices should be considered less legitimate than others. To say that adults shouldn't read about YA experiences would be the same as saying people in their 20s can't read about people in their 50s, etc.
My library does a fairly good job already of recognizing that adults are interested in young adult literature. Our book club has read a couple of young adult books and they were really well received. A couple of years ago, we also combined our adult and YA audiobooks since we found that adults were checking out YA audiobooks more than teens (who seem to be mostly using e-audio). Continuing to evaluate and plan around these genres will just continue to expose them to our patrons, and I'd love to see us do more with graphic novels and other unique collections as well. I'm sure that this will continue to happen as those collection areas continue to grow. It is interesting to see the readings for this week, which were published a while back now, correctly predicting that these genres will only continue to grow in readership.
One quote from the readings this week stood out to me: "Perhaps a particular librarian buys [a book] for her collection and decides it fits in better with her adult books because of the not-super-explicit but still frank depictions of sex. Is it now NA for that community? Who gets to make the determination of what a YA book truly is? And what about the definitions of individual readers, who may not be aware of or care about this brouhaha in publishing and librarianship?" (Brookeover et al, p. 44). This recently happened at my library. We (the youth department) had a younger teen come in looking for a series she saw on TikTok, we purchased it for our YA collection, and while processing realized very quickly that the content was much more adult. We brought the books to the attention of our adult reference staff and moved them over to their collection. The purchasing part isn't a big deal at my library; things end up in different places all the time and we just make sure to order them from the revised collection area budget in the future. We mostly move things to the adult collection based on sexual content since we are in a fairly conservative area that has dealt with book challenges and want to try to protect ourselves as much as we can. While the parents of teen readers may care about the new adult vs. young adult distinction due to the content of the books, I'm fairly confident that adults who are browsing for themselves aren't really aware of this "brouhaha." They seem to know for themselves what content they are comfortable with and will avoid those types of books if they don't want them.
One final thought: I think that one way that we as librarians can ensure books from these "genres" are available for our patrons is to read them and recommend them ourselves! Seeing us excited about books and being able to be authentic about their appeals will make patrons interested in them as well.
References:
Brookeover, S. (2014). What's new about new adult? Horn Book Magazine, 90(1) p. 41-45.
"I think that one way that we as librarians can ensure books from these "genres" are available for our patrons is to read them and recommend them ourselves!" What a great point you make here! Our own enthusiasm is the best way to encourage others to read. I thought it was interesting what you said about combining your teen and adult audiobook collections. The same thing happens at my library - only adults are checking out the YA audiobooks (teens sometimes don't even know what a cd player is!). Regarding your question of who determines what a YA book is, there are probably several right answers, and it varies based on the community. In any case, let adults read young adult! They probably enjoy reminiscing and reading these books probably helps them relate to the teens in their lives!
ReplyDeleteHi Liz! Much like people in their 20s might like to read about a character in their 50s, I think people in their 40s or 50s can gain a lot of insight by reading about characters in their teens. The world around us changes so quickly, and teens today have a lot more to navigate than I did and I only graduated high school in 2015! Imagine how much empathy one could develop for teens if they read their books! Titles like Flamer and The Hate U Give obviously come to mind, but joyful teen books are also just as important to read as the more serious ones!
ReplyDeleteGreat response! I especially love your closing thoughts!
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