Children’s Reading

[DracoM]

YA abbreviation is used in EVERY publisher's blurb / book review in every broadsheet paper.



Come on.............!

[Pulcinella]

YA abbreviation is used in EVERY publisher's blurb / book review in every broadsheet paper.



Come on.............!

Well, it was new to me.
And I have worked in publishing (admittedly scientific journals!).
And I download The Times every day (ok, don't often read Times 2 section).

[doversoul1]

Try Patrick Ness's YA writings. Engrossing.

I’m just curious; how come you are reading novels written for young adults? And being engrossed?

[DracoM]

Good story-telling transcends barriers created or imagined by the apparent age of the reader, doesn't it?

[teamsaint]

Interestingly, there seems to be a bit of a dearth of YA non fiction, which apparently is a much more popular and widespread genre/ category in America.

[french frank]

Good story-telling transcends barriers created or imagined by the apparent age of the reader, doesn't it?

I suppose story-telling is just one aspect of fiction, though not to me the most engrossing (I suspect that accounts for my total lack of success in novel-writing: people wanted stories ).

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I suppose story-telling is just one aspect of fiction, though not to me the most engrossing (I suspect that accounts for my total lack of success in novel-writing: people wanted stories ).

Ahh - but the important bit is the "telling", not the "story"!

[LeMartinPecheur]

YA abbreviation is used in EVERY publisher's blurb / book review in every broadsheet paper.

Come on.............!

Is there an OC (Old Child) genre these days? It might suit me, particularly after an excess of C19 Russian fiction lately

[doversoul1]

Good story-telling transcends barriers created or imagined by the apparent age of the reader, doesn't it?

Good story-telling or literature for children and young adults are created specifically to suite the level of the readers’ knowledge and experience. Best writers write down without condescending or patronising. This doesn’t mean adult readers can’t enjoy these books but we (adults) need to be aware that what interests us in the book is usually different from what the intended readers find interesting. An adult and a child can find the same thing interesting but usually for different reasons/levels. We like to think that we can remember how we felt when we were young and can read as a child does but we can’t, since we can’t un-experience our lives, in much the same way as we cannot listen to Bach’s music as his original audience heard it.

What this means is that books for children and young adult that are interesting to us are not so for no reasons: they tend to have elements that easily appeal to adults over the head of the child readers as is often said. One of the best example of this is Pullman’s His Dark Materials. It is stuffed full of references that adult readers can pick and compare, and marketed as such. It even managed to catch the judges at Whitbread Book Award. It has enough to interest child readers as well but those elements are (in my opinion) little more than good Disney films (super pets, talking bears etc.) which are brilliant but I wouldn’t call them literature.

As long as we are enjoying the book for ourselves, that’s fine but if we are to recommend it to a child or a young adult, I think it is worth giving a thought as to what it is in the book that engrossed us. Also, we tend to be lenient with young adult novels.

Young adult novels sell much better than quality children’s books, as unlike children they go out and buy books themselves, and also, books for young adults tend to be given a proper space for reviews whereas children’s books hardly ever do because reviewers can find a lot more to say about YA books than they do in children’s books. All this means is that writing for children is almost becoming an endangered species (there, I’ve said it).

[french frank]

Ahh - but the important bit is the "telling", not the "story"!

Well, I wuz teached, "Show not tell" :-P

[Dave2002]

I suppose story-telling is just one aspect of fiction, though not to me the most engrossing (I suspect that accounts for my total lack of success in novel-writing: people wanted stories ).

Isn't all fiction story telling, or is there something special about story telling? Does it have to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, for example? OTOH, if all fiction is story telling, then surely the difference between one and another is quality, whatever that is, for a story.

[french frank]

the difference between one and another is quality, whatever that is

That elusive 'quality' …

Yes, there must be some 'story', but some fictional works are billed as 'page turners' - not something that would sell them to me, any more than 'ripping yarns'. Not really thought about this as much as I could, but I think I would regard the story or plot as the surface of a novel. I don't think young children would go deeper than that.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

In the best writing, "page turning" goes in both directions - checking passages that have occurred earlier in a novel, re-reading a particularly well-written passage. The blockbuster type of page-turner is always forward; the point being to have finished reading the damn thing, rather than the present experience of actively reading.

The story is just the hook upon which the writing writhes - I haven't the slightest interest in Baseball, but for the first chapter of Don DeLillo's Underworld, I was engrossed by the game depicted, because of the way that DeLillo communicates the inner world of the players and spectators. I'm reading Jackie Kay's novel Trumpet, the opening pages of which deal with bereavement - but it's a very artificial communication of grief; as if the writer is trying to imagine what the best words should be; and the result sounds a bit "creative writing group" to me. Contrast with Ali Smith's Artful, in which words dance with devastating results on this reader - the same "story"; the telling so much more ... telling.


And, to bing it back to kids - just as a good teacher could make the history of rope-making something fascinating for a class, so a good writer can make the most mundane story totally captivating. Which words? Where? When?

[ardcarp]

just as a good teacher could make the history of rope-making something fascinating for a class

Surely it's the most fascinating thing anyway...especially if you live near Bridport.

[Rjw]

[QUOTE=ferneyhoughgeliebte;728861]In the best writing, "page turning" goes in both directions - checking passages that have occurred earlier in a novel, re-reading a particularly well-written passage. The blockbuster type of page-turner is always forward; the point being to have finished reading the damn thing, rather than the present experience of actively reading.

Very well put¡