Sunday, June 12, 2005

Teen Chick-Lit

A class-fellow came across this chick-lit link while proctrastinating earlier this week. Chapters Books knows that they are onto a good thing with teen chick lit - an exemplary title is Angus, Thongs & Full Frontal Snogging: Confessions of Georgia Nicolson - as the eagerly made theatrical version of Ann Brashares' Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants testifies. I discovered recently that my younger daughter had simply devoured them -- and she is not much of a reader.
My prediction is that this will be an emergent genre ....

1 comment:

Steve said...

Emergent genre?

I think the existence of these 97 titles, currently in print would qualify it as a genre.

Also, I get the feeling The Babysitter's Club and Sweet Valley High would count as teen chick lit -- at least these are what my sister was reading when she was in her early teens.

On the other hand, there are not a lot of lit geared towards young boys -- i suppose it is hard enough to get boys away from their computers, TVs, and XBoxes, let alone convince them to read a novel.

I know Harry Potter has dramatically improved young readership, but I wonder what boys think about reading books written by a woman? Do they think about it? I used to love reading Judy Blume novels, but I think I had some qualms about it nonetheless.

According to this Observer Article, boys grow up to be men who don't read novels. "Getting men to read fiction is the holy grail of publishing."

Furthermore, when men do read novels, this article asserts that they read works by other men.