The Core Knowledge Blog

Another sign that not all is lost. While the conventional wisdom says teens aren’t readers, they are actually scooping up novels in unprecedented numbers, Newsweek reports. “Young-adult fiction (ages 12-18) is enjoying a bona fide boom with sales up more than 25 percent in the past few years, according to a Children’s Book Council sales survey. Virtually every major publishing house now has a teen imprint, many bookstores and libraries have created teen reading groups and an infusion of talented new authors has energized the genre,” the magazine notes.

While Harry Potter gets all the press, any 4th- to 8th grade teacher can tell you there is an extraordinarily rich body of work currently in print for kids, most of which is virtually unknown outside of schools. Ask someone who’s not a tween, teen or teacher if they’ve heard of Jerry Spinnelli, Katherine Paterson, Kate DiCamillo or Louis Sachar. Be prepared for blank stares.

“This is the second golden age for young-adult books,” author David Levithan tells Newsweek. “Levithan and others cite several reasons for this perfect storm for teen lit, the most obvious two being the increasing sophistication and emotional maturity of teenagers and the accompanying new freedom for writers in the genre to explore virtually any subject. Another is that bookstores and libraries are finally recognizing this niche and separating teen books from children’s books.”

The Newsweek piece follows a report issued two weeks ago, What Kids are Reading: The Book Reading Habits of Students in American Schools, which was touted as the first comprehensive report to provide detailed information about the books school children are actually reading.