WSJ: 'You're Reading...What?'

[question everything]

'You're Reading...What?'

This season, publishers are rolling out more volumes for teens that are full of heavy themes, from binge drinking to incest.

By SALLY BEATTY
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
June 24, 2005; Page W1

Hilary Armstrong was happy to see her 12-year-old daughter Katherine reading at the kitchen table one afternoon -- until, that is, she glanced at the back of the book jacket. "I was mortified," says Mrs. Armstrong. The book, which her daughter got from a friend, had a blurb on the back that read, "After all, no one really wants to go to college a virgin."

(snip)

It's the summer book season: Do you know what your child is reading? To appeal to teens brought up on suggestive music videos and cable-TV shows, publishers are releasing more books full of mature themes and unflinching portrayals of sexual activity, with young protagonists the same age as their target readers. One publisher is venturing beyond its titles on dragons and bunnies with "Claiming Georgia Tate," about a 12-year-old girl whose father pressures her into a sexual relationship and makes her dress like a prostitute. In "Looking for Alaska," prep-school students watch pornography and pass the time binge-drinking. Coming this fall is "Teach Me," in which a male high-school teacher has sex with a student.

And kids seem to be responding: Young-adult fiction -- which has come to be associated with the edgy titles -- is one of the book industry's healthiest segments. Targeting the 12-and-up age group, the segment's sales are up 23% since 1999, according to estimates by industry analyst Albert Greco, a Fordham University marketing professor... One discovery: The subject matter is rarely clear from a book's title or graphics. "Rainbow Party" features tubes of lipstick on the cover -- though it isn't about girls discussing makeup, but a teen oral-sex party. We also found that girls are the main target audience here, reflecting publishers' belief that more teen girls than boys read. (The idea is that boys stick to fantasy epics.) That helps explain why there are more controversial girl-oriented titles, like "Alice on Her Way," about a 16-year-old who spends a weekend in Manhattan on a class trip.

Publishers say the mature material simply reflects the culture teens are exposed to today, and may help them to process situations they've heard about or experienced. In some cases, they add, the themes help advance a moral message: "Rainbow Party," for example, teaches children about the risk of sexually transmitted diseases, says Rick Richter, president of Simon & Schuster's children's division, which published the title. He adds that he'd be happy to have his 13-year-old daughter read it.

Industry analysts say editors have been emboldened to go beyond the bad behavior of the '80s "Sweet Valley" novels, because of a few risqué-fiction success stories. Last year's "How I Live Now," aimed at children 12 and older and featuring an affair between teen cousins, won the 2005 Michael L. Printz Award for young-adult literature. Many more have been commercial hits, including the "Gossip Girl" series, for readers 15 and up, with seven installments since 2001 and more than two million books in print. (Most young-adult titles sell fewer than 20,000 copies, analysts say.) The "A-List" novels, about rich teens looking for trouble, have had 945,000 books printed since 2003, while last year's "The Clique," a chronicle of spoiled middle-school girls, is already a three-book series with 1.15 million copies in print.

(snip)

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111956889635168198,00.html

[Mythsaje]

1. This doesn't really surprise me...

in e-publishing, erotic romance (particularly Fantasy or Paranormal "Romantica"--sensual sex scenes with romantic storylines, featuring vampires, shapeshifters, faeries, and the like--), are HUGELY popular with adult women. This sort of fiction is one of the fastest growing segments of the publishing world.

[susanna]

2. "Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret"...the next generation. n/t

[Gabi Hayes]

3. they should be ecstatic at the WSJ....isn't that what they're all about?

the free market rules, above all else. matter of fact, there IS no else....the ONLY consideration is maximization of profit

Laissez les bontemps roulez, n'est ce pas?

the only thing that matters is the bottom line

why don't they STFU and let the profits roll in?

[BeTheChange]

4. This.is.ridiculous

Have parents lost their fucking minds?

I checked the reviews and description of "Claiming Georgia Tate" on Amazon.com..

Good greif.

It honestly seems like parents have just decided to go free market with their parenting style. I can't even imagine my 14 year old sister reading this swill and if she was here visiting Id assume if I let her pick something from the teen section it wouldnt be completely inappropriate. I dont know Id even check. Now, I definately will.

The sexualization of our youth makes me want to scream. This is where I evidently diverge quite a bit from a great deal of DUers.

[question everything]

5. No, I don't think that you diverge

and this is why I posted here. I know that there are many parents here who are concerned about their children, who are active parents.

The sad reality is that parents have abdicated their responsibility to be active parents, to select and monitor what their kids are reading, who their children are and how they spend their time. Either because parents are exhausted from holding two or three jobs or because they have been brain washed about "privacy."

Well, young kids do not have privacy, and teen agers are not qualified to make their own decisions about what is good for them.. the only exception is abortion, of course, since we cannot mandate, after the fact, good communication between parent and child, especially if the alternative is illegal botched abortion.

I don't think that when we, the baby boomers, embarked on free love, when we were in college, realized that this free love would trickle down to high school and elementary school kids.

[seabeyond]

6. with you all on this. but then from youngest of age, i have controlled

what children watch on tv. further, i have taught them why i say no to a lot of shows. the conditioning our society is committing on our children and the results of said conditioning. my kids trust, when i say no there is a reason. they also know, when i say no i can give them the reason and discussion is always welcome.

we are sexualizing our 5 year old girls, and then we say, hey better that then creating them to be inhibited. well there is a middle road. a healthy age appropriate devolpment of a child into teen sexuality. this is feeding the worse, conditioning at the worst.

i said in a convenience store, all the trash around for the young kids to see, i give up. lets just make all our girls sluts. no more struggling at giving them an healthy enviroment to grow in self respect, just embrace the slut in our 5, 10 15 year olds and let it go. it is what our society is fighting so hard to make of our girls