From: Angelica Carpenter <angelica>
Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2003 11:17:02 -0700

Dear all, While I enjoy the occasional novel in blank verse, like Out of the Dust and Sonya Somes' Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy, the trend does worry me. Some of the "poetry" is not very good and I don't see any reason for many of the stories to be told in blank verse. Does anyone else worry that this genre is gaining in popularity because the format is short, with lots of white space? Could this be happening because young readers can't or won't read longer texts, or because publishers think that they can't or won't? Etc. Do any 12-year-olds still read Gone with the Wind, or any long novel, for hours on end, until they finish? I guess Harry Potter has this effect, at least. From a lover of long novels, Angelica Carpenter, Curator, Arne Nixon Center for the Study of Children's Literature
Received on Mon 07 Apr 2003 01:17:02 PM CDT