From: Beth Wright <bethlibrarian>
Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2004 13:04:50 -0700 (PDT)

Like many librarians, I?m sure, I have mixed feelings about pop culture reading. When I?m working to promote literacy, I?m happy to use books and other reading materials (comic books, magazines) that would probably be labeled as pop culture. I give away series books, sports biographies, etc. during my summer reading program, and they get read by children who otherwise don?t read much of anything. If the other choices are cable TV or another game of Doom, I?m glad to see children reading Pokemon books.

When I?m working to promote great books for young people, however, I worry that the latest Pokemon series is taking shelf space, and marketing money, and publishers? time and energy away from more literary books. But does this really happen? Or does more pop reading actually equal more quality books because it gives publishers more money to risk on interesting first books by unknown authors? Also, has the ratio between juvenile pop publishing and juvenile literary publishing changed in recent years? I would be interested to hear from publishers and experts about these topics.

Beth Wright Youth Services Librarian Fletcher Free Library Burlington, Vermont bethlibrarian at yahoo.com



                
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
Received on Tue 13 Jul 2004 03:04:50 PM CDT