This Slate article about Suzanne Collins is so short that I kept looking for the "read on" link. It seems like an introduction.
The author argues that The Hunger Games made adults stop worrying about being seen reading YA. "It wasn't until Suzanne Collins published her bleak, seductively sadistic Hunger Games trilogy that grown-ups stopped worrying and learned to love the teen novel—to the tune of some 4 million copies sold in 2010 alone."
Aren't the giant sellers in children's/YA Harry Potter, Twilight, and The Hunger Games? Didn't all three of these series attract legions of adult readers? Does a children's/YA book need adult readers to become wildly successful?
And if it does, won't that have some kind of impact on children's publishing as publishers try to identify the factors in books that will attract the adult readers and their money?
I always have questions, rarely answers.
Plus Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" series and Mark Haddon's Curious Incident….
ReplyDeleteI thought Curious Incident was an adult book that crossed over to YA. But either way, you're still right that it would never have been as big a seller with just YA readers.
ReplyDeleteWere there any autism books in YA before Curious Incident? I don't think so.