Yesterday I spent the afternoon at the Brooklyn Book Festival where I had the pleasure of hearing YA authors Gayle Forman (If I Stay), Laurie Halse Anderson (Wintergirls) and G. Neri (Surf Mules) talk about the challenging themes covered in their respective novels, and the response they've received from teens and adults. The panelists spoke to the role they hoped their fiction played in helping real teens think about their own problems and starting dialogues with peers and parents.

Incidentally last week Penguin Young Readers announced a fall marketing initiative with a similar purpose. The campaign, Point of View, spotlights novels dealing with difficult topics and aims to connect teens to books that address those topics. Both Anderson and Forman's latest are featured among the backlist titles. Right now the site still seems like a work-in-progress in terms of content (i.e., book trailers, synopses, reviews discussion guides), but  Publisher's Weekly reports there are plans to roll out live Webcast events with the authors, a comment tool and a message board on Nickelodeon’s The N Web site.

It's these social networking features that interest me most. As readers might remember, when Wintergirls was released it sparked a debate between those who worried the firsthand narrative of a severely anorexic teen would act as a trigger and those who saw its potential as a thought (and hopefully discussion) provoking examination of the disease. Personally, I agreed with our guest poster who landed in the latter camp, and I'm curious to see how Penguin's forum and resources will be embraced by teens and adult influencers (librarians, parents, teachers) as a way of advancing those difficult, but much needed conversations.

Along with Wintergirls, the campaign also promotes Jay Asher's Thirteen Reasons Why,a look at teen suicide and John Green's Looking For Alaska, both of which have come under fire by parents and school boards for dark or graphic subject matter (side note: my guess is similar controversy might be in store for After, a new title packaged in the promotion, that follows a teen who gives birth to a baby she later abandons in a dumpster. ) While certainly not a replacement for the support of a classroom environment, ideally these online spaces will create a safe, supervised alternative environment to explore these topics with the added benefit of hearing the message straight from the authors themselves.

Of course therapeutic benefits aside, the platform — if engaging enough — might just connect teen readers with a taste for darker fiction. Because these books (I've read three out of the five) along with everything else are good reads that demand to be talked about. Even if the the subject matter (suicide, car crashes) isn't a reflection of their personal experience. Point of View is just one more example of the YA publishing community leveraging social media to connect a passionate, vocal community.

For more coverage of YA books and publishing, check out the Ypulse Books Channel sponsored by Hachette Book Group, publishers of Prophecy of the Sisters.

Categorized under: Books

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