In 2016, Scholastic conducted a survey on over two thousand US children ages six to seventeen and found that when it came to reading, boys generally do not like it as much as girls do.
YA
Black Characters Matter: Social Justice in YA
By Ruth Robertson @RRobertson1991
Young Adult literature, or YA, has been a genre dominated by white authors and characters, but this is changing. In the past couple years, two debut novels by African-American women have taken the YA world and bestseller lists by storm: The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (2017) and The Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi (2018). If you haven’t read them yet, you should.
Young Adult Audiobook Recommendations
By Monica Hay @monicathewriter
Audiobooks are all the rage in publishing right now. This Forbes article tells us that digital audiobook revenue rose 32.1 percent in 2018’s first quarter. People are turning to audiobooks to get their reading done more than ever. Below are my favorite young adult audiobooks I’ve listened to so far.
Celebrating Action: How Ooligan is Responding to Crisis
By Monique Vieu
We need to be setting an example for future publishers—to strive for imperative community-building values that promote action and advocacy. If we’re not giving back to the communities that allow us to thrive, exciting children about books, helping provide them with the resources they need, promoting literacy, and, more importantly, giving them characters they can connect to on a deep and personal level and live their lives by—then what are we doing?
The Role of Empathy in YA
By Jasmine Gower
Empathy is not so much feeling something about a character, but feeling something with a character. It is not only being sorry for a character when they struggle and happy when they succeed—it’s about the reader experiencing those trials and victories as if they were their own. And when those trials and victories are rooted in immediate real-world issues, there’s more at stake than well-written characterization.
Brief Art Lesson on the Bookstagram
By Sadie Verville @sadieverville
Keeping a consistent brand, no matter how personal the account, is so important. People want to follow accounts that they can trust will post fairly similar art, because they like that art. You wouldn’t commission an artist who gave out a different-styled piece every time someone requested their services; in a similar way, people will not give you that follow if you remain inconsistent and unpredictable.