Comments on: Teen Chick Lit: Who is turning the pages and why?

By: Jenny

Jenny — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 20:26:37 +0000

This comment is more in response to your topic than to your specific post, although I agree that I had some brief interest in the kind of “pre-teen chick-lit” that you are describing. The whole genre seems kind of superficial, and very specific to the audience, which is why I was interested to hear some insight on it from someone who had experience with publishing. Kristin Gore came to speak on campus a couple months ago, and she told our class that when her novel “Sammy’s Hill” was being reviewed and marketed, the publisher wanted to attach a “chick-lit” feel to the book, even though Gore hadn’t written it that way. Playing up the female lead made the book easier for the publisher to sell. What I thought was interesting was that right after she told us that, Gore said that the chick-lit genre is “dead” and that it “wasn’t selling anymore.” It made me think about how much of literature is based on pop culture, advertising, and current trends… one of those “don’t judge a book by its cover” things. Sometimes a book doesn’t get to pick its own cover.

By: My Comments « Menagerie of the Mysterious

My Comments « Menagerie of the Mysterious — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 06:45:24 +0000

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By: muire

muire — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 05:42:29 +0000

I agree with this completely. My own period of reading Chick Lit was brief, a few Sweet Valley High books in the fifth grade, but I can see the benefit to be had from encouraging young adults to read this type of literature. I tended to stick with more “grown-up” works and classics. In essence, I was a complete and utter misfit who had very little idea of how to socialize with the girls my own age. Maybe this type of lit would have helped with that, who knows? As for Chick Lit being “trashy”, the situations and language teenagers are exposed to on television is just as bad, if not worse. Never mind the situations that arise in an everyday school day when hundreds of adolescent hormones bombs are confined with their fellow classmates for hours on end! All in all, literature that young adults can connect to, that has relevance to their lives, and makes them want to read can only be good.