Young Adult Books

Should there be a ratings system for young adult books?

Brigham Young University professor Sarah Coyne studied the 40 YA books that topped the New York Times bestseller list in the summer of 2008, identifying 1,500 “profane words” in the books.

She explained her thoughts at U.S. News: “I think we put books on a pedestal compared to other forms of media … I thought long and hard about whether to do the study in the first place—I think banning books is a terrible idea, but a content warning on the back I think would empower parents.”

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Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

Penguin Young Readers Group will release S.E. Hinton‘s The Outsiders as an eBook for the first time.

Hinton (pictured, via) published The Outsiders in 1967 while completing her first year in college. This digital version celebrates the 45th anniversary of the controversial young adult book’s release.

Here’s more from the release: “Today, with more than fourteen million copies in print, and translated into more than 30 languages, the book is the best-selling young adult novel of all time. The book was also made into a film in 1983, directed by Francis Ford Coppola and featuring such future stars as Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon and Rob Lowe.”

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Wimpy Kid series author and illustrator Jeff Kinney was crowned “Author of the Year” at the Children’s Choice Book Awards gala in New York City. This marked the second year in a row that a middle grade author has emerged victorious in this category.

Follow this link to check out videos from last night’s gala. We’ve posted the full list of winners below.

Kids cast their votes for the awards, breaking last year’s record with more than 900,000 submissions. The Children’s Book Council hosted the event to celebrate the 93rd anniversary of Children’s Book Week.

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In the wake of Hunger Games success, Lionsgate Entertainment acquired the film rights to the young-adult fantasy series, Patrick Ness‘ Chaos Walking trilogy. Academy Award-winning screenwriter Charlie Kaufman will adapt the first book, The Knife of Never Letting Go.

Here’s more from Deadline: ”The Carnegie Medal winning book is set in a dystopian future with humans colonizing a distant earth-like planet. When an infection called the Noise suddenly makes all thought audible, privacy vanishes, chaos ensues, and a corrupt autocrat threatens to take control of the human settlements and wage war with the indigenous alien race.”

Kaufman won the 2004 Oscar in the Best Original Screenplay category for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. He also wrote the scripts for the adaptation of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Adaptation (based The Orchid Thief).

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Before her meteoric rise to the top with Gossip Girl, Cecily von Ziegesar worked as an editor for Alloy, a book packaging company, and knows too well what authors experience getting their titles onto shelves.  So what are her thoughts on allegations that the company takes advantage of its writers?

“You know what you’re getting into when you work with that packager,” von Ziegesar said in mediabistro.com’s So What Do You Do? interview. “I think if you honestly looked at a lot of the series where the writers have worked with packagers, they just wouldn’t have happened otherwise, because it takes that many people to get something in that quantity out that quickly — to a certain quality, too, because it’s a big endeavor. And they’re able to make it all happen well and fast.”

For von Ziegesar’s tips on conquering writer’s block and to find out how she got Gossip Girl on TV, read the full interview.

 

 

Scholastic has printed more than 36.5 million copies of books in The Hunger Games trilogy in the United States alone. This includes more than 17.5 million copies of The Hunger Games, more than ten million copies of Catching Fire and more than nine million copies of Mockingjay.

The publisher shared the news as the movie version of the Suzanne Collins book made records at the box office. Collins herself praised the films, saying via Facebook, “I feel like the book and the film are individual yet complementary pieces that enhance one another.”

The film, which stars Jennifer Lawrence, Woody Harrelson, and Lenny Kravitz, brought in $155 million in ticket sales opening weekend, which according to The Washington Post, makes it No. 3 on the list of best opening weekend ticket sales (behind only Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 and The Dark Knight). The film’s soundtrack has also topped the Billboard charts.

The Hunger Games will open in theaters around the country today and the movie will undoubtedly send readers scrambling for the sequel–a timely book that could help the younger generation think about these revolutionary times.

The Hunger Games focuses on the personal struggle teenage girl named Katniss Everdeen. In Suzanne Collins‘ sequel, Catching Fire, that personal struggle expands in a country-wide revolution. Even though Catching Fire was first published in 2009, certain scenes feel ripped from our current headlines.

Yesterday actor Penn Badgley compared The Hunger Games plot to the Occupy Wall Street movement: “It’s the one percent [killing the kids] … I think you’d have to be blind to not see that … If this doesn’t end in revolution, it’s irresponsible, because of everything it’s bringing up.”

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Summit Entertainment has released the first teaser trailer for The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2. We’ve embedded the trailer above–what do you think?

The 15-second clip has drawn more than 116,800 “likes” on Facebook. The film comes out in November, and the full trailer will be available on the movie’s Facebook page on March 26th.

Stephenie Meyer‘s novel Breaking Dawn features an elaborate plot inspired by two William Shakespeare plays: A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Merchant of Venice.

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Goodreads has created a dystopian fiction inforgraphic, mapping the popularity and variety of books published in this bleak genre. We’ve embedded part of the chart above, but you can follow this link to see the information-packed image.

The inforgraphic explores books about characters living with repressive governments, a genre that covers everything from The Hunger Games to 1984. Wikipedia has a handy primer and list that can help you find more books.

Check it out: “Dystopian fiction is more popular than it has been in more than 50 years. Whether it’s the result of political turmoil, global financial crises, or other anxieties, readers are craving books about ruthless governments and terrifying worlds. The new breed of dystopian novels combines classic dystopian themes of cruel governments and violent, restrictive worlds with a few new twists—badass heroines and romance.”

 

Promoting The Hunger Games adaptation, actors Jennifer Lawrence and  Josh Hutcherson (pictured) visited New York City’s Barnes & Noble Union Square.

Fans camped out 24-hours before the event, vying for special bracelets that allowed them to get autographs from the stars.

The Hunger Games movie has already sold more than one million pre-sale tickets. According to Deadline, the movie could bring in as much as $125 million at the box office during its opening weekend.

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