If we talked more about children's and young adults literature in the wider media maybe people would have a better understanding of it and we could spend less time having to defend it. Sigh. This article argues for greater media coverage on behalf of Australian literature but we need to be doing this in New Zealand too. If media attention was apportioned according to market share, children's and YA literature would be featuring a lot more than it does now. And as Danielle Binks says, the YA and Children's lit crowd are having way more interesting and complex discussions while the adult critics bang on about their cringe over adults reading YA. Our envelope is being pushed, the boundaries challenged and the bar raised, while their record appears broken...
Sure, there are some children's and YA books that are not well written, are formulaic and break no new ground either thematically or in literary terms. But there are many that are and do. Can we please discuss each book on its merits and accept that the term children's or Young Adult does not make a book some inferior entity? No category of book is automatically inferior or superior. New Zealand SFF author Helen Lowe argues the point well on her blog here. The divisiveness harms all of us. Folk need to grow up and talk about each book on the quality of its content, including Children's and YA.
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